Skip to content
Pankha Fan Control - Docs

Welcome to Pankha Fan Control (पंखा)

Pankha Fan Control is an open-source, distributed fan control system for self-hosters and hardware enthusiasts. It monitors and controls hardware cooling across all your machines - PCs, NAS boxes, servers - from a single, centralized dashboard.

Centralized Dashboard

Getting Started

Section titled “Getting Started”
  1. Quick Start: from nothing installed to fans under automatic control, in five steps.
  2. Server Installation: the full server setup reference (Docker Compose, .env, ports).
  3. Deployment Center: roll agents out to the rest of your machines.
  4. Dashboard: a tour of everything on screen.

Key Features

Section titled “Key Features”
  • Centralized Control: manage fan curves and speeds for your NAS, gaming PC, and rack servers from one dashboard (Dashboard).
  • Automatic Fan Curves: temperature-driven profiles with hysteresis and smooth stepping - quiet at idle, cool under load (Fan Profiles).
  • Fan Calibration & Health: each fan’s real usable speed range is measured automatically, and failing fans are flagged (Calibration & Health).
  • Virtual Sensors: combine any sensors into one - “hottest of my NVMe drives” can drive the drive-bay fan (Dashboard).
  • Cross-Platform Agents: Linux (single Rust binary, <10MB RAM), Windows (.NET 8 service + tray app), and IPMI for enterprise servers with a BMC (Linux / Windows / IPMI).
  • Real-time Monitoring: WebSocket-based updates with sub-second latency, sparklines, and historical graphs.
  • Hardware Safety:
    • Failsafe Mode: agents keep fans at a safe speed on their own if the server becomes unreachable.
    • Emergency Override: all fans to 100% the moment any sensor crosses your critical threshold.
    • Emergency Stop: one button forces every fan on every system to maximum.
  • Historical Data: PostgreSQL storage for temperature and fan speed analysis, with configurable retention.
  • Privacy Centric: zero cloud dependency - agents connect only to your server, never the internet (Agent Philosophy).
  • Self-Hostable: the whole system runs on your own hardware via Docker Compose.

Architecture

Section titled “Architecture”

One server runs the brains; a small agent on each machine does only what it’s told:

graph LR
    Browser["Your browser<br/>(dashboard - desktop or phone)"]

    subgraph SRV["Pankha Fan Control server - one per network (Docker)"]
        direction TB
        Logic["Control logic<br/>fan curves, calibration, safety"]
        DB[("PostgreSQL<br/>history")]
        Logic <--> DB
    end

    subgraph FLEET["Your machines - one lightweight agent each"]
        direction TB
        Win["Windows agent<br/>gaming PC, workstation"]
        Lin["Linux agent<br/>NAS, homelab node, Raspberry Pi"]
        Ipmi["IPMI agent<br/>rack server (BMC)"]
    end

    Browser <-->|live updates| Logic
    Logic <-->|"sensor data up,<br/>fan commands down"| Win
    Logic <--> Lin
    Logic <--> Ipmi
    Win --> HW1(["fans + sensors"])
    Lin --> HW2(["fans + sensors"])
    Ipmi --> HW3(["fans + sensors"])

    style Logic fill:#1565c0,stroke:#333,color:#fff

All decisions - curves, thresholds, calibration - happen on the server. Agents are deliberately simple relays, which is why they are safe to put on every machine you own (Agent Philosophy).