Dusty Things

Reviving dusty old stuff to tinker with

I successfully revived my old Raspberry Pi 4 2Gb just to torture it again with NVR stuff. Got a lot of things to work on with my homelab setup. Things are pretty jank as of now but at least things are working.

Got to go work on my 3D printer again and revived it for several projects in mind.

Also some cool macro shots of dusty things

I recently got an Orange Pi 5 Plus 8Gb for the heftier processes. I even got it a nice 1 Tb NVME drive.

I 3D Printed a custom top part of the oPi's case so that I can mount an 80mm fan on it.

Testing a buck converter to power the fan with the GPIO pins

Of course, the Arctic P8 Fan was absolutely over-the-top as a cooling solution. I wasn't able to get cooler temps any more than what my dinky old slim fan could do. Granted I was using a huge heatsink that's originally for 3D Printer stepper motors. Currently I'm running the fan below 12 volts, to save power and to avoid voltage instability under load. Even undervolted, the cooling capability of the fan is still too much, not that it's a bad thing.

All of the wires and components fit snugly inside the 3D-printed top

Results are pretty amazing. Idle temps are at 32-34 degrees and the temperature never gets higher than 50 degrees on full load.