> Florian Fainelli <[email protected]> hat am 3. September 2018 um 20:31 
> geschrieben:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 9/2/2018 10:13 AM, Stefan Wahren wrote:
> > Hi Guenter,
> > 
> >> Guenter Roeck <[email protected]> hat am 2. September 2018 um 18:49 
> >> geschrieben:
> >>
> >>
> >> On 09/02/2018 09:26 AM, Stefan Wahren wrote:
> >>> Hi Guenter,
> >>>
> >>>> Guenter Roeck <[email protected]> hat am 2. September 2018 um 16:23 
> >>>> geschrieben:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> On 09/02/2018 04:20 AM, Stefan Wahren wrote:
> >>>>> This series is an early stage of the hwmon driver for the fan on the
> >>>>> Raspberry Pi Power over Ethernet HAT [1]. At the end this should use a
> >>>>> Device Tree Overlay.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Changes by Stefan based on [2]:
> >>>>> - reformat the downstream patches for submission
> >>>>> - drop reboot notification
> >>>>> - fix remaining checkpatch issues
> >>>>> - add COMPILE_TEST to Kconfig
> >>>>>
> >>>>> The driver is mostly copy & paste from pwm-fan, which isn't good. 
> >>>>> Personally
> >>>>> i see two options:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> 1) integrate the driver function into the pwm-fan driver (new 
> >>>>> compatible)
> >>>>> 2) implement the core function as a PWM driver and use the pwm-fan 
> >>>>> driver on top
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> I don't really see the point of thise driver. Why not implement either 
> >>>> of those ?
> >>>
> >>> i'm not sure about your question. Since the fan is placed over the SoC, 
> >>> the fan should takes care of the SoC temperature. AFAIK the firmware 
> >>> should have exclusive access to the I2C. So why we need this mailbox 
> >>> interface instead of a I2C driver.
> >>>
> >>
> >> The driver sets pwm values. The pwm-fan driver sets pwm values. A pwm 
> >> driver
> >> sets pwm values. The pwm-fan driver uses a pwm driver to set pwm values.
> >> You appear to be arguing that the pwm-fan driver for Rpi is different than
> >> a pwm-fan driver for all other hardware and should _not_ use a pwm driver
> >> to set pwm values.
> > 
> > thanks for your explanation. Now i think i understand and sorry for the 
> > confusion. We need a driver which translate the pwm values into the mailbox 
> > properties. "My" RFC series is only a starting point (not intended for 
> > merge and not an option) for a discussion and i'm perfectly fine with 2).
> > Both options would be feasible in general. I only wanted to know your 
> > opinion before i start to implement one of them.
> 
> Is not there a way to expose the PWM pins directly to the kernel instead 
> of going through the firmware to do that for us? I am just asking 
> because sometimes this appears to be possible, guess not in this case?

According to this blog entry (no schematics available so far) [1], this is my 
understanding of the fan control:

| Raspberry Pi 3B+               | PoE HAT               |         
ARM core -Mailbox-> VideoCore4 -I2C-> Atmel MCU -PWM-> FAN

The only chance would be to bypass VC4 and talk to the Atmel microcontroller 
directly. But this would require a specification of the I2C protocol or some 
time of reverse engineering.

Maybe the foundation guys can say something about that?

[1] - https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/introducing-power-over-ethernet-poe-hat/

> -- 
> Florian

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