Topic: GekkoScience Compac BM1384 Stickminer Official Support Thread - page 15. (Read 268078 times)

Which pool you are mining to? Some pools will disconnect you because of a small hashing speed.
Eligius was OK with my sticks.

Yes, you're right.
Sadly none of the raspberry-models has a build-in USB 3 ... I'm using only USB 2.0 hubs

don't plug your USB3 hub in the RPI.
use a USB2 hub as a bridge.

RPI -> USB2 hub -> USB3 Hub

Yeah, I mostly "reboot" my pi physically after making changes and syncing the filesystem ...
May you can point me on something, I didn't think about (I'm a noob at least with advanced linux-skills).
Are there other "common mistakes" in setting up a raspberry pi based miner with gekkos?

edit: 1, 2 or all geekos at once it doesn't make a difference, when MHz > 150. They seem to work very randomly ...

after you change your cable arrangement, you'll have to restart pi or computer, otherwise they would not start (at least in my case).
that, or there is something weird in your setup. i would start with just one and see if everything works fine.

Ok, I changed it. But the results are the same: Only 1 of 3 is recognized.
I tried with Y-cables, too -> cgminer isn't detecting a single gekko with it.

too high for both 250 and 300.
if "flat" at 5pm indicates about 800mv, try 2pm for 250 and 3pm for 300 (approximate).
I might remember incorrectly, but should be in the ballpark.

Yes, I did. They are all @0.79V

strange, they should work. Most likely nothing to do with the hub.
Did you adjust voltage with the tiny nob and measured it?

Neither in mine...

When there's a will there's a way.

Got mine there:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.14304103

This one is not available in my country :/

Got 6@300Mhs on a superbpag.

Ok, I tried with different positions, but I got the same results. 2 of 3 are (sometimes) working. Mostly only 1 is working, sometimes none of them ...

Yes, I'm using the arctic fan (and it's operated by a rasp pi 3).

three should run at 250. try different positions, for example 1, 3, 5 or 2, 4, 6, restart your pi or computer with all three in.
Are you using arctic for cooling? if not, use a regular fan blowing toward sticks.

Hey guys, its me again.

I've bought the plugable USB 2.0 7-Port Hub with BC 1.2, 60W and up to 1.5A per port.

I'm able to fire 2 gekkos on 250MHz and one of them with 300MHz (there are only one or two sticks recognized by cgmier, the rest is running in "Zombie"-mode and tries very often to hotplug (unsucessfully)) ...

So my question: Do I have to buy 2 plugables to run my 4 gekkos with 250MHz 24/7 ?

Thanks for your help!

Hi MrKaizerSoze,
sorry for late response! Very busy last time...  

@your english: never mind about that, ya are welcome mate , it´s also NOT my native language .

But back to the topic :

@Peltier:
here you can see my peltier element (the white square with red and black wire))
I´ve used it primary with my Antrouter R1 (same ASIC)



To reach the expected cooling effect (down to freeze temp), it´s nessessary, that you use a proper cooling at the other side of the peltier (because its driving very hot, w/o a cooler)

Here you can see some  tests:

The green Controller board youl´ll see in front regulates the peltier (depend of the temperature):



Here a closer view, there you´ll see the peltier working between Air-Cooler and the "Cooling side":



(The procedure to use it with a gekko is nearly the same  )


@your other questions:

the Vcore value is limited by the board design.
(If you want to increase the Vcore you have to remove and replace a resistor there.)

Whats to do:
The onboard 10k pot goes from ground in chain with a ~10k resistor to the TPS51219 voltage regulator.
all what you have to do is to remove the 10k res (seen on my pic below) and replace it with a 17k or 20k resistor



Finally it looks so:



Btw, Its very useful to put a Cooler on the backside from the TPS51219 voltage regulator (seen on the picture), because it´s running hot too.

I tried it, but it fails.
The Problem is the "Max Current" limit of the TPS51219 voltage regulator.
It provides not enough power resources.

It s a Silent Shark "HPD-815" from Evercool (dual copper/aluminium) with a fan "inside".
You´ll find it here:
http://www.evercool.com.tw/products/hpd-815.htm

Don´t know the accurate noise level, but its very moderate, usable in your living room.

I´ve used my so called "Direct Injection" , that means, the Gekko got it´s power via direct on board soldered power connector (not via USB)
so the lenght of the USB cable is of second rank, but I used a 0,5m.



But for the perfect cable you´ll find lots of good suggestions from other members of this forum (preferred 0,3 meters short USB 3.0 cables)

So, thats for it, I think.

If any question, feel free to ask me.

Cheers,
andY

re:

Most folks running more than a couple sticks always seem to be using powered hubs that the sticks plug into the top of. So, fin orientation make perfect sense for that.

Along that line -- If possible do not power any stick through an USB cable. The wires inside them, even in the new BC1.2 cables (for charging/linking to Tablets/phones, etc) the wire is barely thick enough to support 1.2A through a short cable. Plug directly into a powered hub if you are going to pull more than 500ma.

i have a peltier module sitting on the bench in the basement. I was just going to zip tie mine to the compac with a evo 212 on the hot side, and solder a molex/bigass cap for 5v power to the compac, and 12v to the peltier and fan.

i like the heatsinks on the reverse side, ill do the same and get some airflow there too somehow.

i thought there was a way to pencil mod it for higher volts but might be thinking of something else.

that works too:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.14582497

I since replaced the Y cables (which I didn't use for their purpose) to standard 30cm USB cables.

2 big heatsinks, 120mm fan in, 120mm fan out.
heatsink fins oriented with air flow.

Now if the factory heatsinks don't fit your setup, don't blame the manufacturer.

Some notes:

2016-11-11
I noticed that the longer the USB Cable, more hardware errors occurs: this is because (I think) the distance and the curves in the cable creates some interference in the communications. I discover than longer than 1M can start to introduce this problem to the USB Stick.

By using the superbpag 7 USB Ports I don't need a Y USB cable, but I noticed that it get pretty hot after a few hours of use. Consider to set a cooling system for the USB hub.

I'm using 3 stickminers (the 727 I burned down by accident: kids always use a fan and a good heat sink if you pretends to set more than 150MHz), with 3 meters long USB cables, an old laptop fan cooler (around 31 dB) and some old but useful heat-sinks 9Y692

https://s21.postimg.org/v43qkpzsn/Screenshot_from_2016_11_11_11_44_20.png

The voltages are 0.798V for the 709, 0.803V for the 714 and 0.799V for the 727. As you can see, there are running @ 350MHz without any problem after a long period of time, the rejected are because my bad internet connection, thats the price of living in the Dominican Republic. I managed to get up to 380 MHz, but every 5-10 minutes the 727 starts to give 1 HW and after an hour, every 10 seconds the 3 of them. Between 360 Mhz and 370 MHz, for some reason, 727 goes full zombie.

The internet is important: this configuration only uses up to 6KB/s of bandwith, so is 2KB/s per device.

I'm building a small cold chamber for the sticks using some Peltier cells and big-ass heat sinks and fan coolers, at least 500,000 mm³ for the final implementation, but for now I'll try with just some NF-F12 fans and the current heat sinks I have.

There are pretty expensive right now, only on Amazon at the moment of writing. I got mine on august at USD$60 each on eBay, now "no found results". Because of this, having more than 1 its not cost effective, remember these Stickminers are only for those who wants to test/have fun, so keep that in mind.

The electric bill in my country is a very corrupted system and the dollar exchange rate vary a lot: for September the bill was around USD$12, for an increment of USD$2 and I generated USD$0.60, for October was almost USD$23, for a false increment of USD$11. It's false because in october I only generated USD$0.47 and used my stickers 6 days less than september. To calculate the estimated electric cost just think about the power consumed by the USB Hub, add the computer/RaspBerry's power used, multiply per every hour of use and multiply by the cost of every consumed watt. To make this calculations shorts, I'm suppose to pay no more than USD$5.00 just for using my current mining rig and my main laptop.

Noise: I strongly believe that everything louder than 35 dB (common conversation level) its too much for a home, so keep in mind to use quiet fan, no more than 25 dB. Some of the new AntMiners, specifically the S9 are too loud, around 75 dB. THAT'S A JUMBO JET!!!

The current heat sinks of the Gekko, I think and I'm sorry for my offense, it's bad designed. It has vertical channels instead of horizontal ones to allows a correct air flow. But, we can change that with very little effort/cost. Just a quick search in Amazon or eBay.