Top Fan always running, not responsive to PWM

asa · March 20, 2022, 12:22pm

Hi,

I have a problem similar to Pi 4 Quad Sata Hat Fan always at 100% where no solution was given as it looked like a hardware issue. The date on my hat is 2020-09-17.

The fan in the top board is running as soon as I plug the power (12V DC direct to the hat), even without an sd card in the raspberry pi 4.

The fan is also not responsive the the GPIO PWM pins. I have pigpio and rocky-sata running fine (disks are up, oled is working, rocky-sata gets gpio with host localhost, both services are active). I have lvl0 set high of course.

But the gpio pins do nothing. Running the python code manually with import fan, fan.gpio.hardware_PWM(12, 0, 0) and fan.gpio.hardware_PWM(13, 0, 0) do nothing. It is basically impossible to turn off the fan.

Is there any solution to this? Do I need to get a new top board and if yes, where can I get one?

I should mention that I bought the kit used on eBay so I didn’t build it myself. Is it possible that the wrong kind of fan be fitted on the top board? How can I check? There’s nothing written on the fan itself, all I can see are the three red yellow and black wires.

Thanks!

setq · March 21, 2022, 1:10pm

Hello, what does the output of command

netstat -l | grep -o '\S*:8888' | tr -d ':8888'

asa · March 21, 2022, 6:25pm

Hi, the output is simply localhost.

Note I have changed the pigpio service config to force ipv4:

ExecStart=/usr/bin/pigpiod -l -m -n 127.0.0.1 -p 8888

setq · March 22, 2022, 3:02am

Please have a try:

import pigpio
gpio = pigpio.pi(host='127.0.0.1')
gpio.hardware_PWM(12, 0, 0)
gpio.hardware_PWM(13, 0, 0)

asa · March 28, 2022, 8:29am

Nothing happens, the fan is still spinning after I run the code.

pi@mediaserver:/usr/bin/rockpi-sata $ python3
Python 3.9.2 (default, Feb 28 2021, 17:03:44) 
[GCC 10.2.1 20210110] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import pigpio
>>> gpio = pigpio.pi(host='127.0.0.1')
>>> gpio
<pipio.pi host=127.0.0.1 port=8888>
>>> gpio.hardware_PWM(12, 0, 0)
0
>>> gpio.hardware_PWM(13, 0, 0)
0

setq · March 28, 2022, 10:58am

Try stopping the rockpi-sata.service and run the code again.

asa · March 29, 2022, 9:32am

Still nothing. I stopped the service first:

pi@mediaserver:~ $ sudo service rockpi-sata stop
pi@mediaserver:~ $ sudo service rockpi-sata status
● rockpi-sata.service - Rockpi SATA Hat
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/rockpi-sata.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: inactive (dead) since Tue 2022-03-29 10:26:05 BST; 6s ago
    Process: 413 ExecStart=/usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/rockpi-sata/main.py on (code=killed, signal=TERM)
    Process: 955398 ExecStop=/usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/rockpi-sata/main.py off (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   Main PID: 413 (code=killed, signal=TERM)
        CPU: 13min 45.521s

Mar 28 13:46:49 mediaserver systemd[1]: Started Rockpi SATA Hat.
Mar 29 10:26:00 mediaserver systemd[1]: Stopping Rockpi SATA Hat...
Mar 29 10:26:05 mediaserver systemd[1]: rockpi-sata.service: Succeeded.
Mar 29 10:26:05 mediaserver systemd[1]: Stopped Rockpi SATA Hat.
Mar 29 10:26:05 mediaserver systemd[1]: rockpi-sata.service: Consumed 13min 45.521s CPU time.

Then I ran the code and nothing happened, fan still spinning hard.


pi@mediaserver:~ $ cat fanfix.py
import pigpio
gpio = pigpio.pi(host='127.0.0.1')
gpio.hardware_PWM(12, 0, 0)
gpio.hardware_PWM(13, 0, 0)

pi@mediaserver:~ $ python3 fanfix.py

Anything else I can try? Thanks for your help.

yanstr · August 29, 2023, 6:05pm

@setq @asa Hey there, were you guys able to resolve this issue? It seems I’m hitting the same thing. I’ve tried the suggestions here, but alas to no avail.

$ netstat -l | grep -o ‘\S*:8888’ | tr -d ‘:8888’

localhost

$ netstat -vatn | grep 8888
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:8888 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:44440 127.0.0.1:8888 ESTABLISHED
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:8888 127.0.0.1:44436 ESTABLISHED
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:44436 127.0.0.1:8888 ESTABLISHED
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:8888 127.0.0.1:44440 ESTABLISHED

$ sudo service rockpi-sata status
● rockpi-sata.service - Rockpi SATA Hat
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/rockpi-sata.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Tue 2023-08-29 19:36:14 CEST; 4min 59s ago
Main PID: 597 (python3)
Tasks: 6 (limit: 8755)
CPU: 5.248s
CGroup: /system.slice/rockpi-sata.service
├─ 597 /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/rockpi-sata/main.py on
├─1969 /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/rockpi-sata/main.py on
├─1970 /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/rockpi-sata/main.py on
├─1971 /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/rockpi-sata/main.py on
└─1972 /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/rockpi-sata/main.py on

Aug 29 19:36:14 nextcloudpi systemd[1]: Started Rockpi SATA Hat.

More context:

Using RPI4 8Gb Model B Rev 1.5
/boot/config.txt looks like this:

dtparam=audio=on
camera_auto_detect=1
display_auto_detect=1
dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d
max_framebuffers=2
arm_64bit=1
disable_overscan=1
[cm4]
otg_mode=1
[all]
[pi4]
arm_boost=1
[all]
dtparam=i2c1_arm=on
dtoverlay=w1-gpio
dtoverlay=i2c-rtc,pcf8563
dtparam=i2c1=on

/boot/cmdline.txt has the following:

console=serial0,115200 console=tty1 root=PARTUUID=48662b9d-02 rootfstype=ext4 fsck.repair=yes rootwait ipv6.disable=1

I also noticed that even when using “sudo shutdown now” the fan keeps blasting at 100%. I’m using the provided power supply and the barrel jack on the hat.

Any ideas will be greatly appreciated!

Rafael_Koike · August 15, 2025, 3:14am

I recommend checking your board to see if pin 8 of the 2x5 is connected to PIN 33.
After some troubleshooting in my board (that has the same revision as yours), I found that it is missing a jumper (0 ohm resistor).

Here are the contacts that you need to test between the PIN 33 of the 40pin socket and the pin 8 of the 2x5 PHD2 socket.