Topic: Who likes pod miners? - page 12. (Read 56015 times)

Looks great, Sidehack!

WOW AWESOME NEWS, Thanks for the pictures and update!

Ladies and gentlemen and whoever else, meet the Terminus R808.



Two pods running off a Pi, Raspbian with VH's cgminer. rem26 is working on a simple webconfig package so you won't have to SSH in to configure cgminer.
Note that the Pi is being powered by one pod's auxilary power USB port.


What the port face looks like. We've got USB-A for 5V power out, and a mini USB for control. 12V can be drawn from either a PCIe 6-pin jack or a 2.1/5.5mm barrel jack (for running off a brick). The blue knob is used to adjust core voltage from about 0.63 to 0.80V chip-level, basically the same range as the 2Pac. It can be assembled with a vertical (pictured) or right-angle (front-facing) adjuster.

This guy has an onboard microcontroller that handles fan speed via PWM, detects "ZOMBIE" condition and resets the chips automatically, and will overtemp-shutdown at 80C (to restart mining below 70C).

It's a 100mm square sitting on rubber feet, but there are M3 screwholes at each corner for stacking or mounting in a case.

This miner is built with 8x BM1384 hashing chips. I will be using this form-factor as a standard going forward, so newer versions with better chips will be physically compatible.

For all you flashy-light enthusiasts, it's got a base blue LED and blinks white with returned shares.

Testing in the last week, latest Minera would run at most about 6 hours before locking up the Pi and dying. The Raspbian Lite setup is at 3 days 16 hours uptime without blinking.

I mean, the miner's blinky lights have been blinking quite a bit. Because the Pi is running steadily. USB traffic should be about equivalent to four 2Pacs at 250MHz, or ten stock sticks.

I believe there a issue with how the PI's USB and NIC share the same bus and or controller, that causes the USB/NIC to hang and become unresponsive under certain conditions. I have found this does depend on the USB HUB, the devices attached to the HUB and the number of devices. There is a lot of info regarding this on the google.

The watchdog can detect an hardware hang and reboot the PI when this happens, the reboot is to catch any devices that drop out and are not auto detected again. The devices dropouts used the be a very big issue with bitfury miners. They would slowing drop out over time and the only fix was to reboot to reinitialize the usb devices (I think you can do some linux witchcraftery to do this without a reboot but I'm a linux noob so its a reboot for me).

Minera was actually where I got my watchdog config from. There are instruction their thread on how to configure the watchdog.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.7548797

Correction: I got watchdog config from "MinePeon", but the setup is the same so no matter.


 

I was having the same issues on my little Pi-gekko rig. I put it down to the software updates as it was fine on the first version if the new style OS but as soon as I did a second update it would randomly hang for no reason and required constant restarting. Never got to the root of the cause so ended up selling it.

I don’t understand the dropouts and hangs.  I run for weeks on end using the Lenovo m700 tiny.

Do you guys push stick clocks hard?

Ha... good idea. Is the concept that because it's only running for 45 mins at a pop, it never gets a chance to hang? Or can it reboot on a hang also? Since mine stops sending video, I never know just "HOW" hung it actually is.

You can power a PI directly from a 5v molex feed from your standard ATX PSU, soldered straight to the back of the micro USB. This is handy when you need to drive 10 devices and only want to use a 10 port hub. I ran a setup like this for over 6 months and never had any power issues.

If you have a modified USB hub, clip the power feeds in the USB cable back to the PI so you don't back feed PI from the usb port. I always do this on all my USB setups because I found the BBB and PI will run of the power back feed.

You can setup the watchdog to reboot the Pi if the USB hangs and also setup a cron to reboot every 45min. This has worked very well for me in the past.

Phil happy birthday oldtimer.

You are confusing the avalon 4.1 uart dongle  it used   a mini usb connector.


http://bitcoinist.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Avalon-4.1-UART-Bitcoinist.jpg


and If you feed them with this cable they worked well.

I remember you say rasp pi were stupid  for not having the bigger mini jack  as this would work better for the rasp pi.

But rasp pi builders  are stupid cheap and have the shitty  micro.  It is the biggest design flaw in their gear. IMO

The rasp pi that used a full sized sd card used this jack for power



So I stand corrected






damn  I am getting old  I swore it used the bigger usb

the new ones




I now have to figure  what  part of what avalon  was using the mini maybe a dongle


this is not as good  as the mini right below it.

  They've always used microUSB for power. Maybe you're thinking of another SBC? The Pi model B form factor is pretty popular, so I could understand some confusion.


That is a legitimate issue with the 3. Depending on how hard you're pushing it, it can be touchy with power supplies, and you should pay attention to wire gauge in your power cables. I recommend at least 24 gauge, especially when overclocking.


I can't express how much I like this. I've done similar things in my Pi-powered projects, and it really helps in tidying things up.

I've never seen a Pi that didn't have a micro USB jack for power, but then I'd never seen one before about four years ago. When did they make the change?

I prefer mini USB, hence why I'm using it for signal on the Terminus. Speaking of, my Raspbian setup (the Pi is drawing power from the Terminus) is at 43 hours uptime and going strong. 110GH, 53 watts DC including the controller.

Rasp pl did stupid moves on the new designs.

The new one uses a micro usb jack for power

Zero need to do it the larger mini usb is far better.

I would tell them WTF did you shrink the power jack.  The rasp pi is the same size zero need to shrink the power jack

I have had power issues feeding some rasp pi.

The micro sd was good idea as it is more protected the the larger sd card.
The newest rasp pi is pretty fast.  If they simply kept the bigger power jack it would work better.

As for software not enough of it for miners.
I do have Avalon s on it.

But that is it for now.

I follow philipma1957 steps as well, I like work around.

I have 4 raspi ( one is an avalon controller bought from them)
I converted a second one for another pair of Avalon's the other two I have been playing around with.
I have one with minera but never used and the other configured with Raspbian neither of them running any hardware.

I found it very comfortable using windows on the 2 pac seconds that I bought.
Besides using windows with the 2 pacs I am also GPU mining and CPU mining on the same computer which makes it very doable.

I just don't think i am a raspi person...

Cool. I'll get something headed your way soon. The driver isn't optimized for them yet, so stuff like zombie recovery probably won't work right at first until VH makes some updates, but the hardware's all there.

No I understand  since many  don't need or want the pc.

I am a work around guy that is my work around.

My weakest skill is software.  I use it but coding was always a bit out of my reach. So I develop work arounds.

In this case I support your pods.  I support a small pool.  = good for 2 things

I mine some cpu at nicehash = not to good 1 thing.

I show people a work work around if they want a pod from you and don't want a rasp pi.

It is a detour from the rasp pi that will work of some of us.

I wish I could directly help with rasp pi work.  I can clone  sd or micro sd card for you to put in rasp pi's.

I would use the same pc that is mining your sticks and the cpu coin.

I guess what I meant to say was, that's not an option for everyone, especially if you don't want to mine alts at all. And yes I know you're gonna say "yeah but if you do such and such it gets automatically converted to BTC so it's just like mining BTC via alts" and you know that's something you and I have disagreed on for a long time.

So yeah it's something people can do. But you know I straight-up don't care at all. The discussion right now is pod miners, and a stable Pi controller with config options for basic users.

That said - I'm a bit behind but planning to cook up some proof boards over the weekend. I'd like to send you one to review, if you're game.

then they can do this


first  get a meter to see  the power you draw.

I pull 70 watts so 70 x 24 = 1680 watts  so round to 2 kwatts a day.

that is 25 cents in the winter for me
and 32 cents a day in the summer







then with a small desktop  like a lenevo m700 tiny I got one used for 200 bucks I opened it put in a used i7  6700t for 200 more sold the g4400t for 50  net cost for pc = 350
I loaded nicehash to cpu mine  and I earn 40 to 50 cents a day


I run 3 compacs and a 2 pac and the cpu miner



the usb sticks point to bravo-mining I can get 1 btc if I am the block hitter and they also earn 4-5 cents a day.

so 57 cents income - 32 cent power in the summer = 25 cents a day with a shot at 1 btc on any and every block made.

pc cost =350 it would be paid for in about 4 years.  but I use the pc for all my windows work.

I support side hack sticks and bravo mining.

adding a pod or 2 will make  more money as pods do higher hashing.

and my cpu does not get superhot with newer nicehash software.

Might look into that.

Speaking of, the Minera pi barfed some kernel errors overnight and died. Raspbian is still running like a champ, 18 hours uptime and going. We've got a few weeks before these guys roll out so I'll see about integrating a basic webconfig setup. Luci's a good place to start.