Half-full thermometer indicator

[aplocher]

I'm running the latest Raspbian Jessie Lite.

When I run a Python script of mine (which spawns 4 processes, that run continuously, if that matters), I see the half-full thermometer icon on my screen.

From my understanding, that should pop up when the Pi hits 80(celsius).

I run the following command and get back the response showing 40.6(celsius)

/opt/vc/bin/vcgencmd measure_temp
temp=40.6'C

Is this the same temperature used for determining if it's overheating? What could be causing this indicator to pop up?

Btw my most resource intensive process is running GStreamer at about 9% CPU utilization avg (roughly peaks at 10.5). Other processes are sitting around 1.5% or less.

Thanks

[DougieLawson]

It's all the same temperature sensor. It throttles at 85°C.

Constantly watching it does nothing useful except running code on the processor that causes additional heating. To reduce the temp add a small heatsink.

[TreeDee]

Hi: I'm a veteran computer engineer and very long time R-pi user... and I own a whole bunch of Rpi's. And I'm a huge fan of RPi's. Since the debut of the Rpi-3 I thought it would be great to get one of these for my daughter, so she could learn about linux, programming, and tooling around with hardware.

I purchased a stock RPi-3, with a stock RPi-3 case, and I'm using the stock Raspbian with no kernel modifications or switches... everything is STOCK! (no heatsink, because stock config is no heatsink). I was running the latest "standard" release out there (latest apt-get update / upgrade as of Friday April 28th, 2017)... .

When my daughter started using it, she was running only Chromium (as it is now the new default browser on Raspbian), and simply launching Chromium and visiting a webpage, I get the thermometer half full heat warning icon (CPU load is: 4.xx), so the CPU is definitely busy doing stuff, but I find it ridiculous that a browser could be allowed to dominate so many resources and that it is pushing it to heat up to the point where the CPU is being throttled. She is not doing video playback or anything that intensive! And I was not doing anything brain dead such as constantly monitoring the load or CPU execution.

I have fully tested the hardware and there is nothing wrong with it. IMHO, this appears to be either a Chromium software issue where the software is running out of control consuming too many resources, or a kernel issue where it is allowing Chromium to get out of control. Either-way, she's broken folks... IMHO, this should not be the behavior especially with the "DEFAULT" / stock configurations.

I'm hoping someone can look into this issue and fix it!

(I'm not a Chromium expert, but wondering if someone on the Pi team may have been too aggressive configuring Chromium for RPi allowing it to consume too many resources... not sure what config options this software supports).

Previous kernel that I was using (my April 28th, 2017 configuration) appears to be:
Linux _HOST_ 4.4.50-v7+ #970 SMP Mon Feb 20 19:18:29 GMT 2017 armv7l GNU/Linux

I just noticed that a new kernel was available this morning (May 1st, 2017), so I just upgraded, hopefully it will make things better... we'll see.

This new kernel appears to be:
Linux _HOST_ 4.9.24-v7+ #993 SMP Wed Apr 26 18:01:23 BST 2017 armv7l GNU/Linux

The thermal throttle icon (half red thermometer) is still appearing, though it does not constantly stay lit up now, it seems to keep toggling on and off every 20 - 30 seconds or so, I guess it is on the edge of the thermal threshold and keeps throttling and cools down and then heats up again requiring another throttle action.

You can easily reproduce it by running a web (Java based ? not a super 3D graphics intensive game, it is a very benign children's game) game that she plays,but many other websites will also cause this to occur also: https://www.prodigygame.com/Play/

This still needs a Chromium expert to look into it further and tweak the appropriate things so it is not causing the RPi-3 to throttle.

Cheers!

[TreeDee]

I should add, that I did check the temperature, it was indeed above 80C, when running Chromium, so it was taking the appropriate action to throttle. But, running Chromium (in default config) should not be behaving this way in IMHO.

[DougieLawson]

If you're doing web browsing that's got a heavy CPU and heavy memory load. You WILL need a heatsink. No point not adding one as that will get rid of your over-temp warning icon.

[TreeDee]

I ordered a heatsink, but IMHO, that should not be the case! IMHO web browsing is not a heavy CPU load nor a heavy memory load. (Chromium may be resulting it to be so, but it should not be). I have done so many other compute intensive things on the RPi-3 and I can not imagine that web-browsing should be more compute intensive that the other things (client-server etc...) that I've done! It just seems ridiculous to me... that Chromium mis-behaves this way, and my other compute intensive stuff does not cause thermal throttling... my software is well behaved!

It seems that Chromium just seems to spawn too many threads and is not well behaved, this seems like a bad software implementation to me, and there should be some control over what it is doing.

I'm hopeful that someone will get under the hood of Chromium and fix the issue.

Cheers!

[MaxK1]

Some web sites (adafruit is one of them) drives the cpu load up (with firefox) from <4% to >67%.
I do overclock, I have a heat sink and a fan (blowing across the heatsink, an HDD and power supply and the temp is a comfortable 34'.

[rpdom]

I ordered a heatsink, but IMHO, that should not be the case! IMHO web browsing is not a heavy CPU load nor a heavy memory load.

Depends on the website. You want flashy videos, tons of javascript and other whistles and bells and it will be a heavy load on the CPU.

My old laptop would run quite happily at low cpu usage and clock speed for most things, then hit 100% and fan on full blast when web browsing. New laptop has many time the power and RAM of the old one and copes quite well without the fans running on most sites. Old one is probably slightly less powerful than the Pi3, new one is much, much more powerful.

[TreeDee]

Yep, I am not overclocking anything... I'm running stock speed on the RPi-3.

So for comparison purposes, I tried the same prodigy game website with Firefox, and I do not get the thermometer throttling issue (using FF version 53). The CPU load was about 2.x ... Firefox seemed slightly more sluggish than Chromium on loading the webpage, but IMHO it was fine, and what I would expect on the RPi-3. I did not test FF on other webpages so I'm not sure whether or not it triggers the thermal warning on other ones... but FF did not trigger the throttle warning on prodigy.

Yes, my laptop with Ubuntu never ever runs the fan on web browsing, does not matter which website I go to and how much workload is being thrown at it. It only turns on the fan when I am doing a serious compute job. But it does not matter what the compute difference is, the kernel and governor should be spreading the load appropriately... if it does not, then maybe then the clock speed and/or voltage is too high if it is in danger of overheating that it had to be throttled.

As a professional engineer and semiconductor expert, I have lead the design and shipped many successful semiconductor compute products over the past 23+ years of my career, IMHO, I would not have shipped this product configured this way (triggering throttle warnings). You only want the warning to appear only when you are over-clocking. Or perhaps the default configuration should have used a heatsink. Or perhaps the kernel or software has some issue which does not govern its tasks properly... Pick one or the other.

IMHO, if the RPi is being shipped without a heatsink as its default config, then a task like web browsing should be configured appropriately to run without the heatsink (and no throttle warnings). I just think Chromium and all the default software should be configured appropriately so it does not trigger warnings and works without a heatsink.

Is there am RPi Chromium person, forum, or area I should report this issue to? (or will it get to the right person being in this thread).

I do love the RPi-3, I think it is great value for the price... I would like to see it perfected by solving these minor issues... which can totally be done. I hope someone can take my comments in a constructive manner and pull the thread through to and solve it!

Cheers

[HawaiianPi]

The Pi3 heat issue is a bit of a touchy subject. There are those who will fully agree with you, and others who will argue that it doesn't need a heatsink.

As for me, I added a heatsink to mine and just consider it another accessory (like a case or power supply). While I don't disagree that the Pi3 needs a heatsink, I don't agree that the RPF should "not have shipped this product configured this way" ... The Pi3 is sold as a barebones computer after all.

I actually think it's remarkable that they were able to add so much power and features while still maintaining the original $35 price point (the Pi3 is up to 10X faster than the original PiB, has 2X the RAM, 2X the USB ports, and has built-in Bluetooth and WiFi).

[TreeDee]

Well, you are all entitled to your own opinions...

But that is precisely the difference between a "real product" versus
"something that has been hacked together for use by hobbyists only"

IMHO, I would have went for the "real product" implementation and the hobbyists would be welcome to overclock their devices as they pleased... (just like the Gamers already do on GPUs and CPUs).

Cheers

[wh7qq]

I have experienced the same problem but it came down to the web page I selected. One of the worst is the Adafruit web page on putting /root on a USB disk. If I need to see that one, it will invariably overheat my RPi3 in short order. I downloaded that page to a .pdf file and view it as a pdf in firefox and it is just fine. BTW, firefox is very slightly less cpu intensive on that page than chromium.

The RPi IS a hobbyist product and nobody should buy one with the expectation that it will behave like a full-up W$10 laptop (which has its own fan) in every situation. It takes some kluge to get it to that level but it only draws about 6 watts with the monitor off. That said, I use mine as my routine desktop, attached to my monitor back with a VESA mount. It gets free air circulation from being on its side and open to the air, but on some java intensive web pages, it will heat up. Normally it runs about 56 C. I bought a set of copper heatsinks for it that I found to be nearly worthless. They provided about a 2 C reduction. At some point, they fell off on their own. I think it may be due to the crappy coupling medium so sometime, I will try it with a very thin coat of arctic silver epoxy.

It is probably a good idea to get it out of the case to get air circulation and also, running uBlock Origin and FlashBlock minimizes some of the intensive stuff. I see the thermometer only rarely. There are a number of light-weight browsers available: Dillo, Midori, etc. They can easily be added to the RPi with the apt-get command. They are much lighter than Chromium or Firefox but suffer by comparison in their ability to render all the glop in modern web pages which are generally designed for the full-featured browsers used by full size computers.

BTW, show me a "finished" product for even less than $100 that offers the versatility of the RPi for doing a great many tasks that you just don't get the connections for in those "finished" products. The accessibility to the GPIO pins and their wide variety of functions would be difficult or impossible to accomplish on your Ubuntu laptop.

Finally your HO (over-used IMHO) sounds pretty elitist and not very humble. Consider the RPi for what it is or send it back as unsuitable for your needs. No need to dis the developers. You just did not read the product description very well.

[HawaiianPi]

Well, you are all entitled to your own opinions...

But that is precisely the difference between a "real product" versus
"something that has been hacked together for use by hobbyists only"

IMHO, I would have went for the "real product" implementation and the hobbyists would be welcome to overclock their devices as they pleased... (just like the Gamers already do on GPUs and CPUs).

Cheers

The Raspberry Pi is not marketed or sold as a complete or "real" product, as you say. Do you understand the concept of a barebones system? The goal was to offer it as cheaply as possible, to get computers into the hands of as many as possible.

The Pi3 will work fine without a heatsink. It has built-in overtemperature protection, so it might slow down from time to time when given a heavy load, but it will continue to function. You are entitled to your opinion as well, but your opinion seems a bit "entitled" to me, when you consider we are talking about a $35 barebones computer.

And your comparison to overclocked "Gamers" computers is hilarious, since "Gamers" routinely add enormous heatsinks or water cooling solutions to achieve overclocking.