7 ms·
I'm reading this and wondering if a small cooling fan would destroy the potential usefulness of the device, and, if I could passively cool a Pi and this hat, wh
by Jedd 6y ago
I'm reading this and wondering if a small cooling fan would destroy the potential usefulness of the device, and, if I could passively cool a Pi and this hat, whether the secondary problem of the regular coal-train service with 78 wagons, that runs the other side of the valley (say 1.2km away) every 3-4 hours, would either a) make it pointless or b) register.
- tartoran 6y agoI think the train would clearly register and it would not really be pointless. If the coal train passes every 3 to 4 hours and takes a few minutes to pass you’d register a total of perhaps 30 minutes, the rest would be cleaner. Best place to put this device in a basement though
- Jedd 6y agoThanks - that has re-piqued my interest then. I'm on a rural property, no basement, but lots of undisturbed land with few people around. Bountiful night time and crepuscular animals however, that may interrupt the relative (and presumably very delicate) tranquillity of such devices. Reading TFA it sounds like readings are often rejected by authoritative sources, but are still locally extremely useful.
- prox 6y agoWhy would you need a cooling fan for the Pi? It doesn’t really need it unless you do a ton of video encoding for example.
- lmarcos 6y agoIt does need a fan: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2019/raspberry-pi-4-needs-fan-heres-why-and-how-you-can-add-one https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2019/raspberry-pi-4-needs-...
- blacksmith_tb 6y agoThe Pi 4 does, but it looks like you can pair the Shake seismometer hats with the Pi Zero W, those run fine with passive cooling (especially bolted to a concrete slab in the basement, I'd say).
- prox 6y agoThe Raspberry Pi 400 doesn’t have one. I believe it throttles back when too hot.
- detaro 6y agothe 400 has a metal parts of the case as a passive cooling surface, so it fares better than the "naked" Pi 4.
- Jedd 6y agoI've got few of the model 4, though most of my Pis are earlier models. Earlier models I rarely had a fan involved, but the first two model 4s I used, I put on a big metal heatsink that included two fans. For my purposes the fans seem to be fine to be disabled, and the device doesn't throttle back due to thermal overload. However - the heatsink takes up a lot of space, and probably can not be used with this kind of hat, so I'd have to look at a less passive cooling option I think. Also, where I'd be deploying something like this would be in a part of Australia where through summer ambient air temperature can get around 50C, and if it's in a shed or covered area, perhaps higher. I haven't had a Pi4 running here through a summer yet, so have no idea how that's going to play out. In about two months from now I'll have a better idea.
- Noumenon72 6y agoI don't understand why you need to cool it or what "this hat" is a typo for.
- detaro 6y ago"hat" is the term for boards that go on top of a Raspberry Pi. (similar to Arduino had "shields")