For whatever reason, perhaps my mechanical engineering background, I’ve long been fascinated with the cooling of electronics, such as the Raspberry Pi. Last year I developed the EZ Fan board as a way to allow the Raspberry Pi to easily control its own fan. Now, with the power of SMD components, I’ve been able to build something even smaller, the EZ Fan2, for sale now on Tindie.
As shown here, the device is practically dwarfed by the female connectors used here, making it perfect to stuff inline for a cooling fan arrangement. It’s also possible to use it for other loads, with the caveat that its MMBT2222A transistor is limited to 600 mA. Total power dissipation capability is in the order of 250mW (though potentially less when insulated with heat shrink).
The video goes over several methods for how to control a fan with the Raspberry Pi, using the now built-in functionality on Raspberry Pi OS. This can use the PWM pin found on many larger fans, or via the EZ Fan2 for simpler units. Documentation on the original board/script is found on GitHub, though I’m told there’s an issue with using my script at this point, which may be fixed via this discussion.
In other news, Ezra Spencer at The Mixed Signal used my EZ Fan2 to power his audio exciter in the video below. Pretty cool, hopefully it helped him keep his wiring neat: