Hi everyone. Hey I’m working on a project and I need some help on hardware suggestions. And a disclosure I’m very inexperienced with this. So, I have a Pi 4b and I have a Hyperpixil 2 ¼”X3 ¾” touch screen display attached to it using the 40 pin GPIO header and what appears to be a 8mm stacking header with 14mm standoffs that came with the display.
So, I would like to add a fan and a battery to this project. The problem with a fan is that there isn’t enough room between the Pi and the display to fit one in and also all the fans I’ve seen are plugged into the 40 pin GPIO header and that isn’t available because of the display. Also it would be nice if the fan was controlled by a thermostat. What is the best solution here? Maybe a low profile fan and a taller stacking header and longer standoffs? I’ve searched and can’t seem to find a taller stacking header that says it’s for a Pi 4b and even if I could I don’t know how much I need with what fan, even if that’s the correct solution. Perhaps the fan could be plugged into a battery board, I don’t know if that is possible or not.
However, as you mentioned, the Hyperpixel uses all of the Pi’s GPIO pins so there will be a GPIO pin conflict. You might get away with not installing the Fan SHIM software and just letting it run whenever the Pi is powered up. No auto control. The Button and LED won’t be usable either.
Unfortunately, I don’t know the dimensions of the FAN HAT so I’m not sure if it will cause clearance issues or if this could be avoided by using long stacking headers and standoffs.
I would also try to stay away from battery HATs because of the fact that the Hyperpixel uses all of the Pi’s GPIO pins. A safer option would be something like this:
I also suggest visiting the Pimoroni forum to check what combinations have worked for other Hyperpixel users.
Thank you for the reply. I’ve looked at something like that board for a fan also but it seems to me that a shim would just put the whole stack out of whack because it is only under part of the 40 pin GPIO Header but maybe I just don’t understand how it all works.
What is wrong with a battery hat in relation to the Hyperpixil exactly? If all 40 pins are extended thru so each piece of hardware is stacked I don’t understand the conflict.
I’m sorry, I think I didn’t explain myself very well. What I meant was that because the Hyperpixel uses every Raspberry Pi pin it’s difficult to use it with other devices. For example, the FAN HAT could have conflicts with the GPIO pins (something like what is mentioned here). And the battery HAT could also cause similar problems, however, I’m not sure about this because I couldn’t find much information about the HAT you mentioned. But to give you an idea of what I mean you can see the problem with the PiJuice HAT (which is very similar) here.
Taking these problems into account I think the best solution would be to use a combination that other users have tried that is why I mentioned visiting the Pimoroni forum.
Thank you for the detailed explanation and links. I’ve been reading and I figured out what you were trying to tell me after I posted. I do have a post on the Pimoroni site and also asked them in a tech request so I might get somewhere with that. Thanks again.
