Cooling - madBeavis/PimpMyAtv GitHub Wiki

Overview

Heat is detrimental to the performance of ATVs. On the ATV Experience roms, a rough number for throttling is ~80°C. You can make use of the job function in MAD to determine temperature of your ATV, get the file here.

Passive Cooling

Passive cooling is the easiest. Simply put your ATV on some cool tile or in the basement and let lower ambient temperatures help your situation. Got a colder room, move them to there if that is an option.

For the tx9s, think about having them vertically. If they are placed horizontally, hot air coming off the heatsink is essentially stagnant. When vertical, at least the hot air can rise out of the case as it is well ventilated stock.

Air flow

The next easiest method would be to blow air across your ATV. Probably cheap as you may have the fan already. There should be plenty of options at your local stores, but the following have been posted to Discord:

Heatsinks

Heatsinks can be utilized for ATV like the x96. Some like the f1 and tx9s come with them. Start the hunt on eBay or Amazon, many are made for the Raspberry Pi. It should go without saying that air flow should be provided.

I ended up thermal glueing heatsinks onto my x96 ATVs. Some heatsinks come with thermal tape, it didn't seem to stick well. I haven't tested it, but it is not hard to imagine a manufacturer specified application of thermal paste being superior at conducting heat compared to 1mm of thermal tape.

If you are doing a build, consider orienting the heatsinks properly to coincide with airflow. It may be worth just a few degrees, but do it once and do it right. Just doesn't seem right to spend all this time and effort on a build to not maximize cooling potential.

There are so many heatsinks available, just shop around until you find one that is reasonably priced, fits and will accomplish what you need.

Product links

Picture:

3d printing

Head on over to the 3d printing page to find more information.

Stacking

There appears to be minimal write-ups on the regarding stacking ATVs. A basic and workable approach is using M2 Plastic Risers. Metal M2.5 may work with threading through the board, as with any tight fit, best to spit on it first.

A few examples are given below, along with the ATV Setups. Further investigation will require some basic googlefoo. It will be left up to you as the end user to verify worthiness for your specific situation.

Some like the x96 and f1 are easy to stack as they have mounting holes already drilled through the board. The tx9s does not have holes as it clips in the case. Isdor did make the leap and drilled holes in one of his to stack them Discord - Pic1 - Pic2.

A few examples for building your own are given below:

Complete kits for Pi exist, could be adapted to ATV boards, generally cost more that DIY approaches:

Stuck7hrottle (stacked ATVs)

Another option is using Legos. If you need the Legos, try eBricks website.

Picture:

Fan on case

If you want to keep the board in the case you may also utilize fans. This was my first method to cool my ATVs, but I can't recommend it for anything other than to say it exists. Buy a USB powered 40mm fan, disassemble the device, cut a hole with a Dremel or equivalent in the case, put it back together and attach it to the case by super glue and/or zip ties. You can setup the fan to push air into the case or pull from it, I used push configuration. I offset the fan relative to the center of the case, as there is a corner cutout on the board, as to force through as much of the case as possible. Based off their description on Amazon, they use less than 100 milliamps current.

Product Links:

Pictures:

Powering fans

There are several options for powering fans. A full on power supply will depend on the size of your setup, just might not make sense for a small setup. 5v fans do exist and some regular 12v fans can run at 5v (look on fan spec page, see if it lists a rpm for 5v).

The following are some products (for illustrative purposes):

Test results

I wanted to see what effect cooling had on an ATV. This was conducted on a x96mini with a single speed 40mm fan forcing air in. Account was leveling in Paris. Ambient temperature of 20°C (68°F). It started with fan on. Fan was turned off and let temperature rise to a plateau. Then fan was turned on and run until the temperature stabilized.

Link:

dkmur aka MrStats collected an extensive amount of temperature data on his setup, can see it here discord - temp data