Topic: Avalon ASIC users thread - page 188. (Read 438378 times)

this is a great point.  just yesterday i received my brand new high speed Tomato router in the mail in preparation for this.

Don't get me wrong, he's asking for a fairly wide ranging networking tutorial (whether he realises beforehand or not) and you've done a comprehensive job of explaining to him, I was just chipping in my bit 

Yep, you do have a valid point. Then again he did not provide that much info to work with. He did not say what network he is currently using (ie 192.168.1.x or 192.168.0.x)

The key is for him to change the Avalon's IP address information to fit into his existing network.

To be honest, troubleshooting wireless reliability and intermittent connectivity issues is quite a bitch. Usually the first thing you'd want to look at is the quality of your router.  Cheap routers usually have weak radios and poor performing antennas. The other culprit is of course physical obstacles. Does your house have plaster walls? If so this will affect the strength of the wireless signal. Where you place your router and also where you locate the wireless clients (wireless devices) also matters.

If you absolutely must have it connected wirelessly then there are several things you can do:

1) Get a better router. A router that supports the 802.11n wireless standard is the idea. Also if the router has multiple antennas as is typical with the MIMO capable routers then that's even better.

2) If your router supports it remove it's antenna and swap it with a more sensitive one, but typically this has limited effectiveness as often it's not the router's receive sensitivity that is the issue. In some custom router firmwares you can modify the power at which the router's radios transmit at. Most likely if you're using a off-the-shelf router then this is not possible unless you want to mess around with flashing it with a custom firmware like dd-wrt, openwrt, tomato, etc.

3) Install a bigger and more sensitive antenna on your avalon miner. I'm not sure what the dBi rating is for the one it comes with but if you wanted to go all crazy on the wireless setup you can get one of those super sensitive 20 dBi parabolic dish antennas. Kind of extreme though.

4) Another option is to install a wireless repeater half way in between the avalon unit and your router. A wireless repeater will receive your router's wi-fi signal and then amplify it and rebroadcast it. A wireless repeater is akin to a bridge as it bridges the signal distance gap.

5) Also check your router to see what channel it is trasmitting on. Often if you have a lot of other wireless routers in your area and if some or a number of them happen to be using the same wireless channel as your router then they'll sort of step on each other's toes. So what you can do is change the wireless transmit channel. One neat utility that I like to use for this purpose is called "inSSIDer"

Hopefully some of these tips help, but once again it is my opinion that if you can find a means to run a cable, do it. You'll have less to worry about.

I have connected wirelessly
maybe this is the reason for the constantly intermittents?


how do I find where the issue is?

Also, bear in mind that what you are being instructed to do isn't definitively "the answer". If you move the Avalon to a different network, your settings may or may not work, depending on the way that particular network has been set up. allinvain has given you typical instructions for a regular household network, but not every regular household network gets set up in the typical way! So, be prepared for a possible change to all of this stuff again!

Ok, so you want to log into the Avalon unit wirelessly? Meaning you want it to be wirelessly connected to your home network?

If so manually assign the WWAN interface (in the network tab) the IP address 192.168.1.100 , set the subnet mask to 255.255.255.0 and the default gateway to 192.168.1.1 (which I'm assuming is the IP address of your router). DNS server can be set to 192.168.1.1 (once again the IP address of your router which acts as a DNS forwarder).

If you do this make sure you remove any IP settings from the Avalon's LAN interface that way you don't get any IP conflicts (which you would get if you give both interfaces the same IP).

If you can I'd recommend connecting your Avalon miner to your home network via an Ethernet cable as it's a far more reliable connection.

glad you managed to your get machine back from criminal hands

OK it wasn't so simple.  I set the ip address from 192.168.0.100 to 192.168.1.100.   I lost the connection and had to turn the thing on and off again to connect.  Fortunately it started mining right away and I was able to log in with the laptop.  But how do I log in without the laptop using my wifi network?

Almost
Yes sha256 = Bitcoins, however, it will mine any alt-coin that uses exactly the same sha256 as BTC.
There are a few scam coins that use the same sha256 as BTC

No, sha256 only, that is the whole point of building an ASIC, it does one thing, but it does it very well.

question: can avalon be used to mine other sha-256 coins?
i think yes, but why in their site it states "note: Avalon ASIC is designed to only mine Bitcoins."
this is a faulty limitation of the device!
As far as i can understand, the ASIC part of Avalon is used only for sha-256 computations, correct?
Then it can be used for any application that uses this cryptographic algorithm?

The stock device has 32 Mb of memory.  I think the Avalon has been modified to have 64 Mb. 
I have not yet flashed mine with the Avalon software.  I'm taking baby steps.
There is also a hardware mod mentioned in one of these forums.
Still, at about $25, I thought I would get one and explore it.

so is all that's needed to make it equivalent to the Avalon pre-installed 703n is to flash with firmware?

That's so simple.  I just wasn't thinking it through very well.  Thanks.

I bought a 703n to test drive before my Avalon arrives.  I really like it, it's as much computer as you could get anywhere in 1990.  Ahem, anyway...  Last night, I forgot my password.  It turns out that OpenWrt has a fail-safe boot sequence.  You can hold in the reset button while the lights are flashing on the power up, and it will begin rapid flashing, and allow you to login on the 192.168.1.x network, as root, no password.  There are more pages to Google for what to do from that point.

Change it's IP address so it's on the same subnet as the rest of your home network. Example if you're using the 192.168.1.x subnet give the avalon unit an ip address between 1 and 255..ie 192.168.1.111 or something. To change the avalon's ip address go to the "Network" tab in its admin web interface.

I was able to log in.  I set my laptop network to DHCP.  It then gave me an IP address and I was able to connect.  That is not what the startup instructions say.

Do I always need a connected computer to log into the Avalon?  I can't see it from any other computers on my local area network.

I got my new Avalon running today.  It is running now.

I followed the start-up instructions from here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Avalon

But I don't understand the networking.  I was able to use the browser to follow the instructions.   I set a root password and I was able to log in via ssh.  Then I logged out.

Now I can't log in.  I can't get to 192.168.0.100 via the browser or ssh.

The miner is still running and I am loath to turn the thing off if I might never get it to start again.

Any suggestions on how to proceed?

Yes I have done this
and a few days later flashed the new fw again