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Topic: Walkthrough: Raspberry Pi/Block Erupter mining rig setup with autostart and vnc - page 2. (Read 30950 times)

newbie
Activity: 26
Merit: 0
Yes just using two of those Arctic Breeze mobiles (the one without the stand). Seem to do a very good job at keeping it cool. I did actually fit heatsinks onto the chips (on the other side from the preinstalled large heatsinks). Lots on ebay, and the fans hit the erupters from that side so the ridged heatsinks I installed keep nice and cool. I can't say it makes anything run faster, probably more stable though and may last longer until I sell them.
newbie
Activity: 56
Merit: 0
Wow, that was a lot of Block Erupter  Shocked , I dont even have the Raspberry  Sad
Anyway are you only using the fan to cool it?
newbie
Activity: 35
Merit: 0
hot plugging works perfect in 3.3.1 and you don't need -S anymore, also I'm getting a bunch less hardware errors.
And was easy to get it to boot up and run at init without having to check for ttyUSB's. I'm sure there must be other improvements with keeping up with the latest versions.

Excellent.  Is there a guide for this setup?  Many thanks!

All you need to do is edit /etc/apt/sources.list by commenting out wheesy and adding jessie:
Quote from: sources.list
#deb http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ wheezy main contrib non-free rpi
deb http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ jessie main contrib non-free rpi

Then run "apt-get update" and then "apt-get dist-upgrade" and install cgminer from git.
newbie
Activity: 16
Merit: 0
newbie
Activity: 18
Merit: 0
hot plugging works perfect in 3.3.1 and you don't need -S anymore, also I'm getting a bunch less hardware errors.
And was easy to get it to boot up and run at init without having to check for ttyUSB's. I'm sure there must be other improvements with keeping up with the latest versions.

Excellent.  Is there a guide for this setup?  Many thanks!
legendary
Activity: 1302
Merit: 1007
Where did you buy the USB Block Erupter from?
newbie
Activity: 35
Merit: 0
hot plugging works perfect in 3.3.1 and you don't need -S anymore, also I'm getting a bunch less hardware errors.
And was easy to get it to boot up and run at init without having to check for ttyUSB's. I'm sure there must be other improvements with keeping up with the latest versions.
newbie
Activity: 26
Merit: 0

Quote from: The tutorial
Note: this is not the latest version of cgminer, at the time of this writing, the current version (3.3.1) has issues communicating with Block Erupter USB on Raspbian

FYI, I also experienced issues with Block Erupter USB's on Raspbain. However I was successful at building and running cgminer from git (3.3.1) after dist-upgrading Raspbain from wheesy to jessie. 




I hope this isn't being lazy but is there any benefits in going to 3.3.1 (It would be quite a bit of work for me to learn how to do that)
newbie
Activity: 35
Merit: 0

Quote from: The tutorial
Note: this is not the latest version of cgminer, at the time of this writing, the current version (3.3.1) has issues communicating with Block Erupter USB on Raspbian

FYI, I also experienced issues with Block Erupter USB's on Raspbain. However I was successful at building and running cgminer from git (3.3.1) after dist-upgrading Raspbain from wheesy to jessie. 


newbie
Activity: 26
Merit: 0
I got two Pi boards myself, they are a lot of fun to mess around with. I have to ask the question though... why would one not use a 1 foot usb extension cords on each port of the hub to keep the Erupters farther apart? Hell could take a block Erupter shell off and vaccum seal all the PCBs and the exposed usb parts and just lay them in a few buckets of water, might melt the plastic but who knows! Iunno fun stuff Tongue

Yes I thought about that (the extension lead thing) and I have heard of other people using these - I just decided it was more trouble than it's worth. The hubs nicely arrange the erupters for the fan to blow over them, I think it's important to have theit heatsinks facing upwards for the heat to convex (?) off of them. I have also fitted those raspberry pi heatsinks to the be chips (on the underside), and they heat up considerably so must be doing a good job. It's surprising effective a fan is at colling down those heatsinks. Having said that I don't have the fan running at night, and some days too (and it's warm here at present) and I haven't noticed any increas in Hardware errors by having the fans off, if anything it's slightly lower by a smidgen, but we're only talking 1.002% as opposed to 0.998% errors.

On the raspberry pi, I now have three - one for running Xbian to play films (http://youtu.be/G2-eUrGbl0I) from my bittorrent directories on my PC, this one for mining and another as kind of a testing one. Really versatile and keeping a lot of people very happy!
newbie
Activity: 19
Merit: 0
newbie
Activity: 10
Merit: 0
Great thanks for looking for confirmation on that point, and again for raising it in the first place!

To answer the other commenter, with 6 erupters at just over 2gh/s it's making about 0.04BTC per day at present but I can't realistically expect to see any ROI financially given increasing hashrates and difficulty.
Other than eBay, where the USB Erupters are over priced, is there another site or place that sells them for less? If I may ask, where did you get yours from, and did you use BTC to pay for them?

Thanks!
newbie
Activity: 13
Merit: 0
I got two Pi boards myself, they are a lot of fun to mess around with. I have to ask the question though... why would one not use a 1 foot usb extension cords on each port of the hub to keep the Erupters farther apart? Hell could take a block Erupter shell off and vaccum seal all the PCBs and the exposed usb parts and just lay them in a few buckets of water, might melt the plastic but who knows! Iunno fun stuff Tongue
newbie
Activity: 26
Merit: 0
Great thanks for looking for confirmation on that point, and again for raising it in the first place!

To answer the other commenter, with 6 erupters at just over 2gh/s it's making about 0.04BTC per day at present but I can't realistically expect to see any ROI financially given increasing hashrates and difficulty.
full member
Activity: 196
Merit: 100
Thanks for your suggestion, and I just put a note about this in the original post. I'd be interested to see the command for running block erupters under linux for the most recent version 3.3.1. Adafruit did say there was a problem with this under Raspbian, but that might just be because they were trying to use -S tags.

Great, thanks. I only mentioned it just in case someone downloaded the latest cgminer instead (like not everybody reads the instructions in full before starting Roll Eyes ).

I had a scan through the cgminer support forum, and it looks like its best to stick with 3.1.1 for now vis https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2632152 (lead developer recommends 3.1.1 as newer versions are unstable on RPi).
newbie
Activity: 26
Merit: 0
You are using quite an old version of cgminer (3.1.1) here. As a heads up for any newbies reading this, this is the latest version that supports the -S parameter. More recent versions expect to communicate directly with the the USB driver, so the setup procedure is quite different. Perhaps you would like to update your tutorial with this information?

Thanks for your suggestion, and I just put a note about this in the original post. I'd be interested to see the command for running block erupters under linux for the most recent version 3.3.1. Adafruit did say there was a problem with this under Raspbian, but that might just be because they were trying to use -S tags.
full member
Activity: 196
Merit: 100
You are using quite an old version of cgminer (3.1.1) here. As a heads up for any newbies reading this, this is the latest version that supports the -S parameter. More recent versions expect to communicate directly with the the USB driver, so the setup procedure is quite different. Perhaps you would like to update your tutorial with this information?
That's a good point. I did compile the latest version (3.3.1), but couldn't get it to run. But if I can get it to run, I'll post the instructions here.

The definitive thread for Block Erupters on RPi is https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/usb-asic-erupter-setup-config-bcg-miner-cgminer-hubs-oh-pi-220905 .

I gather than minepeon https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/linux-mining-distro-for-the-raspberry-pi-minepeon-137934 (a stand-alone RPi distribution based on ArchLinux) is well thought of too.
newbie
Activity: 10
Merit: 0
Looks badass, want to try this. Are you breaking even? You should update us on your production/costs.
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