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Cooling

Q-engineering edited this page Aug 20, 2023 · 2 revisions

Cooling.

Since a deep learning model requires a lot of computing power, the Raspberry Pi gets hot. Very hot.
You must use a heat sink to cool the Rpi. Without proper cooling, the CPU will reach 80°C (176°F) within minutes and starts to throttle. Besides the severe performance drop, this throttling mechanism will not fully protect your Raspberry Pi. Over the years, we have lost quite a few devices due to overheating. Another concern is the shortening of lifespan if electronic devices become very hot. See our website for more information.

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Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W heatsink.

There are situations where the Raspberry Pi gets too hot even with cooling. Think of the windowsill behind glass in full sun.
We have therefore built extra security into the software. Once the temperature reaches 75 °C (167 °F), some additional frames are skipped. It will lower the overall FPS hence the heat build-up. This mechanism is friendlier than the 60% CPU speed drop from the throttling. It is activated by the guard_temp setting.

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Raspberry Pi 3B+ heatsink.

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