This utility is made for cases when one has a USB fan that he wants to use for RPi 3 cooling. The utility is made possible by the fact that the USB hub's power in RPi 3 is switchable. Unfortunately RPi 3 does not support individual port power control, therefore no other usb devices can be used simultaneously with the fan as this utility would turn the power off for all of them. The Ethernet port should remain working in most cases, but there is a chance that the power will also turn off for this port, since it's a part of the USB hub. This software will NOT harm your USB hub permanently. As soon as the utility is killed, the power is restored.
The utility is made for Python 3. Can be ran by typing the following command into the terminal.
python3 temp_ctrl.py
The utility provides a possibility to configure the control values. Samle of the config file is shown below.
max_temp=60 # Fan turns on at this temperature
cool_by=5 # Fan will keep running until the temperature is decreased by the given value. 60 - 5 = 55
temp_check_interval=1 # The update interval in which the temperature will be checked
Note that the config file has no extension.
If you want to control the fan only when needed, set the cool_by option to 0.
The terminal does not provide any options.
The utility will show some system status when running. Example below.
Min Max Curr Load % Mem % Temp 'C Fan
----- ----- ------ -------- ------- --------- -----
600 1300 1300 100 15.1 68.2 1