Topic: Walkthrough: Raspberry Pi/Block Erupter mining rig setup with autostart and vnc (Read 30909 times)

I don't have one of those either - but I do actually have the lcd coming through the post too, but I won't get a chance to solder it up for a few weeks yet.

When you connect the lcd panel I'm not sure but I don't think you would have to change the settings to call up CGminer that I wrote (if you have been following them also). You'd have to follow the PiMiner steps of the Adafruti tutorial though. I think that CGMiner provides an API port on the computer and in some way the PiMiner links up to that port to broadcast information and provide some control. But I think that API runs independantly of any settings that you apply - so hopefully nothing has to be changed.

I am enjoying this work, although I am very ominous about the release of the 400gh chips, apparently there was a 100TH surge on the network yesterday and people thought it might have been KNCminer doing some testing. So the next few months could be bad news for these, I was considering selling them on ebay whilst I still had a chance to mitigate a bit of the losses, but I figured that I wouldn't get that much for the number I have (6) and to have a 'poker in the fire' would be more interesting than not to have. Lets say for example that shipping by all these companies are put back a few months/years as with BFL - here's to hoping anyway!

thanks

I have no problems updating. just this one step.

useing all equipment including raspbian from the tutorial.
I tried saterday night and Sunday morning.

I so pose the site could have been down for quite a while and will try again after work.

read somewhere a time out setting exists and is defaulted to 900 seconds
but my attempts timeout much quicker than that.



*Update:* problem resolved- I guess their site was down all weekend. worked right away this afternoon.
Now I have an error   input/output  when starting cgminer

perhaps because i don't have the lcd keypad kit connected yet. still waiting for it in mail.

I take it that you didn't have any issues running the first parts sudo apt-get update etc. maybe the site was down when you tried because it downloads the file in my browser

Hia, I am no expert but lets work through the simple things - so you have got the internet up and running via either wifi or ethernet? (did you check it out by opening up Midori)

hopping you gents can help out a total beginner using Linux.

I have tried the tutorial on adifruit but can't get cgminer to download.

whenever I put the line


wget http://ck.kolivas.org/apps/cgminer/3.1/cgminer-3.1.1.tar.bz2

I get a message along the lines of: failed.  timed out
and it retries over and over continually timing our
after a few minutes each time

do I need to change a timeout setting and if so
could someone help me learn how?

thanks

used the guide, didnt have any problems, a friend of mine used it too and now we are both up and running. cheers

Looks good, like the power switch idea. Post back if you use my guide and have any q's.

First and foremost I'm no expert at this, but as a professional troubleshooter my suggest is below. I think you are correct but to be sure

If you wanted to have the earnings of one miner sending to one address and the earnings of another (lets say block erupter) sending to another address, assuming that you are mining via a pool (and from my experience that would have to be Slush's), what I would do would be:

• Set up two accounts for a pool, each with one worker, and each with a different payout address
• Run two instances of CGMiner on the RPi (you might get warning about API but that is not important), because I don't think you can have more than one worker logged in in one instance of Rpi
  Have both having a separate config file with each going to the pool but with different users and workers.

I am currently comparing slush vs btcguild pps vs btcguild pplns weekly payouts, and have written some personal documentation on the processes, currently up to top of head with a dissertation but if I get a chance I'll update the OP with some instructions about running multiple instances with different block erupters.

Thanks for looking, Will

They're 336mhz each and I have 6, so that's just over 2gh. They are turning over about £1.30 / $2.30 per day. And in order to work out if I was making any money you'd have to know how much I paid for them!

Hi, for my setup I have a 4-port powered hub (2.5Amp power adapter for each), and each of these hubs plugs into 1 of the usb sockets on the rPi (I don't need a keyboard or mouse or whatever because I have it set up to be controlled over the network). If I had to plug in a keyboard I have a spare socket on each of the two hubs because I have 6 block erupters instead of 8. If I wanted to get more block erupters then I would buy another hub and hope and pray that this would daisy chain on from one of the hubs, but from what I have read this can be iffy with an RPi. best of luck

Yeah that's the only thing putting me off upgrading (plus no money is that any bigger miner I would really still like to have control of the computer part of the miner. Look at kncminer or anything like that, lots of gigahashes but you have to use the linux board that comes built into it to control it. I like tinkering with my pi - guess that's the difference between a hobbyist and an investor. Anythink I think the bitfury works through usb? I am envious

Hi yeah I should think so, I greatly assume that no difference in Ram or speed (or if there is that it wouldn't cause any hassles), the only thing is that you'd have to get the wifi up and running as model A doesn't have ethernet I think? I think this is pretty easy to so but you might find it useful search google or the raspberry pi foundation for a list of known compatible usb wifi receivers. There are loads of instructions on line, but if you run into probs or need more info, post back to here and eventually I check here again. Thanks for taking a look. Cheers, Will

work in progress. 2 block erupters using 2 usb hubs from macbook pro.

9v RC car battery powering an old CPU fan



just finished turning it into a usb fan, with an old pc power switch to turn it on/off



still waiting for raspberry pi, usb hub and 8 more block erupters to arrive


all donations will go towards some less ghetto setups lol

148sqSg9uz41X1Q4METXJYzgsBpHrr149A

Still make no money on this. 600 MHZ is not enough

Great walkthrough. Thanks.. Wondering what do you do if you have used the 2 usb ports on the pi. Can you chain usb hubs or is there another trick to it?

Thank you.  Looking forward to my bitfury rig 

Going to fall in love with this things, are we can mining using raspberry pi model a?

I'll add to that that it is also a discrete package, nice and small to hide away somewhere. And also with the way I have set it up, I have every faith (touch wood) that if I had a power outage/cut it would happily turn on, boot up and start mining all by itself. Certainly a lot more confidence that it won't BSOD or someother reason why it shuts down and then doesn't come back up. Very robust I'd say

Using a Raspberry Pi is definitely a space/cost saver. Compared to a PC, its a fraction of the size, costs $25/$35 for 256MB/512MB models respectively, and uses much lower amount of power (5V micro-USB charger). Things like heatsinks and fans add a little bit of cost, but definitely improve the performance (I know this from experience).

If you have an old PC layout around, you could certainly use it. Over time the extra energy costs will definitely add up though.

Is there any benefit to using the Raspberry Pi instead of a PC when mining with Block Erupters? Or is it simply a space/cost saver?

Thanks!