Raspberry Pi 5 Fan Control

This guide will help you set up automatic fan control for your Raspberry Pi 5.

Setup Instructions

1. Copy your working script to a system location:

   sudo cp fanspeed.py /usr/local/bin/fan_control.py
   sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/fan_control.py

2. Create the systemd service file:

   sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/fan-control.service

   Copy and paste the following service configuration into this file:

   [Unit]
   Description=Raspberry Pi 5 Fan Control Service
   After=multi-user.target
   
   [Service]
   ExecStart=/usr/bin/python3 /usr/local/bin/fan_control.py
   Restart=always
   RestartSec=10
   User=root
   StandardOutput=syslog
   StandardError=syslog
   SyslogIdentifier=fan-control
   
   [Install]
   WantedBy=multi-user.target
   

3. Enable and start the service:

   sudo systemctl enable fan-control.service
   sudo systemctl start fan-control.service

4. Verify that it's running:

   sudo systemctl status fan-control.service

Customizing Fan Behavior

You can customize the fan behavior if needed. Here are some options:

1. To make the fan quieter, you can adjust the temperature thresholds in the script. Open the script:

   sudo nano /usr/local/bin/fan_control.py

2. Find the calculate_fan_speed function and modify the thresholds as needed. For example, for an even quieter operation:

   def calculate_fan_speed(temp):

3. After making any changes, restart the service:

   sudo systemctl restart fan-control.service

Additional Commands

1. To view the logs of the fan control service:

   journalctl -u fan-control.service

2. To stop the service temporarily:

   sudo systemctl stop fan-control.service

3. To disable the service from starting at boot:

   sudo systemctl disable fan-control.service