Topic: Modifying a USB hub for extra power and "I did it!" showoff thread - page 3. (Read 6363 times)

okay the y-cables are in.

so far so good they do allow me to run about 1.1 amps and freq 250 hash rate = 13.5 very few errors will post more since this has been running under 2 hours.

Just because I was asked - shouldn't take this as a guide; modifying nice hubs is structurally better, buying a hub that already does the job is more sane, and if wanting to do this right, fire up kicad/eagle/something and at least design a nice board

( click for big )

Regular USB A male connector with cable (from a cable I wasn't using - I'm drowning in the things), chopped off and stripped at one end, coming in from the left.
USB A female connector from an old, dead, power bank on the right.  If just connecting these two together, you'd just solder these from
left to right straight through.

For injecting power, solder the black (gnd), green (D+) and white (D-) wires through, and leave the red unconnected.  You can pretty much just chop it off entirely but that's a bit of a waste.  Now take your PSU, connect the PSU's 0V / 'ground' (not the chassis ground) to the black wire, and the PSU's +5V to where the red wire would have gone.  Done.  Ideally you'd check for potential differences between the two grounds instead of just blindly wiring them together, but you'd need some screwy PSU/computer for that to be terrible.

There's a few extra things on that board - quick overview of that:
Instead of dropping the USB cable's red wire entirely, I soldered it to a male header that connects to the PSU +5V at the other end.  That way I can always use it without the PSU for lower power solutions.  If you'd be inclined to do this as well, don't bridge that jumper while also feeding with the PSU.  If you do, you may have a bad time.
The PSU's +5V supply is not connected straight through - there's two test points I can stick a multimeter between to get current readings, and if for any reason I don't want to measure current, the track can again be bridged with a jumper for lower power solutions.
At the top left is a resistor that goes to a small LED to indicate power, and on the flip side of the board is an array of capacitors to help deal with initial current draw on the board's end.  Ideally these would all be close around the USB socket, but it'll do for something cobbled together.  Their leads (bent over the pads) and all the pads underneath got a good globbing of solder on there to carry the current.

i shrunk them with bbcode, right click and "view image" should show the full size

I need bigger pictures or a new set of glasses hard to say where the wires are soldered with my poor eyes

looks encouraging.

I would think it will be able to run 5 sticks at freq 250 easy.

 since that is about 5.5 amps for 5 sticks

if you push past freq 250 and go up to freq 300  it is about 1.5 or 1.6 amps  say 7.5 to 8 amps

Sidehack  or theRealSteve have the numbers over freq 250

So going by this:

I've restated this idea, stripping all the old wires off, going to resolder these wires to each port (yes yes, its a 7 porter, I'm only using the 5 on this side)


I start off with stripping out the wires in the molex needed to connect to the 5 wires.


Starting the solder onto the Positive side to the USB jacks.


Finalising the soldering to each point. and as you can see, the 5 wires are now joined to the pin at the Molex plug.


Moving on to solder on the Negative to the Earth pins and casing


The final product:


Shall we see if it smokes?


Well, Power light is on, so that must mean something Right? RIGHT?!

Well, the maximum rating by the documents with the BM1384 is 400MHz, so anywhere outside the factory tests ate unknown territory (probably people have pushed them well beyond this)

But hey, I know nothing about these chips..

But more photos coming up!

In terms of easy over clock :

   freq 250   uses 1.1 amps  does 13.7gh   uses about .33-34 watts a gh likes a fan but can be run without the fan.  you can use this link


http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/

and get the 4.9.2 build and zadig

I still don't know if ck has add support for above freq 250  but sidehack and steve do have how to go above 250


In terms of insane over clock

freq 425  uses 2.6 amps does 23.3 gh   uses about .58 watts a gh  and must have a fan


sidehack and theRealSteve   can fill inbetween



a usb2 hub with the y-adpater from here

http://www.ebay.com/itm/221661361513? 

should let you go to 1 amp maybe 1.2 amps,  still waiting for these  to test them.

Op's solder trick  should be good for a better diy hub.  sidehack's  star power idea vs chained power should improve on op's idea.

A cheap hub


http://www.amazon.com/Etekcity-Adapter-Charging-Protector-Indicators/dp/B00ELPSEVW/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1439906982&sr=8-2&keywords=10+port+usb+2+hub


I would think that with the y adapter this  hub can do 4 sticks at freq 250   giving you  4.4amps at 5 volts    about 22 watts for about 66gh .  comes with a 3 amp 12 volt brick 

which has 36 watt max  and you are pulling 22 watts.   may not be able to do this once again I have these on hand and will test once the y-adapters come.

I ended up just cobbling something together so I wouldn't have to mess about with the hubs I have in terms of adding test points. I'll have to take a pic when I get home, but it's essentially just the data signals going straight through and power coming off of a small PSU.

Since it's got a buck, it should be about 10% less efficient than an S5 at the same setpoint.

2.6A is pretty good current for USB. To be honest, the jack on that is only rated 1.5A from the manufacturer. What's the hub setup you're pushing that with (since this is a hub thread)?

---

cgminer version 4.9.2-compac - Started: [2015-08-17 17:57:31]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(5s):27.02G (1m):23.40G (5m):23.25G (15m):23.19G (avg):23.31Gh/s
A:396784  R:108  HW:57  X:237  T:126  GN:398784  WU:325.67/m  WE:100.00% HE:99.73% cf:425.00 ch:23375.00 t:73471
Connected to pool0.btcdig.com diff 19 with stratum as user BEUSB@gscompac
Block: 545278ff...  Diff:52.7G  Started: [14:20:54]  Best share: 178K
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

---

425MHz, giving 23.31Gh/s on average so far; hover over the statistics to get an explanation of what all those extra bits are.

Temperature-wise, it's currently at 38.1°C vs 23.5°C ambient, but that's with an Arctic 'Breeze' USB fan just about on top of it now.  At 400MHz it was at a 50.2°C vs 27.7°C with the fan 9cm above it.

Power-wise, I haven't tweaked this for efficiency; Vusb is at 5.23V, Iusb is at 2.6A - yielding an apalling ~0.58W/Gh.  Still beats the 0.6W/Gh scamware people tried to get for free, but I'd definitely stick to lower hash rates and with it much more agreeable current draw

23GH is 425MHz and I'd be surprised if they weren't hitting 0.5 at that point.

also remember that when you push the sticks they become less efficient.

 I got lazy and stopped at 1.1amps  per port and freq 250  giving me 13.7gh and about .33-.34 watts a gh.

Therealsteve has pushed the sticks up to 23gh!  but they then use over .4 watts a gh  they need a fan and are still pretty hot. I think he was at freq 350 or 375  IIRC.

425 freq corrected

There is an option of getting these Male to Female adaptors, splitting the plastic off, and with the 5V lines, solder in 1 Molex adaptor.

Yeah, that too. i was looking into Molex to USB power + data on ebay, but you think i could find something? there is this though:
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/5pcs-lot-5V-2Pin-IDE-Molex-to-USB-A-Female-Power-Charge-Cable-Cord-35cm/32297387976.html but it would be nice if it was UAB-A-M to USB-A-F with IDE Molex 5V rail spliced in..

I was thinking of getting one of these and taking the power plug side, and splicing a molex plug on.. Next idea: multiple USB jacks to only power these types of cords..  only need several USB jacks, a proto-board and a Molex plug

I will look for your notes on it working or not.
I've been looking at USB3 externally powered hubs, but none seem to offer the amperages you guys talk about for being able to go to the high end of frequencies on sidehack's sticks.

or just buy this


http://www.ebay.com/itm/221661361513?

not saying it is better  I am waiting  on my 5 cables to arrive.


for all I know they will work poorly

AJ thanks for posting this.
You saved several of us some time even thinking about it, and can come straight here to copy yours in readiness for our Compac's.

I'm going to redo the wiring, have 4 wires to the plug itself, then I'm going to show how to just do a power wire to plug modification..

good point.


wiring is all up to the fab labs, speaker wire has markings similar to this, but the amount of colours and markings can change depending on application at the time.

as for the "self powered" hubs, i do have a hub with plugs that go both ways if you want to see that go up in smoke too?