Soldering on the FanSHIM

Discussion Raspberry Pi
1

Hi,

I have a FanSHIM and it’s currently slip installed onto the pins as it is in the documentation. But because my Raspberry pi is installed upside down under my desk, over time the fanSHIM becomes loose and stops functioning fully (LED stops, stop being controlled by temp, etc).

I was wondering if I could solder the FanSHIM onto something like this (Header) therefore, not soldering directly to the raspberry pi itself and also gives me the ability to remove the FanSHIM easily if needed in the future.

2

There is something you might try that would be easily undo-able first.

Get one of those 20x1 header blocks and plug it (unsoldered) onto the Pi on top of the fan shim to act as a “lock”. It would grip the Pi’s pins and separate them slightly giving the Fan Shim a better friction connection.

If it doesn’t work reliably you could then do as you suggest and solder the Fan Shim to the header block.

Note, if you want to plug any other HAT on top of the Fan Shim you’ll need to use a stacking header block instead (long pins rather than short solder pins)

3

I’ve soldered one or two of mine to headers. The one you linked too will work. I just mount the fan under its holder instead of on top, to lower it back down a little. I don’t know that that’s needed but its what I did.
I have also just plugged a header in on top of it.
I have also taken a male header, pulled the pins out. Then I trimmed it to size and then just pushed the black base part down over the top of the pins used by the fan shim. It holds the fan shim firmly in place, doesn’t look bad, and can be carefully undone latter if need be.

4

If you want to get really fancy, plug a Blinkt in on top of it and set that up to show CPU temperature. =)

5

Thanks for the suggestions. I hadn’t thought about putting the FanSHIM under the header. But I think I’m just going to solder it directly to the header.

Now another question; would you solder all 10 pins or just the 5pins needed + 5v? (FanSHIM Pinout)

6

I soldered all of them. I’m a retired electronic technician, soldering is no big deal for me. ;)

7

Update:

I soldered just the pins needed for the FanSHIM as the tip on my soldering iron was a little too big. I may have melted a little bit of the PCB but still seems to work. I can confirm that my FanSHIM now fully works upside-down :)