Recalbox ships the recalbox-wpaf utility, which automatically regulates the fan of some Raspberry Pi hats and cases based on the CPU temperature: the fan only spins when needed, and your Recalbox stays silent the rest of the time.
This feature only exists on Raspberry Pi (Pi 3, Pi Zero 2, Pi 4, Pi 5). The regulation is fully automatic: the temperature thresholds are tuned per board (between 50 and 60 °C depending on the hardware) and cannot be adjusted.
| Value to use | Hardware |
|---|---|
wspoehatb |
Waveshare PoE (B) hat — also drives its small OLED display (CPU temperature and Recalbox version) |
argonforty |
Argon One cases (Argon Forty board) |
piboy |
Experimental Pi's PiBoy DMG console |
rpipoeplus |
official Raspberry Pi PoE+ hat |
fanshim |
Pimoroni's Fan SHIM |
Everything happens in the recalbox.conf file, with two keys:
| Key | Role |
|---|---|
hat.wpaf.enabled |
1 to enable fan control (0 by default). |
hat.wpaf.board |
the value matching your hardware, from the table above. |
Example for the official PoE+ hat:
hat.wpaf.enabled=1
hat.wpaf.board=rpipoeplus
Then reboot: on first activation (or after changing the board value), Recalbox adds the required hardware configuration (I2C bus, PWM…) to the boot partition, and it is only applied at the next boot.
Copy the
hat.wpaf.boardvalue exactly (all lowercase, no spaces): an unknown value prevents the utility from starting, and the fan will not be driven.
Recalbox can also manage the Argon One through its case support (which handles the power button and the fan with the official Argon40 scripts). If your Argon One is already declared as a case in Recalbox, do not enable hat.wpaf.board=argonforty on top of it: both regulators would fight over the same fan. Pick one or the other.
Need help? Join the Recalbox Discord.