Topic: The combined sidehack-novak usb stick review thread. AKA GekkoScience BM1384 - page 7. (Read 26345 times)

I'll be watching like a hawk to get a few in the first come first serve basis!

So it looks like we've gotten some sort of approval from four of the eight testers. Still waiting to hear anything from MrTeal, CanaryInTheMine, vs3 and ManeBjorn. I'd like to have approval from at least two of them before opening a sales queue. I've gotten word from vs3 and ManeBjorn that sticks have been received, so hopefully something pops up in the next few days. I'm tentatively looking to open sales next Wednesday with at least 600 sticks (more if I hear back from Bitmain about a potential second chip buy). As I've done before on limited-batch opening sales, I'll announce several days beforehand the time (and time zone) and orders will be queued on a first-come first-serve basis.

I'll be focusing on North America, I reckon. I'm supposed to send European customers to the German guy, who has received manufacturing data and tells me he'll be running out a tiny batch to test before doing a full run. Anyone in Europe specifically wanting a GekkoScience-made stick for posterity (like, you know, TheRealSteve) I can probably send a couple, but so's I don't cut in on his turf I'd just as soon stick to the Western Hemisphere.

i cant wait to get a couple of these.. as well as a whole handful of the typezero boards to replace my s3s. (which will stop making money for me around 65 billion difficulty)

I really like it aswell nicely done.  Maybe on back put history and a little about the miner on the white spot.   

But very well done.   I like it shows the color of the heat sink off.

Bravo! I like that look a lot, I want one even more now for keep sake.

Those types of boxes are very common in the rock & mineral community for displaying rock slices and such.  They can be found in large quantity at wholesale prices around the web, but here's an ebay link for an example.

The case is really nice.
I look forward to see more from you in this thread.

*shudder*

---

Didn't get to play much with the Compac today, spent some off time on a train whipping up a preliminary packaging design for the ones I'll gift, though.

Box is a cheap PP box, small foam inlay currently only cut out for the heat sink - might flip that around yet.  The box is intended for playing cards, so I ran with that for a small insert's design.  Needs a few small tweaks.

The insert is, at the same time, a bit of documentation on getting started - also very much in progress.  There's a small table for either individual test results or nominal ones, given they should all perform pretty similar.


I've only just done some testing, had to collect my test gear over here, calibrate bits and decide on a set up.

Probably won't be using the IR gun very much, the probes give nice continuous feedback anyway.


Multimeter will be used to check the core voltage, the USB meter will do its thing measuring both USB voltage, A, and mAh, while cgminer (though I almost got somewhere with bfgminer - nope.) will be used to track speed and HW errors.  Will probably mine over on BTCDig, as long as they don't get DDoS'd again.

Cool reviews guys!  TheRealSteve I dig the Pink!

The photo I posted a week and a half ago with nine sticks running 225MHz on my test hub were all running off a Pi (running Minera) powered from the same hub, zero problems.

Zadig was actually pretty easy in my case I used a fresh install of Windows.  And it installed first time without any issues.

But Raspberry Pi is where I see these moving to.   Even with low power windows options, the price point just makes sense to use multiple raspberry pi's if needed vs some of the windows options.

When I can buy one, I'll try it on a Raspberry Pi. I have a very low tolerance for zadig difficulties.

I expect it should be pretty straightforward. Prior to my SP20, I was running a single Pi with 3 of the older R-boxes (the little 4" cubes), and some U2's. I am comfortable enough with Linux, that I expect I can do it.

Just testing notes so far:


0) General information + Hardware Needed
1) The Miner
2) Install
3) Conclusion


0) General Information + Hardware Needed to buy
The GekkoScience Compac is likely the first BM1384 chip project we see from Sidehack and Novak.   But for sure will not be the last.  It is likely a series we will see. The miner it's self has a huge offering of adjustable speed, and with being able to easily push 14-15GH/s out of the miner makes it relevant to today's mining.

• Computer or Raspberry Pi to run the stick miner
• Most likely a powered usb hub to keep heat away
• Active cooling such as a fan to cool down the miner

1) The Miner
The Compac was made with a taller heatsink and profile.  This will work well with most powered hubs.



2) Install
The optimal install will be on a small electricity usage device.  I foresee these being a good miner for raspberry Pi's.  A lot of the testing/reviews have been done on windows boxes.  But chances are once these hit sales low powered linux boxes will take over.

Right now most are using windows machines with Zadig driver - http://zadig.akeo.ie/  With using cgminer - http://zadig.akeo.ie/

I personally suggest putting together a batch file to make it easy to run if you are going to run in windows.  Will feel very familiar to anyone who has used miners with Zadig before. Below is the command with approximate speed each frequency will get you. 

The command line I use is "cgminer.exe -o stratum.mining.eligius.st:3334 -u 1BURGERAXHH6Yi6LRybRJK7ybEm5m5HwTr -p x --au3-volt 0 --au3-freq 150"

100	5.5
125	6.88
150	8.25
175	9.63
193.75	10.66
196.88	10.83
200	11
206.25	11.34
212.5	11.69
218.75	12.03
225	12.38
237.5	13.06
243.75	13.41
250	13.75

Running at 100 freq I tested on a laptop without USB hub.   At this level its cool to touch.   You have a LOT of adjustment possible.  Once you go up you do need to adjust and use a hub with fan pushing air.


3) Conclusion
This no doubt will take over the single usb miner market.  We will see how far it goes from there, there is a lot of possibility.   We have seen Sidehack and Novak can take a product from a thought to a product ready to sell, this say's a lot. 

One thing that we have not seen in someone really use the Raspberry Pi in combination with this miner.  With the Raspberry Pi's low market point, I just think this will make a lot of sense and eventually will see it vs the windows installs (even the low powered windows installs).

steve i really liked looking at your review i am not a technical person when it comes to miners and what not and you made it where a noob would understand them

No problem!  I'll incorporate your comments into my post and provide some references  I'm glad the trimpot's direction will be reversed, makes much more sense - at least to me (volume knob analogy and all that).

Evergreen is slightly more bluish and a bit less saturated, I think?  Take your pick: https://i.imgur.com/IMUFYMc.png
( hot pink also looks quite sexy - bit of an attack on the ol' eyeballs though )

I do think it's worth selling.  You already have the chips - as does the other guy - so selling something is a given.  I think it's more a question of proportions.  How many single chip Compacs would sell vs the - relatively - marginal increased cost for an Amita?  How many of those would sell vs a fair bit larger cost for a pod miner?  How many of those would sell vs the type zero you're planning?  Those are questions some of the other guys are probably better equipped to answer as they've been on the sales end - and I'm terribly biased  All I know is I have a few potentials (pending final cost and - due to shipping - European licensor terms) lined up, some of which could be changed to Amita depending on how those pan out.

Given that the bi•fury, NF2 and Avalon Nano are still selling (not at a high rate, but selling nevertheless) out of official stores - some at prices quite a bit higher than what you're aiming for - I don't really doubt that they will sell over time, regardless.

You can't, yet. I'm waiting for more of the testers to post opinions before opening a sales queue, in case there's something wrong that I hadn't noticed yet but merits tweaking the design.

where can I place an order for some of these?

The black heatsink on Phil's old test (which is a modified V0.3 stick) is actually cut from an AM Cube heatsink with dimensions eyeballed. The gold heatsink on the new test (which is a V0.4 stick) is colored differently but otherwise identical to the final version. They were samples sent from the factory, drilled from stock they already had run out.

On the final version, the pads on the back are labeled. The question-mark pad is indeed GND; I had separate planes for PGND and SGND which were joined elsewhere to avoid ground loop issues from the VCore currents but that actually made things worse. This was fixed on the V0.4. The V0.5 (final version for production) has a single GND pad and RESET is broken out on the fifth pad in case someone needs it.

Another thing changed on the V0.5 is the pot rotation direction; it'll be back to clockwise increases voltage instead of counterclockwise.

Regarding the soldering commentary, I did have a paste stencil for V0.3 which was still accurate for about 90% of the V0.4 board but all the components were hand-placed with a crappy homemade vacuum pencil and heated with a reflow air gun. We have inbound (and held up in customs, grumble grumble) a pick-and-place and an IR oven so placement and soldering should be a fair bit more precise on the end product.

Thanks for that thorough review, TheRealSteve. I think the actual green for the heatsinks will be more "evergreen" and less "whoa that's sexy" than in your sample image, unfortunately. So what do you think? Worth selling?

 Steve a Nice review.  you did bring out a shorting issue which is good.

I really would suggest a usb meter  as the " I have fat fingers and bad eyes" method  for pot adjusting. Also I have the older black and the new gold and sidehack flipped the pots on my so I really needed two meters to be sure.

 You are correct that the lead pads may be more accurate, but you need to watch for shorting

.


fullsize links

http://imageshack.com/a/img912/9373/dU82Bt.jpg
http://imageshack.com/a/img911/2746/L5sfbE.jpg

note the fans have a nylon grill to prevent a short sticks are at freq 250 with the fans they are only warm
no sticks made before these did the temps as well as these
newer gold is 85 f
but my probe was a bit too wide for the gold fins I suspect both heatsinks are 90-93 f




older black is 91 f

Great review, and I agree with your closing statement.  In fact, I posted something almost identical yesterday in the dev thread.