Fan port on the board does not work

[akrami]

I have connected a case fan to the 12V port on the board, (not the modules), to use as a passive cooling, and it's not working. the thing is there are nothing on the BMC to see the fan or temp status.
How can I make sure everything is ok with that?

[disconn3ct]

It only comes on when a node is powered up.

[akrami]

of course the nodes are up. but still I can not see it works anytime

[nerocide]

I had an issue with a 3 wires fan, with unidentified wires (all grey). Usually you have black, red and yellow, i had to change the connection for the fan to work. Did you try an other fan, or made sure your fan is working on an other machine?

[akrami]

@nerocide yeah I have tried with another two fans and the same situation.
I'm using a 2pin to 3pin converter for the fan: https://amzn.eu/d/6I8ioWS
and in the docs this is mentioned:

Also on board is a 12V case fan header located near the UART ports. These ports can be controlled by BMC with $tpcli.

but I can not find anything on the $tpcli to control that.

[KevinWhalen]

@akrami, the 2-pin female to 3-pin male adapter is not strictly needed. Such can be convenient, nice if extra length is needed and help guard against inserting backwards. Have you tried connecting directly to the 12v, 2-pin, male header on the board with your 3-pin fan? The red lights, next to the module slots, for the power on state, need to be on (not only power supplied lights) for the fan to run. This can also be seen as two green lights next to the ATX power plug. One light there for power supplied, a second for system powered on.

I am using a 4-pin fan on the 2-pin header. Actually, after an initial test, I am using a 4-pin splitter with a 4-pin on one side and a 3-pin on the other. One blowing past the boards and the other across the SATA hard drives.

The wire colors can be weird so I checked mine on Noctua's site: https://noctua.at/en/productfaqs/productfaq/view/id/215/.

The orientation of the pins on the Turing Pi v2 can be seen in the documentation: https://help.turingpi.com/hc/en-us/articles/8686159954461-Case-and-Cooling.

If you have double-checked the orientation, tried connecting the fan directly, and tried the fan in another system, then something could be wrong with your Turing Pi v2 and it might be time to be contacting them about a replacement.

P.S. As for the documentation saying, "these ports can be controlled by BMC with $tpcli." The current state of $tpi/$tpcli is a bit lackluster. I assume fan control had only been available before the switch to Linux, but has been a low priority since. Unless they start shipping boards with a 3-pin or 4-pin for then sysfan, there will never be status from it anyway. Eventually there may be "control" for it from being able to toggle a high and low speed, which switches it between 12v and 7v (my understanding is only some 12v fans support going down to 5v). That can also be achieved with a low noise adapter, so even if it could be done from the board, it would be an extra low priority.