Sunday, September 11, 2016

Change Banana Pi M3 CPU Frequency

This is a short script for changing the CPU clock rate of the Banana Pi M3 in the allowable steps between 480 MHz to 1.8 GHz.

Motivation

Since the Banana Pi M3 heats quite a bit at 1.8 GHz (even with heat sinks), lowering the CPU frequency can bring these temperatures down. The clock rate can be tuned between 480 MHz and 1.8 GHz by default, possibly up to 2 GHz when the CPU voltages are adjusted and unlocked. 

Note: This script only adjusts the speed up to 1.8 GHz.

How-to

  1. Download the script from Pastebin [Direct Download
  2. Copy it over to your Banana Pi M3
    scp BananaPiM3_FrequencyChanger.sh user@bananapi:/home/remoteuser/
  3. Make it executable
    chmod +x BananaPiM3_FrequencyChanger.sh
  4. Run it with
    ./BananaPiM3_FrequencyChanger.sh

Optional:  Add an alias in your .bash_aliases to call it faster!
echo "alias frequency='./BananaPiM3_FrequencyChanger.sh'" >> .bash_aliases
Apply the changes with,
source .bashrc
From now on you can call the script with
frequency
Screenshot of the script in action.
Screenshot of the script, setting my board's frequency to 1 GHz.