There are two types of warning icons that can appear in the right-hand corner of the screen when the Player is not functioning optimally.
Let’s have a look at their significance and how you can troubleshoot:
1. Lightning / Thunderbolt / Thunder Icon
This is an indication that the power supply is unstable, the player is under-powered and this situation could lead to corruption of the SD card and overall instability. It would be best, in this case, to switch to a new power adapter as soon as possible.
- Raspberry Pi 2 needs a 5V/2A power adapter
- Raspberry Pi 3B and 3B+ needs a 5V/2.5A power adapter
- Raspberry Pi 4 needs a 5V/3A power adapter
2. Temperature / Thermometer Icons
The thermometer icons mean that the Player’s main chip is hotter than normal.
The half-red thermometer icon means that the Player’s chip temperature is between 80 and 85℃ and the Player will throttle the CPU (decreasing performance) in an effort to keep the temperature below 80℃.
The completely red thermometer icon means that the Player’s chip temperature is above 85’C and the Player will throttle both the CPU and GPU (decreasing performance even further) in an effort to keep the temperature below 85℃.
Why the overheating? Most probably, content pushed to players is somehow too “heavy”. You might not realize it, but adding too many Playlists, or transparent content, might put too much of a burden on the Player.
What can you do? Here are some possible remedies:
- Try removing some content, combine multiple Widgets into single Widgets, or reach out to our support team and ask for help in order to optimize your Show or content in general.
- Add a passive heat-sink. They are really cheap. Note that our Playboxes come pre-installed with a heat-sink (US warehouse only).
- Try using a metal case instead of a plastic one. If using a case with a cover (like the Official Raspberry Pi case we ship over with our Playboxes), try removing the cover to allow the chip to cool.
- Place the Player in a well-ventilated space.
You can override standard behavior and disable both icons. Make sure that you understand the risks of doing so.
- Go to the “Monitors” list and edit the monitor in question.
- Click on the “Advanced” tab.
- Make sure the “Allow Raspberry config.txt Override” toggle is set to “ON”.
- In the “Raspberry config.txt Override Directives” text area, you will have to enter the following configuration line:
avoid_warnings=1 - After you are finished, click the “Save” button.
- The Player will reboot, and you are set to go.
Keep in mind that we do not recommend that you just remove the warning icons without troubleshooting. You should investigate and remedy the issue, rather than ignore the warnings.
