High Pitch Noise Coming From Pinebook Pro

[pfeerick]

but I can definitely identify storage access in the tone. Sometimes changing the screen brightness will alter the pitch.

Does turning the screen up to full brightness make it go away. Someone mentioned that stopped it for them, suggesting it's something related to the PWM backlight control... perhaps an inductor that needs a dose of epoxy.

[tuxor]

Mine has it, too. Turning up the background light to maximum now and then stops the noise for me.

[linusfargo]

Likely cross post: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=8242

[jsperson]

but I can definitely identify storage access in the tone. Sometimes changing the screen brightness will alter the pitch.

Does turning the screen up to full brightness make it go away. Someone mentioned that stopped it for them, suggesting it's something related to the PWM backlight control... perhaps an inductor that needs a dose of epoxy.

Turning up the brightness does fix it, but only some of the time. Once I figured this out, I leave it at maximum brightness and still get the whine about 60% of the time.

[AndreVallestero]

Same issue here. Backlight doesn't seem to affect it however it seems to happen randomly with no obvious trigger. My PBP is from the mid-September pre-order batch.

[tuxor]

Haven't done some long term testing, but the occasional max.brightness seems to help.

Same issue here. Backlight doesn't seem to affect it however it seems to happen randomly with no obvious trigger. My PBP is from the mid-September pre-order batch.

Same here, September pre-order. My board is printed with: 2019-10-08

[swulff]

It's mentioned in this update: https://www.pine64.org/2019/10/05/octobe...ping-news/

I wonder if your unit didn't receive the fix?

If there was a fix, mine missed it too. Everyone in my household - especially the dog complain. It's intermittent - most often when charging, but right now I'm running on battery and the dog took off as soon as I turned it on. It seems unrelated to CPU speed, but I can definitely identify storage access in the tone. Sometimes changing the screen brightness will alter the pitch.

Any hack to fix it would be welcome. Is the part that was replaced at the factory user replaceable?

Yea my dog was not too happy either, but the noise is completely gone from my machine. I wish I could tell you I did something to fix it but the truth is that after using it for a while, fully charging it while off and running mr Fixit and apt upgrade to make sure firmware and software was up to date, it simply disappeared.

[FrancisTheodoreCat]

For anyone interested, I did some testing. Both were with the PBP on and mostly discharged, logged in to the desktop, and with the CPU moderately loaded via a muted YouTube video playing in Firefox.

Charging via barrel jack = audible high pitched coil whine.
Charging via USB-C = completely inaudible coil whine.

Not sure why the difference. Something to do with USB-C PD? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[sinistermrcream]

I get the whine at specific times, mostly due to load, I assume. Startup is the most easily repeatable event that does it.

[McMarius11]

this noise makes me crazy.