Tricks, Tweaks & Hacks

Here are some of the tweaks I do to my Pi installs. Feel free to add your own to this thread.

Disable the Rainbow splash screen.
edit the config.txt file from terminal with
sudo nano /boot/config.txt
and add disable_splash=1
ctrl x, y, enter

Stop the cursor from always going to the Raspberry in the Menu Bar
sudo sudo nano /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart
and remove the point-rpi line.

If your like me and want a 12H clock, right click the clock and go to Digital Clock Settings. Then go to clock format and change it to how you want it.
I changed mine to %a %-I:%M %p thats gets me Fri 4:17 PM
Use this for reference http://strftime.org/

If your using a Pi 4 you may want to keep an eye on your temperature.
Right click the Menu Bar and go to Add Remove Panel Items, then scroll through the list until you find CPU Temperature Monitor and add it.

If you do a Shut Down and leave your Pi powered up, momentarily grounding GPIO 3, physical pin 5 will have it boot up again. You can also have it do a proper shut down by momentarily grounding that pin if you edit your config.txt file
sudo nano /boot/config.txt and add dtoverlay=gpio-shutdown.
The shutdown only works if i2c is turned off though. Enabling i2c on my Pi 4B stoped the shutdown function from working. The Fan Shim Button grounds GPIO 3 when pressed and will boot your Pi up, and do the shutdown with the config.txt edit

If your using i2c you can map the GPIO shutdown to another pin. I did this.
dtoverlay=gpio-shutdown,gpio_pin=17,active_low=1,gpio_pull=up
Its the other pin grounded by the Fan Shim Button. It worked even with i2c enabled.

You can also control the fan on the Fan Shim with an overlay.
dtoverlay=gpio-fan,gpiopin=18,temp=55000
When added to the config.txt file will turn the fan on at 55c.

If you want your Fan Shim Fan to stop on shut down you can do the following at your own risk.
If you connect a 10k resistor between the Fan Control Pin, GPIO 18, physical pin 12 and ground, the default state will be off. You will have to command it on though as above or with the Pimoroni Daemon. That will still work as before. The fan will now stop on shutdown instead of just running continuously.

Thanks.
Duly snipped.

I have a few more but they are hardware specific.
Stuff like this that Scott posted in another thread.

Scott

You can increase the sensitivity on the Phat Beat VU Meter by doing the following:
cd Pimoroni/pivumeter
nano src/devices/phat-beat.c
Change line 88 to:
int bar = (meter_level * (meter_level / 8) / 131071.0f) * (brightness * (NUM_PIXELS/2));
Recompile the library:
sudo make
sudo make install
Sudo reboot

Now your VU meter is more sensitive! Tweak the values to your liking.

This is what I set mine to.
int bar = (meter_level * (meter_level / 8) / 1000000.0f) * (brightness * (NUM_PIXELS/2));

You’d have to compare this to the original file to see what I did, but I tweaked the Blinkt CPU Load py file so the Blinkt is blanked (all the leds are off) when I press my Fan Shim button to shut down my Pi 4B

#!/usr/bin/env python

import os
import time
import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
import psutil
import blinkt

from sys import exit

GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)  
GPIO.setwarnings(False)
GPIO.setup(17, GPIO.IN, pull_up_down = GPIO.PUD_UP)  

x = 2

blinkt.set_clear_on_exit()

def Shutdown(channel):  
    global x
    x = 0

def show_graph(v, r, g, b):

    v *= blinkt.NUM_PIXELS

    for x in range(blinkt.NUM_PIXELS):

        if v < 0:

            r, g, b = 0, 0, 0

        else:

            r, g, b = [int(min(v, 1.0) * c) for c in [r, g, b]]

        blinkt.set_pixel(x, r, g, b)

        v -= 1



    blinkt.show()





blinkt.set_brightness(0.1)





GPIO.add_event_detect(17, GPIO.FALLING, callback = Shutdown, bouncetime = 2000)

while True:

    v = psutil.cpu_percent() / 100.0

    show_graph(v, 0, 0, 255)

    time.sleep(0.01)
    
    if x == (0):
        blinkt.set_all(0, 0, 0)
        blinkt.show()
        time.sleep(30)