SuperHouseTV #4: Making Home Automation Gear Run Quietly 

Make sure to remove all rings and watches in future videos so that a young DYI'er won't loose a finger or their lives. It's very important to display sound practices when dealing with high voltage devices and pass that knowledge on as well.

Probably a bit late for this video, but recently I had to try and quiet down a Ubiquiti 24 port POE switch for my brother in law. I come across a video on YT where they switched out the standard fans for some Noctua fans along with the resistor mod. Just the fans alone at full speed made a huge sound difference over those cheap and nasty OEM fans. It went from being able to hear it in the hallway to only being able to hear it in the room. If I was to do it all over again I would probably hack the case and fit a noctua 120mm fan.

Good video thank you for posting it. I have a Netgear GS716 switch and have been planning on either switching out the fans or doing something like this. My question is could I just use one of those fan controls to control the speed of the fan? I have an old one that fits inline with the fan and doesnt require extra power.

Hi, Fantastic videos. Just curious, since you've got the Arduino and Temperature sensors there anyway wouldn't it feasible to use the Arduino as a smart Fan speed Controller for all the the Switches in the Rack? Given at night the ambient temperature would drop and (I'm assuming here) the traffic on the LAN would slow they should be a lot cooler resulting in much quieter operation whenever it is safe to do so.

Sounds like a good experiment! I have two identical gigabit Ethernet switches in that cabinet, so I'll give it a try. It'll be hard to measure the temperature of the unit with the lid off using the HUMID module because the air temp won't be localised as much, but I could point an I/R temperature sensor module at it and see if I get good data. I'll keep you posted. I don't like the idea of leaving the case open long-term (exposed 240V, etc) but I'm curious.

Hey, just wondering which Firewall appliance that is

How do you plan on ventilating your closet there? Louvered doors? Door removal? Door-mounted fans?

That's an interesting point. I don't think it'd make much difference but it's worth thinking about.

Hello. Great channel - makes me wanna start "smarting my house" up. If only you had more room over the top of the switches you could put in a 20 cm fan or even a couple running at 5-7 volts pulling air out while fresh air enters from the sides. Is there a place where u`ve put some info on the code u run on your etherTen`s and the source code for your php webpage and mqtt server?

What about using those giant turbine style fans? They spin slowly but they move alot of air due to their size. You could just use that one turbine fan to cool multiple racks.

Question, why didn't you use SNMP for reading out the temperature of the processor? On professional network gear (Cisco, Juniper, etc) you can even set/change the fan profile via snmp? You can even shutdown a network socket if a device suddenly is using way more networking bandwidth than it's normal operating envelope. It's a very good, simple and easy way to get an indication if something is wrong with a server (hacked, malware, (spam) bot, etc)..

Sure, that's a good solution - what I did is basically a cheapie hack to achieve a similar end result, but a proper fan speed controller is better. I just happened to have a bunch of resistors handy, so that's what I used. Check the voltage on the fan first though: some are 5V, some are 12V. Use a fan controller to suit.

That's not exactly the kind of switch you'd find in a data center... That's the kind of switch you'd find on a shelf in a closet in the back room of an office...

The air-forced cooling is a lot more efficient than passive convection cooling. At this fan speed I think it would be a close call as to know which solution is better thermally. Factor in the risk of leaving a case open, I think his solution far better. It would be an interesting test to do trough! Jonathan would you mind to test it?

Why not run both at low speed using the same method.. then if one fan gums up then you have another, two fans are not always for airflow, but redundancy, when one fan stops (bearings fail, dust etc.,) you still have some airflow. Especially important if they are in a place where you don't check them all the time. But in this case there is monitoring, maybe not everyone would do that.

Best thing to do in small cases is always to force feed air INTO the case and NOT to try to generate decent air flow by trying to suck out the hot air which adversely affects the life of the fans causing the sintered bronze sleeve bearings to dry out prematurely. Cool air passing through the fans keeps them MUCH happier. Easy enough to fit an Arduino temp controlled PWM drive inside in line with the fans ... Should mean at times of low usage/traffic (during the night) they will automatically run at low level.

Mounting the fans on a piece of rubber to cancle vibration?

Take the rack cover off and stick it in the rack cabinet, problem solved. As long as the closet is cooler it will never get hot again.

one thing that has baffled me is that people keep using ' traditional ' shaped heatsinks , these require an external force to blow air over them to cool them ,why hasnt someone mass produced a tube shaped heatsink that heats up and draws air into the bottom through shaped slots to induce a vortex and through convection cools it by the air flowing by it ? no fan just the shape of it , terrible description i know but if it was like a venturi tube where getting the body hotter and having it vertical should be a passive cooler

the noise level is exactly why I bought a 2u 3com 48 port switch it is ridiculously quiet!

Why not slow both of them down so that the airflow remains constant to the specs and doesnt create a pocket? I'm just a lil more paranoid I guess.

how can a room be 19 degrees?? you would be freezing?? how is that possible? my room is around 25 and the two places where i have equipment get a lot warmer

You need to sort your naming convention for the videos. If you play the series from your home page, it runs in reverse. So annoying when I have to stop the video and select the correct one. Otherwise, the series is excellent, and could be used as a blue print for modern houses.

would you please provide the color code of 22ohm resistors

Put the 2 fans in series. They get each 6 V and run half as fast.

you could have also mounted bigger fans in it somehow. Bigger fans are quieter and more efficient.

netgear is not really datacenter material. you get some fanless systems available

Haha no way! I go to the Red Flag lan. So random to find a video that mentions them.

Maybe just a stupid idea, but why not put some big fans running really slowly on some light airducts and mount these over the holes where the fan sit, than remove the fans completely. With a little effort it might suffice to use just 2-3 fans for the whole equipment and cool them all together.

iot？

Do the same trick to both fans just in case one fails!!!

cool

Why not add liquid cooling, it would be cramped and more expensive but would definitely help

.... cost versus benefit.

More importance is can have a good sleep.

❤💪

You can kill that mosquito. Just cut the power :)

Nerd. :)