Is it ok to leave EmuStation running 24/7? (overheat question)

rapidfire

ive got a rpi3b running retropie 4.2
no overclock
heatsink on cpu. heatsink gets hot to the touch.

i would like to know if its a good thing to leave emulation station running 24/7, so i can just pick up and play at a moments notice?

i ask because the other day emustation started slowing down a lot (took a minute to quit emulation station back to terminal)
and the text on the screen said both the cpu and gpu were 72% Celsius (thats about 150F isnt it??)

i dont know why it would overheat (or if indeed that is classified as overheating) when all it was doing was displaying a theme onscreen and no games or anything else running.

should i not be running it all the time? are there known bugs with emustation after its been on for an extended time?

AlexMurphy

@rapidfire I wouldn't to be honest. My Pi, official case and heat-sinks gets pretty hot just sitting in the Emulation Station menus. I drop out to the terminal using F4 or quit out through the menu and this will just let the Pi idle with no graphical UI running and it will run a lot cooler. To start again just type emulationstation and you'll be back in within seconds.

AlexMurphy

@rapidfire As for running all the time, I just keep my 2 Pi 3s running constantly. They only get turned off briefly for a reboot or to be moved. They use such little power, pennies a week, that it makes no sense to turn them off. To me anyway.

dankcushions

@rapidfire
are you running videos in emulationstation? i understand that is pretty cpu heavy.

i've let my pi3 run 24/7 with ES running for about a year. no overheat issues. it uses about 5-8% of one core when idling for me.

AlexMurphy

@dankcushions I must admit I do run background music. Probably should have mentioned that. No video snaps though.

rapidfire

@dankcushions said in Is it ok to leave EmuStation running 24/7? (overheat question):

@rapidfire
are you running videos in emulationstation? i understand that is pretty cpu heavy.

i've let my pi3 run 24/7 with ES running for about a year. no overheat issues. it uses about 5-8% of one core when idling for me.

no i dont use videos

i tried them briefly, but i found they were quite choppy and so removed them all, deleted the gamelists and rescraped with just basic images

how do you monitor all these things like temp and core usage while emustation is running?
is there some sort of onscreen display i can set, like fraps on a pc?

steptoe

I bought a tiny fan that cost about £1 from Hong Kong but 3 weeks delivery, and superglued it to the top of the large heatsink I have on the RPI3 powered directly from the GPIO. It takes so little current and comes on only when the RPI3 is powered up. Running very heavy stress tests showed the rPI3 barely get over 40c no matter how long I left it running for

It wasn't an official heatsink though, large 25mmx25mmx30mm aluminium heatsink that was cut down so it overlaps the CPU and glued on using heatsink glue. Basically heatsink paste and epoxy. Cost about £2 a small tube of that and works great once you leave it to set overnight

dudleydes

@rapidfire To measure temperature, you can run the command vcgencmd measure_temp via SSH, either from a PC or a mobile app such as ConnectBot.

Alternatively, you can install a monitoring app such the free Android app, RaspPi Check.

XVO

72°C is a bit to hot if you ask me. I have my pi built into a Nes case with a 80mm fan in the case, it doesn't even reach 60°C when leaving it on.
On Kodi it stays below 40°C.
And I leave my pi on all the time because of the power usage.

rapidfire

@dudleydes said in Is it ok to leave EmuStation running 24/7? (overheat question):

@rapidfire To measure temperature, you can run the command vcgencmd measure_temp via SSH, either from a PC or a mobile app such as ConnectBot.

Alternatively, you can install a monitoring app such the free Android app, RaspPi Check.

can that ssh command be run whilst emulationstation is running or do i need to quit out?

i havent got android, so is there a way to monitor emustation whilst it, or any emulators, are runnings?
(if that command doesnt actually do that)

dudleydes

@rapidfire You can run the command vcgencmd measure_temp via SSH regardless of what your Pi is doing, whether it's idle in EmulationStation or terminal or whether it's running an emulator.

There are probably SSH client and/or Pi monitoring apps available for the OS of any mobile devices you may have. For example, here is how to get started in iOS. You will need to enable SSH on your Pi first.

packetm0n

I just registered to say that it's fine. I leave my pi3 in a clear case (it's not the official one, but it's a popular one brand I forgot). No heat sink no fan. For about 95% of the day it sits idle waiting for a electronic coin to be deposited.

Sometimes I add extra packages on top. Right now it's doubling as an ad sinkhole with pi-hole ( https://pi-hole.net/ ) and it's happily sitting at about 59C.

Arcuza

I've had my PI 3 running for 93 days without ever shutting down. Emulation Station goes into a dimmed mode after a few minutes. What that does for power consumption, I don't know.

4 hours since last play system temperature is 42c. We have 21c in house. I don't have a heat sink, but I haven't attached the top lid either.

The nice thing about having it running 24x7 is that is gets out of dimmed mode nicely by pushing the X-button on the Xbox 360 controller and you're good to go...