Topic: Community brainpan - please discuss and debate desirable features for a miner - page 3. (Read 5724 times)

Well, ideal and practical. I'm opting for a bucked string since it's by far the most efficient and least parts cost that still allows adjustable core voltage. The obvious problem with that is if one chip fails the board fails, chained comms or not.
If you look at the node-level support hardware on a Prisma versus S5, to implement parallel comms requires a lot of extra stuff.
A "lego miner" is probably not feasible, as half the cost of the thing will be in sockets. I'm not attempting to define an open standard, just some guy wants to build a miner.
If the darned USB circuit fails - I'm assuming we're using a USB-enabled microcontroller, so if the USB circuit fails that probably means all board-level control is gone. No chip comms, no temp sensors, no voltage regulation, no fan speed. But I bet you could swap on another $3 microcontroller, flash the firmware and get back up. It might be worth having a separate UART port; the only problems would be adding to the cgminer driver and micro firmware to support that transport alongside USB.

I am definitely in favor of monolithic heatsinks, but I also suggest that double-siding should get better heat transfer to air which should result in quieter fans. However, I'm not a mechanical engineer or heat transfer guy so I don't have the numbers to back that up, it's just an intuition.

As far as the spec goes, the cgminer source code will be public (as are the license terms, after all) if I have to steal and host it myself. I don't know about micro firmware source code, that'll probably remain proprietary, but I'll see about making a compiled hex available for folks in need of repair. Surely there'll be some documentation on the command structure for talking to that micro as well.

Nice thread

Some of my suggestions:

• If possible, one-side only monoblock heatsink. It makes it super easy to maintain and super easy to upgrade. The S5 heatsink was great to work with, especially the extruded ones that had straight fins.
• USB communication with a jumper or dip switch to override it and use direct UART. What if the darned USB circuit fails? it would be nice to jack it up to a raspi UART and be back on business.
• A good spec: it would be nice to have a spec so anyone wanting to roll their own solution can push work to the device easily.
• If chained comms can be avoided, better. Too many times i have had one antminer board fail on me because one chip malfunctions. That, for me, is designed obsolesence.
• Replaceable power module. Your regulator circuits rock sidehack, you know i admire them. How cool would be to just throw a faulty regulator circuit and replace it with a new one?
• Also, replaceable comms. I know i'm suggesting a lego miner, but heck i have seen too many dead boards because of anything but the board really failing.

I know some of my suggestions are a little pie in the sky, but we're talking about an ideal miner, right? RIGHT?

Those are really good points you guys have been pointing out. I hope this is a success. And how about using C.H.I.P as the controller it's just $9 with wifi, 4gb storage, 1Ghz processor, 512mb RAM, Bluetooth, eth. I guess a 512Mb RAM can easily handle tasks.

A USB dongle for wifi support is acceptable, since it's optional and would just plug into the controller's external USB jack. A USB dongle being required for base functionality of the machine, that's when dongles are unacceptable.

I would prefer a miner in the 400-500W topend size, but it's not up to me. Like I said, those attributes are fixed.

I have no interest in enabling thievery, so telling me what will make it easier for you activates my contrary nature and makes me want to oppose your suggestions.

A miner for those who only have wifi would be nice. A lot of people like myself can't connect any other way.
I personally have been stealing internet access for over 10 years.
So miners that connect to a PC via USB or a expansion card slot are nice.

The wifi transmitter that comes with the raspberry pi is just to weak, I have to use a Alfa card with a large parabolic dish to connect. So everything has to run threw my computer.

 Size, sure - but power consumption on BOTH of those units was quite high for a "home" miner.
 I'd aim for under 1KW and preferably WELL under for a "consumer" miner - 500-700 watt range is a lot more manageable for non-BIG FARM miners, IE the S5 and SP20.

 WiFi - definitely should be OPTIONAL.
 A lot of us don't have any use for it nor any interest in paying for it.
 Available AS AN OPTION, sure - some folks DO want it.

Retail the Pi 3 is ~$40. You'd likely spend more on a non-wifi devboard, and then have to come up with a wifi solution, which is typically a dongle. As you have stated several times, dongles are not desirable.

That the Pi 3 is a quad-core board is just an added bonus.

- zed

I'm not a fan of proprietary designs when there are off the shelf components available. That's why I was thinking about using something like:

https://www.adafruit.com/products/2885

or similar as the slave controller. It is powerful enough to do everything to manage the miner, and is sourceable from a lot of places. Using a slave controller also makes some of the management tasks easier.


Yes, as @irritant mentioned, the RasPi 3 has it built-in.


How would fan management work in the failed/external controller scenario? I like the idea of each hashboard having it's own connection to the controller, but as you mentioned earlier, how to associate fans to hashboards/miners becomes a challenge. How much non-hashing functionality do you want to put on the hashboards? Is there benefit/value in keeping the hashboards "simple" and having some auxiliary board handle some of the other tasks?


Agreed. If "fixing" the miner is as simple as removing the failed controller, pulling the microSD card, inserting it into the new controller, and plugging it back it in, then that's good. That the failed controller is available off the shelf from a number of places around the world, then it's even better. That's why I keep coming back to the RasPi variants. The Arduino and it's variants are about the only other ones I know that have such broad availability. There are probably others, but those are the two that come to mind.


Done! That is exactly what I was thinking. I'm just not as familiar with the low level power stuff as you are. What you and @NotFuzzyWarm are suggesting is a far better solution than my proposal.


Yes, this is what I was thinking, too, but you stated it better than I did. The nice thing is that if automatic control is implemented, you could have each hashboard under-volt and under-clock when temperatures reach a certain threshold. This enables miner self optimization to run at peak levels in hotter locations with less human intervention.

Cheers,

- zed

That is handy, depending on how easy it is to interface to. But do we really need a quad-core? (hint - the answer is "no").

What specific model of what devboard computer gets picked is important to the overall discussion, but I wouldn't mind deferring it for a bit. If enough people want wifi, that certainly adds weight to one supporting it natively.

raspberry model 3 has wifi built in

A slave board is possible, but if there's a way to do without it I'd prefer that. I think the fewer proprietary and also essential parts there are, the better. Dealing with warranty stuff sucks from both ends, especially if there's no workaround to get your miner at least back to limping while waiting for replacements.

Are there any decent wifi modules that work with the Pi via USB? I'm assuming so, that seems like a very simple and common problem but I don't really use wifi so I've never had to look it up. What I'm thinking currently is have a Pi as an internal controller, and expose ethernet, at least one USB and probably some status LEDs on the front panel. Hashboards would connect directly to the Pi by USB. Worst case your Pi craps out and you're waiting on a replacement, you should still be able to tie the boards to an adjacent miner or other computer via hub. With a setup like that, the hashboards become the only proprietary (and therefore difficult to source) electronics, and they would be easy to run off a variety of nonproprietary controllers, which minimizes a lot of the issues people have with, say, Antminer BeagleBoners and IO boards shooting craps and losing a month of hashtime and money out of pocket waiting for very specific replacement parts existing in limited quantities (if at all) from exactly one source in the world.

I generally don't like unnecessary complexity because it tends to add failure points. Yes I know using USB for interconnectivity is adding a layer of complexity to a problem which could be solved in a simpler way, but it does so in a way that reduces the overall cost of failure. A layer of complexity which adds a layer of redundancy or reliability is okay - like RAID5. It's not perfect, but the benefits merit the extra effort.

Enabling power to the hashboards does not need to be accomplished using external switches in any way, provided the hashboards have an onboard regulator (which they will if I have any say in the matter). One only needs control of the buck controller's ENABLE pin (which NotFuzzy stated while I was typing this up). No power will get to the hashing chips if the buck is shut down, so the board-level microcontroller should be able to control this in addition to determining operating voltages. I like the idea of making a software power-cycle of individual hashboards possible, and an advanced driver could be implemented that watches for a hung board then forces a hardware/software restart. That would be really handy for automatic tuning especially at the bottom-end voltage range where node-level voltage imbalances have the most effect on overall stability. Being able to force a total power-down of all ASICs would also be good for mitigating damage from an overheat condition resulting from fan failure.

Well put. The only flaw I see is:
    "This could be managed using GPIO to activate/deactivate relays that feed power to the hashing boards."

Relays that can handle the currents involved are not cheap. However, use the same idea but talk to the MC to trip the voltage regulators run/stop pin just like a PC's PWR_OK line from ATX and other psu's so the Vcore regulator(s) simple shut down until all is well again..

I think it is, and I am basing that on the fact that my Compac has been hashing away for a couple of months now and it seems pretty happy. I've probably only had to unplug/plug it a dozen or so times.

Where USB gets wobbly is when you keep plugging/unplugging cables. The connectors loosen up, the connections become less "solid" and that's when things get flaky.


What if the miner used a two controller configuration in a master/slave setup? The slave would be the focal point for all onboard items like the hashing boards, power control, fan control, and information gatherer.

There could be a 3-port USB hub within the miner with one of the ports wired to the slave controller, and two externally accessible ports to connect to other miners and the external master controller.

The master controller is where cgminer runs. You could put together a package of software that runs on a RasPi 3 so that you have USB connectivity to/from the miners, ethernet or wifi connectivity to/from the 'net, and the spare horsepower to run a web server to proved a nice GUI interface and REST API. You could also plug in a keyboard and mouse on the USB bus, and plug in a monitor on the HDMI to use like a regular computer.

The slave controller inside the miner has several management tasks:

• Fans
• Power
• Hashing boards
• Information gathering

Fan ownership would be a non-issue as the slave controller handles it. Fan control could use a PWM pin on the slave controller with the fan(s) always spinning at some arbitrary low speed when power is applied but the miner is not hashing. This minimum speed would be enough to keep things cool at idle.

The hashing boards could connect to the slave controller using I2C with the I2C IDs set by a simple switch on the hashing board if the boards are identical, or with a hardwired I2C ID if the boards are different based on which side (left/right) of the case they are on.

Power to the hashing boards could be controlled/managed by the slave controller. I'm thinking about two levels of control here. The first level is on/off which is dependent on a properly operating fan and active communication with the master controller. This could be managed using GPIO to activate/deactivate relays that feed power to the hashing boards. The second level of power management is controlling the voltage on the hashing boards to manage the power usage for custom tuning (over-/under-volting) and optimizing.

Information gathering could be achieved through use of the other GPIO pins to sensors for things inside the case, and any hashing board sensor data coming in through the I2C data stream. This information would be fed back to the external controller via USB.

The miners would be modular as the external controller could talk to them via USB, up to some arbitrary limit. Each miner would have a unique ID as USB devices on the bus. The internal slave controller could be a custom design, or could be an off the shelf devboard. The use of the external controller allows folks to use their existing computer as long as it can run the cgminer software. For an added charge they can buy the GekkoScience external controller that provides additional bells and whistles.

Cheers,

- zed

Query: How is the miner connected to the home network?
Hardwire only using jacks and cat5 cables?

Any chance for a WiFi option as well as the hardware (for setup) connection?

Hmm, might also be a good chance to reuse the WiFi boards and hardware from s1's... I ask because it seems the OPL LAN bridge between house and garage is acting up again -- it runs warm to start and doesn't seem to like a hot garage So, need to setup a WiFi link from my home router to there... Side note to this is that my s7b6 normally draws 1090w as reported by the UPS feeding it, when in loss of internet 'safe' mode power drops to 390w. So far fans always stay running at my set 85% but if they ever stop....

For the new miner - how about the MC having a safe mode to have the V regulators feeding the ASICS to shut down when the network connection is dropped and the ASIC's are just twiddling their thumbs?
 
Along those lines, Why did Bitmain change drop using OpenWRT? I loved the data traffic graphing it offered.

Hopefully fourth time's the charm...





If you're looking for something in any way akin to the U3, you're in the wrong thread.
That said, thanks for the support. Hopefully whatever ends up getting built is worth buying.

It's easier to keep track of if there are fewer add-on parts strung along in the middle, especially since it won't cost any extra or be any extra work to build it into the board. That adapter you linked is the same hardware as on USB Block Erupters, AntMiner U1/2/3, my Compacs, New R-Box and a bunch of other stuff. It is easier to find for an end user, but (as Novak and the AM Tube found out) people sometimes still have problems with incredibly simple things. Idiotproofing is your friend - well, assuming "you" will be doing any kind of customer support. Most customers, at least the ones who ask questions, are idiots.

cool like i said whatever work , I'm not being rude by saying whatever works i don't mean it like some might take it . .


and the Avalon 4/4.1/6 is made for the Avalon your are right about that what i link is not and sold any place. so excuse me was offering feedback just being cool or trying if it's works yea .


cya


  

Well, we've already noted that it's annoying to find replacements for the USB converter Avalon uses, and made specific mention of how easy it is to find microcontrollers with USB capability built in. So, if going USB why require an annoying converter when you can just integrate it onto the board?

USB has also been raised specifically because it doesn't limit you to one controller type. It's easier for everyone if the thing comes with a controller already, but with open software and USB connection you could replace that controller with almost anything you wanted. "Not hard to replace parts" is definitely a key desirable feature.

not asking to unmind you . whats wrong with  USB dongles if you using a hub , won't you need some kind usb plug on the end is my whole point. i use a hub with wires running to the hub from the miner is my point why i said any pi . so i hope it not just limited to one controller pi type then it's kind like bit main any way whatever comes I'll  adjust just adding feedback idc either way as long it does what it  suppose with less power and more hash and user friendly for every one and not hard to replace parts .

No USB dongles. No external boards for fan control.