Anyone managed to adjust the fan speed in software?

[blueman2]

When the Tivo boots up, I see that it is setting temperature targets for its fan speed.

Start fan control
First temperature parameters set:
Terminal temp: 71
Critical temp: 62
Logging temp: 60
Target temp: 50
Lowest fan speed: 7


This appears to be from the program "Fancontrol". Has anyone played with this program to change the settings for a more quiet (but perhaps a bit hotter) Tivo?

[blueman2]

Well, after some playing with this, it turns out that fancontrol has a setting for minimum fan speed. The default is 7, which was quite audible for my system. I played with different values, and found that 3 was in-audible, yet still kept my system cool enough (42 C). The great thing about this is that if my system does heat up for some reason, fancontrol will up the fan speed to whatever is needed to keep it below 50 C, which is the default target temp.

With my drive set at quiet mode, and my fan speed now set at 3 by default, my Tivo is finally competely quiet (at 10 foot distance) to my ears.

Nice! :) :) :)

The setting, by the way, is

fancontrol -lowestfan 3 -background

Put that in your rc.sysinit.author, and you will have a much quieter Tivo.

[blueman2]

By the way, does anyone have any idea what the -P, -I, -D, -Imin, and -Imax values are for? Here is the help response.

usage: fancontrol [-help] [-terminate] [-setspeed speed] [-fancheck]
[-P P] [-I I] [-D D] [-Imin Imin] [-Imax Imax]
[-target temperature] [-target2 temperature]
[-lowestfan speed] [-sleeptime seconds] [-verbose]
The default values are: P=2, I=2, D=0, Imin=-5, Imax=50, target temperature
based on TiVo Config values, lowest fan speed=7, sleep time=30 sec.

[pentium101]

I'm assuming that there is a PID (proportional-integral-derivative) controller that regulates the fan speed. The seperate values for each would determine how much fan speed would be applied to help control the changing temperature inside of the unit.

To get a better idea of how PID controllers work, you can read this wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller

I'm not sure of the Imin/Imax numbers unless they apply to the integral function. :confused:

[ercdvs]

I tried this in my bedroom tivo as the fan is noticeable at night...

and I can hear the fan cycle from lower to higher quite often. I can't really catch the temperature (system settings show 37-38) but i assume I am right there on the threshold of the temp ... hence the cycle..

I can't understand .. as this tivo is on top of a dresser, covered by nothing, with 1' of space behind it. at it hits 38c

My other tivo is in a component shelf, very restricted, and gets only to 42

Gonna bump it up to 4/5 to see the changes...


Have you played with adjusting the temp threshold ?

[blueman2]

No, but since the target temp is 50 C by default, and my machine never gets near there, it never cycles at all. Not sure why yours is at only 38C.

For testing, I even put lowestfan to 0, and totally stopped the fan. Even then, my tivo never went to 50. After having it set this way all night, in the morning the fan was still off. Not what I would recommend, but just for those who want true quiet experience....

[ercdvs]

hmm... i'm going to play with the settings to see .. maybe the fan just sounds louder at that lower voltage due to age / dirt / etc

[blueman2]

Another thing to do is to use verbose mode to monitor what the fan is doing in real time:


fancontrol -lowestfan 3 -verbose

This will print to your screen every 30 seconds that the temperature is, what the fan speed is, and how far the temp is from triggering a higher fan speed.

use cntrl-c to exit the program

[simpsong]

I tried this in my bedroom tivo as the fan is noticeable at night...

and I can hear the fan cycle from lower to higher quite often. I can't really catch the temperature (system settings show 37-38) but i assume I am right there on the threshold of the temp ... hence the cycle..


I tried adjusting the fancontrol in my author file, and kept hearing rapid changes of the fan as well. Looking at my logs, it appeared there were 2 instances of fancontrol running. One with the original settings, and one with my settings.

I then looked some more, and found rc.Sequence_575.StartFancontrol.sh located in /etc/rc.d/StageD_PreMfs/. I removed my edits from the author file, and adjusted this file, and all has been well since 11/25/07.

I've done this to 2 Dtivos each with 160GB HDDs. My living room's new lowest speed is 4, and my bedroom's lowest speed is 2.

Thanks for the starting point, hearing the fan in the bedroom was always a pet peeve.

[Greubin]

Thanks for posting this. :)

[mlnc248]

Hi, thanks for the good tip. I have adjusted my three dtivos by modifying the rc.Sequence_575.StartFancontrol.sh file to have a fan speed of 3 and they are indeed much quieter.

One question, if the TiVo will automatically increase the fan speed above the minimum when the temperature gets too high, then is there any harm in setting the minimum fan speed to 0 or 1?

[StanSimmons]

Ideally, you want a steady temp inside the box. Fluctuating temps cause all kinds of nasty stress on the chips and connections.

[realbigmike]

Changing your fan will not cause "all kinds of nasty stress on the chips and connections". Stay under 60ºC and over 20ºC and you are within normal operating range that all chips, drives, and components are rated for.

I have software version 4.01b and I cannot seem to change the lowestfan speed :(
It just keeps spitting out the same options for me no matter which switches I use, maybe the 4.01b software is too old.
I even tried killing fancontrol with ps ax then kill 94 and nothing I do seems to change it. If I enter fanctontrol -help at the telnet prompt it still spits out the same thing:
Terminal temp: 71
Critical temp: 62
Logging temp: 60
Target temp: 50

Would someone mind uploading their version of fancontrol from their /tvbin/ folder please.

I tried with the version of unhacked life sub tivo and it crashed my other tivo with the message "master:/tvbin # fancontrol: error while loading shared libraries: cannot open shared object file: cannot load shared object file: No such file or directory"