Hi! Just received my shim fan and installed it in my pi4, and it works great but it has bad connection so it don’t start and stop when it should when it reach set temps. It works if gently press on it but loose connection after a while and the fan keep spinning.
Is there any fix for this without soldering? Are the manufacturer aware of the problem? Or is it the raspberry 4 that have smaller pins?
The shim should have female connection instead of just holes in my opinion
Some have no issues and some have fitness issues. I have no idea what the percentage of works versus doesn’t work is though. You usually only hear about it not working on forums as they want help to get it working.
One thing others have tried is to plug a female header in on top of the fan shim. You could also try bolting it down with a stand off at that one end with the mounting hole. The hole right at the end of the GPIO.
I don’t have one yet, but do have plans to buy one. I will be soldering mine to a female header. One drawback to that is it will raise the fan up and away from the SOC. I already have a heatsink on my SOC so I will need to raise it up a bit anyway. My plan is to mount the fan on the under side of its holder instead of on top. I’m going to test fit it before soldering anything. My last resort will be soldering it right to the Pi’s GPIO pins.
The pinout is here
Pin 12 BCM 18 is the fan control pin. Check that pin to see if its bent or something.
A low profile surface mount header on the top would likely sort this issue out. That would require a revision of the current fan shim though. And raise the cost a bit too I would think.