Updated: POE Hack for UCTRONICS 1U Pi Rack

Posted on by Thomas Davies

As stated in my last post about the UCTRONICS Pi rack, I wanted to update the build to the correct modification as the last post was just a quick, dirty and cheap way of making the setup work with PoE. This new build allows the Pi to remain modular so you can separated the three boards if you ever want to remove a Pi from the rack or need to replace one of the hats.

Thanks to a comment from almulder on my previous post, I found out that UCTRONICS now provides a POE hat version of this product. At this time is UCTRONICS doesn’t provide any information on the POE specifications. This is very important to me because if I am going to recommends a product and invest ~$400 into Raspberry Pis I want to make sure they are protected to the best extent I can provide and a $25 hat per unit isn’t that bad. Without knowing what protection UCTRONICS PoE version provides, I will have to state this setup is far superior because the Professional version of the LoveRPi PoE hat provides “Transient Overvoltage, Undervoltage Lockout, Thermal Shutdown, Foldback Current Limiting” protection to the build.

Products used:

Desolder and pull out pins 1-8. Use Micro cutter and carefully clip off the plastic support as shown. Clip off 4 pairs of 2 of the extended pins.
Clear the holes with the desolder braid. Put the pins into the holes and only solder one post per each of the 4 sets. Once all of them are in, adjust the pins to line up with the stock set by liquefying and adjusting the alignment quickly. Solder the rest of the posts.
Clip the post hole off of the PoE hat so it can fit the post.
Put the PoE hat on and remove the plastic clip retainer from the POE hat by gently prying up on the plastic retainer.
Remove the fan from the UCTRONICS hat.
Desolder and remove the Header from the UCTRONICS hat. Pull off the 3 plastic spacers. (The hot air was a bit hot and melted the spacer but no harm done to the project.)
Push the pins into the header, I found they can come loose. We are going to flush mount this so you can clip the pins down.
Solder the header on flush and attach your fan on the opposite direction. Example of the modified board vs unmodified.
You may want to clip the extended pins for a closer fit but they can be left to the stock hight. Final Look of the new configuration.
2 boards configured with this guide and 2 running with the previous setup.
Either way you configure this, the setup is still sexy.

I am not paid, sponsored by, invested in or even remotely related to the linked sites, products or companies listed in this article. This is a blog post and honest recommendations of sites and/or products that I have used and documented to help everyone in our community.

Leave a Reply