People who know me will know I likes me a bit of a Raspberry Pi. I use them everywhere to do everything from raising chicken coops, playing Image Fight, summoning cups of tea and controlling various parts of my house. If there was an option to fix something with a nail and a bit of string, or to build an ARP sniffing raspberry pi housed in a 3d printed weatherproof box running off a solar panel then I’d be out shopping at 3dprintersandsolarpanels.com
Anyway, I noticed that one of my Pi’s constantly had the cooling fan running. Since it was beside me on my desk in the office the noise started to piss me off. So I looked into all the /boot/firmware/config.txt type stuff and set it all up. Still the same. I started digging around all the proc files and everything seemed to be setup as it should. Still the fan span. So I thought “maybe it’s a dodgy fan”. I could get a new one….or….or… I had just been reading about a beautiful new Pi case with a processor fan, two more RGB fans, some LED’s built in to light it all up and a little tiny screen that shows the IP address, disk space, temperature…all that sort of gubbins. It was [ as you may have guessed ] marketed as a Pironman5.
I took my time building it. Enjoying every moment. Trying to build it perfectly. The perspex sheets that made up the case came covered in brown sticky paper. As I peeled it off some of it got left behind around the place where “Pironman5” had been printed. I could have used a bit of rubbing alcohol to remove it. I could have used some blu-tack. I probably could have just rubbed it off with my finger, but noooooooo, nooooooo I had a screwdriver in my hand. “I’ll be gentle” I thought. I’m an idiot. Scratched the beejayzuz out of it. Oh well.
It all worked perfectly after building it. Only annoying bit is that the processor fan still spins constantly. Pretty sure there is a hardware fault on the board where the FAN PWM is going to GND somewhere. However, it’s now in a case which makes it quieter and it’s now no longer on my desk….it isn’t even in my office so it doesn’t bother me at all. It’s taken over the duties of my tea summoner and my spotify connector so it’s taken two pi’s off my network and I suspect it will become my git server.
In summary, buy a Pironman5 for your Raspberry Pi 5 – they’re ace. Don’t scratch off the brown paper with a screwdriver – that’s just folly. I’ll be buying another one to house my baker.