Bitcoin Forum

Hello everybody :)

I'm a happy owner of a "old" Raspberry Pi (model B, and not B+). I installed cgminer, and joined Slush's pool. I managed to make the USB ASIC miner block erupter 330MH/s working. However, the rewards i got are extremely low. Therefore, i was wondering which device i should buy, to get a reward superior to the power consumption. My budget is around $100, although the absolute maximum would be $160.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Regards,

you won't get any profit with that kind of budget. nowadays it's almost impossible to earn a sizable profit using a 1TH ASIC that is worth over $350.

If electric is quite cheap a pair of S3 could do well. Not a lot of profit (about $50/month total return right now, something like that?) but certainly better than a block erupter.

you could join the sidehack stick pool using 1 sidehack usb stick.

while it won't make much unless we hit a block it is cheap to join. you need only have 1 stick from sidehack.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1205056.0 ------- current thread

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1177508.msg12393719#msg12393719 -- old thread

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1126705.0 ---- sidehack stick thread

  read up on the three threads above

this is all geared for new miners like your self  you get in cheap and stand a chance to profit or lose very little.

With the block erupters 1 of siehacks compac's can bet them by quite a bit.   Compare 333 MHz to 8GHz normal and up to 16 GHz without much work.

Also what is your electricity price?   If cheap enough there are options on used miners.

Hello,

Thanks everyone for your answers. :)


I just checked my electricity bill. The company EDF (Electicité de France) sells 1 kWh for 0.10€, then i have to pay a first tax of 0.01€ per kWh, and of course the VAT: 19,6% here in France. I think that most of our electricity is produced from nuclear power stations  :(. In the early 70's (even if i was not born ;D ) we were told that it would be the cheapest method of producting electricty but it turns out that it is not the case. We have very old nuclear power plants and it costs a lot to close them cleanly ::)

Just wondering: do you pay more or less than me?

Cheers,

P.S.: I would be very happy to earn $50/month. That's even more than expected ;D

Hello,

Thanks for your message. It looks indeed very interesting. I'm going to dig deeper into the subject thanks
to the links provided ;)

Regards,

To be honest there is not much to research. If you want a stick miner to mine.  Go get one of sidehacks compacs. 

No other usb stick can do 8gh let alone 16gh when oc.   Raspberry PI is nice as it uses very little power.

Hello,


It's just that i know it's rude to ask questions without reading first every topics the members provide ;D

Still this USB device "sidehacks compacs" looks amazing: cheap and as powerful as the big equipments. Any drawback?
Would i have to join the sidehacks pool too? I mean is it just recommended or mandatory?

Thanks again ;)

If i'm not mistaking, sidehack uses the same component as the S7, so there shouldn't be to much downsides :)

ps: i THINK i'm correct, but my memory sometimes fails, check the specs before buying a stick ;)

Its actually using the BM1384 chip so not S7.  But what sidehack and novak did was amazing on what the dropped power to.  They truly excelled at this.

It's currently in-between batches but within 2 weeks I think should start shipping.  If your in us it's pretty easy - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1126705.0 . Europe is a little different.

But on the club it is not necessary to join.  It's just a group of us that pooled ours together for fun.  We are solo mining which it's a small chance of hitting it but we have fun doing it together.   The club is really a group that supports sidehacks hardware current and hopefully future :).

I can vouch for the fact that getting a stick in europe isn't easy...

There is one seller AFAIK, but he hasn't sold a single stick so far (still not in stock). I've been checking his site frequently over the past month(s), but nothing so far...
https://www.bitshopper.de/shop/sha-256-miner/usb-miner-bitcoin/gekkoscience-compac/

:(

I keep thinking the will have them in sometime.  Not sure of timeline though.  To be honest if renderings are right I might want a Europe one - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=464496.0 . I like owning set's.  So not sure if I will manage to get one of those for decent to US or if they even will sell one to US.


Have you asked the seller in email or anything if they are close?

Actually, i haven't contacted them yet... I might send them a mail and ask for a timeframe tough...

I don't know if they ship to the US either, if they don't ship i can easily buy one for you and send it over (don't mind using an escrow)...

Thank you for the offer I will have to keep it in mind.  With it being Monday might toss them an email and  see what they say.

I would suspect once they get it going it will move pretty fast.  But if they are working on first batch there could be some tinkering to get it right on their manufacture machines as I suspect they and Sidehack do not have exact same machines.

Hello ;)

Thanks for the answers. Although, i live in France, i don't mind buying in the US, even if the
seller doesn't ship oversea. Indeed, i know and use a very reliable mail forwarder (they have
a referral scheme, so don't hesitate to contact me if interested ;D). From what i understood,
both device from bitshopper.de (europe market) and GekkoScience (US market), is build from
the same recycle chip board (am i right?). The first batch is already sold out, and the second
batch should be available soon, although a little more expensive (but the new device might be
more powerful). Did i understand correctly?

Cheers,

Jeff.

Not sure of bitshoppers source of chips.  But Bitmain sold 1k chips to sidehack.  They are using those chips on the US/Non-Europe compacs.   If you have a good mail forwarder like you said you can put in a order to get in queue.   Currently it's between batch 1 and 2 it should be less than 2 weeks from when me made the announcement.

The recycling of board is more for a future product from Sidehack.   The pod, it is still in dev though. 

Me too:) I would be more than happy to do our US members a favor. That beeing said, it's very likely that the two sticks are very similar. Did i miss something?

Cheers,

Jeff.

If the rendering is correct in stick forum they will have a different heatsink.  So as far as usability should be the same.   But it looks different :) and i like to collect sets.

So no real justification on getting one besides I like collecting sets.

I already sent a PM to Sidehack to know the availability.

So the device is assembled from "new" spare parts? How did Sidehack manage to sell it for only $25?
I mean it is the price for an "old" Asic Miner Block Erupter 330MH/s at amazon...

Cheers,

Jeff.

Ok, i understand better ;)

I use 3x Antminer U3 (60Ghs) and a BFL 30Ghs on a Raspberry Pi2 running minera.

I believe the U3 has a much better cost/production ration than the USB stick :)

And I live n France too :p

They are cheaper then USB sticks on price per GH.  This is true.  I like the U3 it would be even better if I could get rid of zombie's.

But sticks like the compac are much more efficient, so you can run them with very little cost over a long period of time.

But the reduced Ghs of the stick along with the increase in block difficulty means they'll never pay for themselves :)

The U3 is just a bit better as you can actually get enough BTC to use.

Zombies are a non issue if you restart them once a day, which is cheap and easy with a programmable power plug :)

http://www.castorama.fr/images/products/h/h_471862.jpg

You can run some ROI math but a U3 I don't see paying for itself.  It is like 1 watt per ghash I think somewhere around there.  So it does have a cost although if mining with one or two doubt you notice much of a increase in electricity.

But it is hard to ROI on small miners due to cost per GH.

Well, 3xU3 give me enough BTC so I can actually pay for something :)

I have a bunch of 333Mhs and they're still running for fun, because the fractions of BTC they make will never be useful.

The U3 will pay for themselves if not the electricity they use :) (i'll post a screenshot of their power usage tomorrow as I monitor them closely)

when I say stick miner I'm saying like the Compacs where you can get 16 GH with very little power used.   Not the 333 old asic miners.   

1 of these Compacs can be ran at speed of almost 50 of the 333 MHs old usb sticks.

I know but these are pretty difficult to get :)

And while you're not getting them you're not making any BTC (but you're not spending money on electricity either :) :))

Do what you have to do to get a sidehack stick. Better yet, get two, same shipping cost.
I'm set up with an old pi, two sticks, cgminer-gekko,  24GH, at a cost of 20 watts total.

At this level, ROI is not a consideration to me.
What matters is that miners have to mine, and these mine well.

At first I dismissed this.  But I tried one with just power .... and it worked.  If they all would be power that is a interesting fix.   

I am going to just unplug power for next day or two and see my results.  If truly works I will consider you a genius.

Ahah :)

I power off my 3xu3 for 15mn at 00:00am and 00:00pm.

I lose 30mn/day but barely have any zombie anymore (except when I run them on the raspberry and Minera, but i'm working on that)

Hello,

Thanks for your posts. So to sum up: if one doesn't take into consideration electricity, the U3 has a better ratio: Hash rates/price of the set. Would it be reasonable to think that 1 U3 = 4 compacts ? However, i looks as if the power consumption of 4 compacts is inferior to one U3. Am i right?

I didn't get any answer from Sidehack yet, but here is the answer of Asicpuppy (the other us store selling the compact):

"Yes, I’ve got a good amount in stock. I have raspberry pi model B’s and cubie controllers pre set up for mining with the compac. Software-wise, the Compac is supported by bfgminer and custom builds of cgminer."

Btw, if somenone could explain me in a few words what a "zombie" is  ;D ;D ;D

Cheers,

Jeff.

A zombie is a creature that is half human and part dead.   Ok.... zombie is a pain with the U3's  The U3 if it has trouble with USB it either starts a new interface (you will notice a different number in ID) or it goes zombie.  Zombie means you need to un-plug and re-plug it in.  It's a pain but doable I have 3 I play with and when I see zombie I unhook/rehook them.

The compac is MUCH better on power consumption.  You can get 8-16  gig pretty easy with a Y usb cable and decent usb hub.  With it no zombie so you can set it and it keeps running.  I use a RPI and it's a great combination.  I use RPI with the compac-cgminer it is really good software that works.

I honestly enjoy playing with both but I'm addicted to mining.  As far as Asicpuppy yes the owner is great guy.  He is CrazyGuy.  He actually made a firmware for his customers on R1 - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1197152.msg12734703#msg12734703 top notch guy.

Sidehack is the maker of the compac.  Also good guy.

100W/63GHs for the U3 approx.

Rigwarz states 1W/GHs

Currently my 3xU3 + BFL 30GHs are using 312W

 The Gekkoscience Compac is more efficient than any other miner currently being sold to the public except for the S7 - and on the lowest undervolt settings the Compac can argue with an S7 on efficiency.

 U3 isn't even close - it's a generation older chip and doesn't undervolt nearly as much - the BM1384 in the Compac at it's HIGH voltage settings is more efficient.

Hi everyone ;)

Thanks a lot for these useful informations. I think i'll go for the GekkoScience Compacs. Looks as if this device is great. Still have to decide where to buy it. It looks as if nobody beats Sidehack prices. That beeing said AsicPuppy shipping costs are lower and the item is in stock (although Sidehack should restock it soon).

Regarding, the powered USB HUB, which models would you suggest? I know that the HUB have to be chosen carefully with the Raspberry, so i prefer asking.

Thanks again ;)

Jeff.

;D ;D ;D Like in Michael Jackson video clips Thriller  ;D ;D ;D

I could not help myself... have been watching a little walking dead so I think of them as I type zombie :)




The RPI can be a pain on hubs. This explains the problem's and some that are tried - http://elinux.org/RPi_Powered_USB_Hubs

So basically go 2.0 and look at power.  I good example of power is here - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=253749.0  Someone might post a good one.  Mine I just had laying around in my parts.

Hello everyone,

some news:

1) Just placed an order at asicpuppy for 1 GekkoScience Compac (if everything goes as expected, i'll probably buy more ;D)
Just wondering is there any discount code valid at the moment for this shop? I made a google search but the only one i found
didn't work ???

2) Regarding the Hub, i think i'll go for this one:
http://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/B0000B0DL7?

I hope the plastic won't melt ;D ;D

Cheers,

Jeff.

No there is not a current discount code that I know of currently.  He is not making a ton off of sale already on Compac's.  So with being in stock he's actually pretty dang fair since few have stock selling until bath 2.

On hub it was in a different language I did not translate.  Main thing to look at is power it provides to each port or overall.  You want a good amount of power.

Fractions of Btc are important and you someday may be biting your tongue on that thought.  Short term isn't the best way to plan your venture and I wouldn't recommend Btc now as a payment method or an income....just acquire and hold if you can but for most of us it is tough to do.

It's actually pretty good on payment. I mean I have used it on quite a few miners, it's neat to use some of it at times.

But I agree longterm your goal is to collect as many BTC as possible and hold longterm.  Even if you look last few weeks it's had a decent jump on price. I think and hope long term keeps looking promising.

According to the specs it looks as if this hub can deliver up to 3A per port.

Regards,

Jeff.

You might want to double check that 3A per port.

I think it's the power supply that does 3A.

This is honestly the best comparsion on hubs still.  I'm sure there are some other ones not on list but here - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=253749.0

You can look at all those hubs.  And a modded hub could go higher.  I personally have not modified any of my hubs though.

I didn't paid much attention but after checking i think you are right ;)

I might want to reconsider my choice, although this device should theorically be able to power 5 miners.
The typical hash rates for the Gekoscience compac (if not overclocked) is about 8Gh/s. Efficiency is .31-.35 watts per Gh/s,
so each device need 2,8W. The transformer seems to be able to deliver 5V with a maximal intensity of 3A, that is
a total power of 15W max. The maximal number of compacs which can be connected to the HUB should be: 15/2.8, that is 5.

That beeing said, the calculation is perhaps too optimistic and theorical. Not to mention that the transformer might become
out of shape quite quickly...

Hello everyone ;)

I don't know if it related to the Zombie we were talking about, but someone noticed that when using Antminer & bfgminer software, crashes can be fixed by adding the line:

slub_debug=FP

in the following text file:

/boot/cmdline.txt

For more info, visit:
http://hawkcreation.com/raspberry-pi-miner-bitcoins-cles-antminer/

P.S.: Feel free to move this post in the software section if necessary. Thanks.

Not related to zombie

This is to avoid raspberry pi crashing (details not provided)

And he's using u2 not u3 :)

Ok, thanks zOU  ;)

My pleasure, being french helped a bit understanding it :D

Hello everybody:)

Knowing that the raspberry pi only supports USB 2.0 hub (and not 3.0), i was wondering if this limitation would impact the mining performances...

Cheers,

Jeff.

No, the actual data transfer over the USB port is small. It could probably be handled with USB 1.1. USB 3.0 is complete overkill in terms of transfer rate.

The only thing is some usb 3's tend to have more power for usb sticks it would be nice.  But RPI does not like a lot of powered hubs and usb 3.0 at all.   

But if usb hub needed for U3's you can use cheap no power usb hubs to RPI.  And you will have no issues with it.

Hello everybody :)

Thanks for your answers.


In fact, i bought a GekkoScience Compac recently. The device arrived at the forwarding company warehouse and is in transit to Europe. I can't wait, but i should get it soon ;) I had the felling that i will have more fun with the compac rather than the Antminer U3. That beeing said, i might have more difficulties in finding the right USB Hub, taking into account the Raspberry and the Gekko specifications.

Regarding the softwares, can you please let me know if my understandings are correct:
1) the official cgminer software should work, but novak wrote a custom cgminer for the compac and it's better to use it.
2) Minera is a software that can be used to monitor the device. Since i registered to Slush's pool
i didn't really need Minera. However, Minera will useful if i join the more confidential sidehack
stick pool. Binaries can be downloaded, but it is adivised to compile the source code with the right options.

Am i right?

Cheers,

Jeff.

1) is 100 percent correct Novak did a amazing job with compac-cgminer.  It works great if you have a RPI to throw it on it's even better.
2) Not really Minera is like a miner OS for dummies (no offense to anyone using it).  It has great nice gui's, and there is a image that supports the copmpac.

So it really deepens on no 2  on what OS you want to run on a RPI. 

Thanks a lot for your quick answer notlist3d  :)


Ok, so i think i won't need Minera. I'm going to compile the cgminer source from Novak this afternoon (even if i don't have the compac in hand yet).

Cheers,

Jeff.

It's not a bad idea you can test it out and make sure you can get it compiled.   It should not be to hard if you are use to Linux.

But yea Minera is mainly for those who like the GUI.  I like having the OS there and just using terminal to run the cgminer instances.

I'm using 2 compac stick on a standard RPI minera image.
I've compiled the cgminer-gecko and it's running fine so far. (see https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1173963.msg12368480#msg12368480)

I'm using a Belkin F4U018-BLK with a 2.5A power supply

I'm using --compac-freq 180 (10.2Ghs), V set at +/- 0.75.

Note: order to delivery in France from ASICpuppy took less than 1 week.

Hello,

Thanks for the informations.


I compiled the source files too and didn't had any troubles on the Raspberry Pi. However i noticed that a cgminer binary file is already existing in the folder downloaded, so the compilation may not be madatory, although it is probably better to do so since the binary file is "hardware optimized" that way.


Lucky you ;) Their oversea shipping costs are, in my opinion, quite high (more or less the price of a compac itself...). I prefered to have the compac shipped within the USA, and reshipped back to me in France (thanks to the forwarding company i currently use). If i remember well, i paid (taking into account both shipping charges) less than $7. That being said, my compac is still in transit :'(

Btw, did you have to pay customs duty?

Still, i went a ahead and tested the cgminer-gecko software on my 330MH/s ASIC block erupter.

./cgminer -o stratum+tcp://stratum.bitcoin.cz:3334 -u Jeff_59.worker1 --????

[I didn't know which frequency paramater i should specified, so i didn't specify any ;D]

Although it seemed to work, the tasks given by the software were too difficult for this miner. In fact, the miner were just warm and not hot as it used to be when using the "regular" cgminer software...It didn't manage to mine anything...

Cheers,

Jeff.

No tax duty.
I ordered 4 more yesterday.

Paid 179$ shipping included.
Still better than bitshopper since they don't have any in stock anyway...

Custom miner go to /var/www/minera/minera.bin/custom (if you want to use them in minera UI)

The default cgminer is in /var/www/minera/minera.bin/ and doesn,t suport the sidehack sticks :)

With the 330Mhs you should use --icarus-options 115200:1:1

My 2 compac have been running at freq 210 with no problem for 24h (well ventilated too)

If you look at the compac thread there is a custom minera image that is already to use with compac's.  It has the compac-cgminer set up on it.  Just put image on SD and its ready.

Or you can use a more standard OS on the RPI and put compac-cgminer on it.  Its not that hard and really is good software.

I know, that's where I got the miner binaries and the compilation process :)

I'm swapping miners on my raspberry pi regularly so I like have several mining SW option :)

Hello ;)


I hope there will still some left when i place my next order ;D. The first order beeing just a test.



Thanks. I didn't forget to specify --enable-icarus to create the binary file, but had no idea of
the options i have to specify when launching cgminer. What does this option suppose to do?

Btw which pool did you decide to join?

Have fun with your miners ;D

Jeff.

That's the "COM" port speed and distribution of shares/block per miner.

Below is the information I got from someone else, credit to him.

I'm using bitminter so far, maybe I'll change if I care to look for better options :p

Hello,

Thanks for your message.


Here what i got:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ cd /home/pi/Desktop/cgminer-gekko
pi@raspberrypi ~/Desktop/cgminer-gekko $ ./cgminer -o stratum+tcp://stratum.bitcoin.cz:3333 -u Jeff_59.worker1 --icarus-options 115200:1:1
 [2015-11-02 09:10:14.284] ./cgminer: --icarus-options: unrecognized option                   
pi@raspberrypi ~/Desktop/cgminer-gekko $

Although it worked fine with the "official" cgminer v.4.9.1

I'm puzzled because i think i compiled the gekko cgminer with the option --enable-icarus --enable-gekko

Regards,

Jeff.

cgminer gekko only supports the compac sticks:

--enable-gekko --enable-icarus : gekko was built by gutting icarus and rebuilding for compac's, so to use icarus, you would need to do 2 cgminers. 1 for the cgminer-gekko, 1 regular cgminer for icarus, and run both cgminers 1 for compac and 1 for icarus.

Hello,


Do you plan to plug the 6 (4+2) gekko compacs on this HUB?

As far as i'm concerned, i ordered the D-link HUB:
http://www.amazon.fr/D-Link-DUB-H7-ports-pour-Noir/dp/B0000B0DL7

I will test and report its ability to support the compacs. Do you think that
pluging HUB on HUB to support more compacs is a good idea?

Cheers,

Jeff.

Ok, thanks for the information ;)

I just have a question while we're at this topic any way. I also have a Raspberry pi B+ which I don't currently use as I was planing to create a CCTV using it which will be connected to a twitter account. but what I wanted to ask instead is that -- can I mine altcoins using this Raspberry Pi?

As a miner mining with a CPU no not really not much.  It does make a great controller though for some miners.   Avalon 4.1, U3, Compacs, pretty much usb miners or a miner designed to use it.  

As far as CPU mining not really worth it.  It is not much on mining machine but great contoller.

I will use the dub h7 too for the 6 compac sticks
http://www.ebay.fr/itm/D-LINK-Hub-USB-2-0-7-ports-DUB-H7-NEUF-/231737239956?hash=item35f49da994:g:eNAAAOSwuTxV~nJf

My current hub ports layout doesn't allow that many sticks.

Daisy chaining hub doesn't work well or at all.
I've seen it covered somewhere.

Maybe in the "which usb hub..." thread ?

Found it:

So 1 hub with multiple hubs connected to it should work

Rpi -> hub -> hub -> miner: ok
Rpi -> hub -> hub ->hub -> miner: not ok

If you use non-powered 2.0 hubs seems to be best working for me. I can throw a cheap hub on it and run U3's or something.   But some need power like when I run compacs, so the RPI is more picky on those.

But you are right avoid 3.0 for the hub.  It kinda all depends on what your task is.  For example another hot controller is the R1 I am using a 2.0 cheap unpowered hub and works great.

Hi,

Thanks for the information ;)


Have you ever tried to join Sidehack pool or ckpool? It looks as if there is a waiting list to join
these clubs. Also do the compacs have to be bought from Sidehack to have the
permission to join its pool?

Cheers,

Jeff.

To my knowlege it does not matter where you are buying the compac, just that you have one. (Which ultimately it should have first sell to sidehack or europe compacs).   As some were sold to are not penalized by purchasing from resellers (a lot of other countries were resellers)  But yes the club is capped at 30 at the minute to make it fun and not just have a ton. 

But check in at the club pool board to check more into it.   It is had some good community help.  Phil of course has done a lot of work on it, and crytoglance did a amazing job on tracking software. 

Hello everyone:)

I got my compac in the post yesterday, and of course i wanted to test it at once  ;D

I launched the the gekko cgminer software:
./cgminer -o stratum+tcp://stratum.bitcoin.cz:3333 -u Jeff_59.worker1 --compac-freq 150
The miner seemed to work great, however i'm a bit puzzled. Indeed, i looks as if i still don't earn
anything ;D

I mean nearly each time the task is confirmed i get no rewards :o

Did i make something wrong, or does it simply tell me that mining with one compac is not enough?

Regards,

Jeff.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/xvp69ggbs42eavo/mining.jpg?dl=0

You get shares to hash,
You have to "mine" them sucesfully
Once all the shares in a block are mine, the block is found and the reward is shared amongst people having mined it.

But your pool is not always the first to complete a block, so you don' always get a reward.

We can both mine a gold mine, but I may be the first to find gold on a certain day. Maybe another day it'll be you.
That's the concept :)

Hello zOU,

Thanks for your explanation. So, if i understand correctly:

1) When i get no earning for my contribution, it does mean that anyone in that pool get a reward.
2) When i get something, then i does mean that 25 has been shared between the members
of the pool. If anyone had the same miner hardware as mine, it would mean that there are 25/0.00000637=3 924 646
members in that pool. On the other hand i read that there are in fact 'only' 18 901 active workers. Does
it mean that an average worker in that pool owns miners that are 3 924 646/18 901=207 times
more powerful than mine?

Cheers,

Jeff.

The reward for the block is distributed according to the share processed.

So the more mining power you have, the more share you process, the bigger the reward.

Salu Jeff,

just a quick answer to ckpool (this is a pure solo mining pool).
You mine there for yourself, you don't get anny pay excapt you are solving a Block.
Then you will get the Reward for the Block -0.5 % wich is for con the pool holder.

nb: I live verry verry near of the alsac area, on the german side.

Jeff, as far as I can see you only got one BTC payment from the pool because it takes a delay of 100 blocks before the blocks that you helped finding pay out.
The confirmed ones on your graph were from before you started mining on that pool.
By now you will see every confirm give you a little bit of BTC

Guten Abend ;)

Thanks for the informations. What's the amount of the reward? BTC25 ?
Btw, did you already manage to solve a block? I mean it must be quite hard...

Jeff.

Hello Mercado ;)

According to the graph, i think i got three (tiny) btc payments. The first two beeing when using the 330Mh/s ASIC block erupter.
That makes sense because the last one (when using the compac which is 25 times more powerful) were much higher. So i think i did get a payment with the compac. Did i misunderstand something?

Cheers,

Jeff.

This is indeed what i understood. Btw, is my calculation correct? I mean it sounds weired that
an average worker in that pool owns miners that are as powerful than 207 compacs...

Cheers,

Jeff.

I have
2 compac = 22Ghs
3 U3 = 180Ghs
1 BFL = 30Ghs
4 block erupters = 1.2Ghs

Total= 234Ghs = 20 compac

And i'm a very very very very very small miner.

So 200x8Ghs=1.6Ths... not that big IMHO. (as long as you can afford/want to spend the money to get the hardware...)

Hi Jeff,

If I look carefully at your graph, I think you have 7 payments.
2 extremely small ones, 2 very small ones, 2 small ones and one bigger one (Like couple hundred satoshis or so)

If you go through the history page by page you'll find them.

The Slush pool is doing OK today so you'll see a lot more of those come in today and the next day or so

Cheers, Mercado

Thanks a lot. I understand better. Btw, do you manage to make some profit? Taking into account the price of the hardware and the electricity price, it looks as it has became quite difficult...Perhaps i should have begun 3 or 4 years earlier, it might have been easier...

Cheers,

Jeff.

It's a fun project for me, I don't do it for profit :)

That's why I have different HW, I buy what I find cheap and I tinker :p
(I got rid of some U2's at some point)

I'm looking for more block erupters to fill the slots on one of my switch :)

Yes indeed  :)


Great ;)

What do you plan to buy?

Regarding the compac: there is a white led blinking next to the green led, i guess it tells
that the miner is working, but more precisely what does it mean? Does it indicate that a
calculation has successufully been done?

Cheers,

Jeff.

I think it's showing it's processing shares, I don't know more.

Maybe ask in the gekko thread ?

I'm looking for basic 333Mhs usb miners :)

Yes, 25 BTC + Transaction Fee - 0.5% will be your's.

Unfortunaly I did not yet solved a block at all, but I will mine until I get one @ck-solo-pool.
I was thinking about the nuclear power plant you've talked about (Fesseheim) and I am verry
happy if it goes offline, because I life not so far from it.

Have a nice weekend

I wish you good luck and every success in sloving the block. That beeing said i still have a question though:
why do you need to join a pool for solo mining ???

Regarding the nuclear plant you are talking about. Yes, F. Hollande said the governement will close it (but
it was during a meeting for the election compain ;D and here in France nobody believe/have trust in our
leaders and politicians. They often don't keep their promise ;D

Regards,

Jeff.

Hello everybody ;)

New out of the box, my compac worked great at the usual frequency: 150Mhz (although i didn't get rich  :-[). Just to have fun and to see what would happend i set the frequency at 250Mhz. The hashrate increased significantly: more than 33Gh/s. However, i started to get HW errors: no valid hashes in the last 10 seconds...I thought i could just adjust the voltage using the small potentiometer on the compac, but i decided not to do it (or more precisely to do it later). However, these last days i noticed than even at the normal frequency: 150Mhz i still get many HW errors. Considering i didn't change anything, i'm puzzled...

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Jeff.

Hi again ;D

Perhaps, some of you, like me, would like to know (if they don't already :D): What are bitcoin miners really solving?

here is a nice and interesting explanation:
http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/8031/what-are-bitcoin-miners-really-solving

Jeff.

Hello Everybody ;)

I encounter a weird problem. I own a D-link USB2-HUB and i connected 3 compacs and a fan to the HUB. The HUB beeing itself connected to the USB port of the RaspberryPi, both having their own power supply unit. When i turn on the RaspberryPi and lunch cgminer, i get an error message "no valid hashes for...". In order to get the compacs working i have to quit cgminer, unplug each compac from the HUB and plug them again, and of course relunch cgminer. Does anyone know how to fix this? I mean, it is not very convenient to plug and unplug the compacs...

Thanks in advance for your help ;D

Cheers,

Jeff.

what freq are you running the sticks at ?

have you tried just unplugging the hub ?(power+usb) ?

I had the same troubles whether i try to run at 150Mhz or 200 Mhz.


Yes, but it didn't solve the problem...

It could be a crappy USB on amout of power.  Have you tried running 1 instead of three?   

That's what I would do is reduce amount of them and test it.  See what happens.  All usb hubs are not equal.

Even with one compac plugged on the HUB, it does not work. It only works when i plug the compac on the HUB after the Raspberry Pi is running. I also tried to plug the USB port of the HUB on the Raspberry Pi while the Raspberry Pi is running (having the compac already plugged on the HUB): it does not work either (even with just one compac).

It is all the more strange so as the compac (with its serial number) appears on the boot screen (when i turn the Pi on, and when everything is plugged).

Cheers,

Jeff.

No one ::)

Just got up :p

What OS are you using on the RPI ?

Raspbian ?
Minera image ?

I've had a lot of issues with the Dlink DUB H7, I'm just using it with my RPI and U3 now.

Hello zOU ;)

OS: Raspbian
RapberryPi: the old B (not B+) version.
Software: GEKKO-CGMINER (4.9.2)

Cheers,

Jeff.

have you done sudo rpi-update ?

just to make sure your RPI is up to date ?

What kind of USB hub do you use? (USB? 2.0? 3.0?) And does it have an external power supply?
I used to have weird behavior from my compacs when I just got them and it solved when I increased the voltage on them (via the potentiometer/screw), but I use an external-powered USB 2.0 hub from orico. I didn't increase the voltage too much because I don't have a way to actually measure the voltages now.

If your hub doesn't have external power, or if it is cheap, maybe you need more power to make the sticks work OK. As you can tell I'm just learning, but one way of getting more power to a stick if you don't have a good hub is using a Y-cable like this one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/221661361513

Also I've read somewhere that USB 3.0 hubs don't behave correctly sometimes.

Hi,

I upgraded the packages, but was afraid to update the kernel/firmware because of this:
http://www.framboise314.fr/installer-une-version-anterieure-du-noyau-sur-raspberry-pi/
Any way, the number version of my firmware is 817 (uname -a)

Cheers,

Jeff.

USB2.0


Yes. Here is the HUB:
http://us.dlink.com/products/connect/7-port-usb-2-hub/


Well it turns out that i encountered the same problem even if only one compac is plugged. Moreover, i never got any troubles when i (hot) plugged the three compacs on the HUB while the RaspberryPi is running, so it might not be a power problem.

That beeing said, i recently bought this cheap item:

http://www.amazon.fr/CARCHET-Voltm%C3%A8tre-Amp%C3%A8rem%C3%A8tre-Testeur-T%C3%A9l%C3%A9phone/dp/B00LHU0QRY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=8&sr=8-1&keywords=B00LHU0QRY



I read the same...

Cheers,

Jeff.

That's what I'm running on RPI2

Linux raspberry 4.1.13-v7+ #826 SMP PREEMPT Fri Nov 13 20:19:03 GMT 2015 armv7l GNU/Linux

Hi everybody ;)

Although it might not be related to the slight trouble described above, it noticed on the Cgminer window console that the figures in front of "WU" (in the far right of the screen) one of the compac (i currently run three compacs) does not look like the other figures.

Here is what i got:
Compac 1 WU: 166/m
Compac 2 WU: 162/m
Compac 3 WU: 45/m (only ?)

I set the frequency at 210 Mhz and the hash rates of the compacs are all between 9-12Gh/s

Btw what does "WU" stands for ;D

Have a great day ;)

Jeff.

Had my Raspberry to which I installed puppy linux. :)

Has any of you did it will Arduino too?
Been  trying to learn about the board and so i installed its ID and tested few scripts to work with it lately. Maybe someone also had tried it to work with an Asic miner device.

If I remember right, WU = work utility or something like that.

Give the pot a little bit more of a turn on the low one and see if WU increases.

And why the Pi's have trouble with a lot of hub's, is some of the hub's back feed power to the Pi's. So you got the Pi trying to send power to the hub, the hub trying to send power to the Pi on the same cable and the hub usually wins and causes problems with the Pi.

The 1 usb 3.0 hub that I've found to work with the Pi 2 B and compac's, is the Superbpag 7 port 70W 2Amp per port hub. I only have the Pi 2 B, so don't know if it works with any other Pi models or not.

You won't make anything.
It is not worth mining with a raspberry Pi,
Unless you are willing to use a 10000 block erupters.
Just buy an ASIC man.

Superbpag also works on pi zero using a nonpowered usb 2.0 bridge (i used cheap 4 port Sabrent) in between.

Hi Jake36 :)


Ok, thanks for the clue. A google research with "cgminer work utility" gave the me the following:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=424095.0


I tried. However i didn't notice any real change. Does it mean that the miner is faulty?



In my case both the Pi and the Hub have their own PSU.


Thanks for the information ;)

I'm aware i won't get rich.

I my opinion, it's not as simple as that. First, the lattest Asics are quite expensive and the electricity
consumption of such devices are much higher. My goal, ATM, is to understand better BTC mining...

In fact i really wonder, whatever the devices people are mining with, if it's still possible to make profits...
I mean, even a Antminer S7 won't probably be sufficient in one or two years. Does anyone share the same
opinion?

Cheers,

Jeff.

Hi Biodom,


Lucky you ;) It looks as if you managed to get a Pi Zero. Even in UK it's nearly impossible to get a copy of the MagPi. Last week,
while i was looking through severals computer science magazines in my local newsagent here in France, no less than 3 people asked me (although i don't work for the store...), if i knew a way to get a Pi Zero ;D

No, it's probably just not enough power from the hub to do 3 @ freq 210 or the green. Or could be like one of my sticks, set them all by eye with the flat at about 10-11 o'clock with the usb pointing down at 6 o'clock. One stick would do crazy HW error rates no matter what, turned the pot 180 degrees (4-5 o'clock) and it runs with 0 HW errors.

A lot of hubs don't have the data (port between pc/Pi to hub for data) port isolated from the power for the regular ports. So they are also sending power back to the Pi's along with data on the syncing cable
IE: power from the Pi port going out ---><--- power from the hub port going out, so power coming from two sources on same the cable.

Hi Jake36,

Thanks for your message. It turns out that the "WU" is still low even when i plug the weird compac directly on the Pi (without using the HUB). Moreover the HW errors are very rare. I mean how is it possible to have a low "WU" with very few HW errors?

Cheers,

Jeff.