Getting Fan to work with Retropie using Raspberry Pi 3
-
Hi, I currently have Retropie v3.8 installed onto a Raspberry Pi 3 with a fan case. Following online instructions I connected the fan to GPIO pins 4 and 6, with Red connecting to 4, and Black connecting to 6.
The problem I'm having is when I turn on the Raspberry Pi the fan doesn't move.
I have checked and I can move the fan manually, so it isn't stuck, and the fan itself is a simple 5v, 0.20a fan, so I don't think it's a power issue.
I was wondering if anyone had any similar issues? Does retropie automatically send power to the GPIO pins or is the fan itself broken?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
-
Hi
Pins 4 and 6 aren't really operated by the Pi, Pins 2 and 4 are directly attached to the 5v power supply and pin 6,9,14,20,25 and 39 are directly attached to ground. To eliminate the pins themselves as an issue try connecting the red to pin 2 and the black to pin 9.
If it still doesn't work, try changing your power supply.
Simon
-
@omegafeggy The 5v power pins are connected directly to the Pi's power input so you will have the full rated power of your adaptor at your disposal. If it's a 0.2A fan, then it will be drawing that from your power adapter. What else is connected? Do you see a flashing rainbow in the top corner during use? The Pi will draw 0.7A doing work then you might have a keyboard and optical mouse both wired to the usb ports so another 0.2A max for both. Then there are your controllers, 0.3A for a PS dual shock wired in. So now you are at 1.4A with the fan connected. Do you have two controllers? or an Ipac? If you have only a 2A supply it might be getting close to the limit. Try the fan between 2 and 6 (Edit: see @simonster posted this as I was typing this lol), try the fan with an external power supply to see if it works with an old phone charger or get a couple of LR6 batteries to power it with 3V just to see if it moves. Finally, make sure that you have not connected it to Pin 3 and 5 by accident. I think that I also read once that your total USB peripheral consumption could not exceed 0.6A on all ports but I could be wrong on that. If the fan spins externally, I would then be probing the gpio pins with a voltmeter to see whats there.
-
@simonster Hey thanks for the reply. Next week i'll be grabbing some male to female jumper cables to plug the fan into pins 2 and 9 to see if that's the issue or not. I'm still trying to get my bearings with the GPIO pins and Pi in general, so if anything, this will at least be a learning experience.
-
@rbaker Hey thanks for your reply. At the moment I have a wireless keyboard connected that uses it's own USB dongle as an input device. I haven't seen the rainbow square in the corner, and i'm currently using a 5v, 2.5a power supply. I'm gonna see if I can find a way to power it externally as that would give a good indication if it's the fan or not, and hopefully i'll be able to get a lend of a multi-meter next week to check the pins. As i said in the previous comment, if anything this will at least be a learning experience for me to get to grips with the pi lol
Contributions to the project are always appreciated, so if you would like to support us with a donation you can do so here.
Hosting provided by Mythic-Beasts. See the Hosting Information page for more information.