For any WiFi device, one still needs to configure it properly unless you really want to run all of your network traffic via wifi unencrypted and "open", thus vulnerable.  Using the command line (thus, logging into StarMiner via SSH or via the console by plugging the Raspberry Pi into a monitor and keyboard), this is done via wicd-curses.  It is not "sexy" as a GUI, but it does the job it is designed to do in a TUI (Text User Interface) style just as well.

For reference, I am part of the developer team, as well as the Owner of Linux ETC.   StarMiner is my original concept and thus, it is "my baby" as a project here as well.  StarMiner came to be due to the lack of proper controllers that "looked pretty and sexy", but were "not up to snuff" mining functionality wise.  Reminds me of buying a car...always look "under the hood", not just at the body.

Yes, "time is money".  Most of us in the mining circles know and understand this as well (myself included here).  However, this is also a Raspberry Pi which is just a minimal/basic ARM CPU and 512MB of RAM, not like perhaps your video editing workstation on Apple's Mac hardware with 16GB+ of RAM and an Intel i7 CPU (as a polite guess ).  Having a GUI run on top of (1) a mining application like cgminer or bfgminer; and (2) Apache web server running Perl scripts will overload a Raspberry Pi to make it operate under an extremely and excessively high load (i.e., you are moving at "snail's pace").  The webUI is meant to resolve some of the "plug and play/miner" needs of basic users in place of using a GUI.  So, when you refer to "time is money", having a miner that runs as "snail's pace" also fits in this situation.  We are aware of such, and designed StarMiner to avoid running as "snail's pace" and thus be more effective and efficient as a mining controller tool.

So while I admit, StarMiner may not make everyone happy (as you so noted above) by not having a GUI interface, the reason, sound logic, and engineering behind such is noted.  Most would prefer knowing that StarMiner can and does mine with their particular ASIC device (we have a growing list on our SourceForge Discussion section) in full and efficiently versus "where is my pretty GUI" that will overload a simple Raspberry Pi.

For clarification purposes, StarMiner is not a "ROM" nor "firmware" (both terms have been commonly misused by both hardware manufacturers and community members).  This is an "image file" that is parallel (for example) to one installing Linux on a Raspberry Pi.  We just simplified the process by making sure that this image runs both Gridseed and Zeus Miner ASIC units, and eventually Scriptor 8X FPGA units.

To answer your questions in order:

• StarMiner does not use a GUI "per se" from the Raspberry Pi itself.  There is a webUI which is accessible by going to a web browser (e.g., Firefox, Chrome, IE (yuk!), Safari) and going to the IP address of the StarMiner Raspberry Pi.  This is "our GUI" and is focused on the specific aspects of ASIC mining for the "end user" without "extras" that could get any "curious George" type end user into trouble.
• WiFi can work on the Raspberry Pi via the command line and using wicd-curses.  However, not all USB wifi dongles will work with a Raspberry Pi.  Please refer to this site for more specifics related to "Raspberry Pi friendly" Wifi devices.
• StarMiner "could", however and to prevent people from damaging their Gridseed Mini and Blade units, we compiled and configured cgminer for "scrypt only".  Looking at the "operation costs", you are actually wasting power trying to "dual mine" with a Gridseed Mini ASIC versus just scrypt mine with it.
• By the "Gridseed 5 chips (orb)", if you mean the "Gridseed Mini" (as it is commonly referred to), then yes.

There is also more information and further discussions on our LitecoinTalk forum thread for further review, as well as our SourceForge site under Wiki and Discussion, both of which are "work in progress".

Let us know if you have any further questions. 

Happy and profitable mining to all!

We decided to start on our SourceForge Project page in the Discussion section a listing by ASIC manufacturer of verified and tested units with StarMiner.  I invite everyone to take a quick look here and advise if we are missing a particular model that you, yourself, have tested and can verify that "StarMiner with my particular ASIC is working". 

How would you verify such?  Message us via the forums the URL produced by starhelpme from the command line on a StarMiner Raspberry Pi, and inform us "I have this particular ASIC unit".  If you do not mind posting even a screen shot of the webUI's Overview page (with the ASIC(s) mining a bit for some time of course ) that would be even better.

Thanks to all of the folks out there mining away via StarMiner!

07 June 2014 version release notes and change log:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Created multiple configuration profiles for individual Gridseed and Zeus Miner ASIC units including the following:
  
  • Gridseed Mini.
  • Gridseed Blade.
  • Zeus Miner Blizzard.
  • Zeus Miner Hurricane X2.
  • Zeus Miner Thunder X3.
  and also included profiles matching the Zeus Miner ASIC units "rebranded" by GAW Miners.  These default configurations are made for using only one (1) ASIC unit.  Depending on the ASIC brand, the end user will need to adjust accordingly to account for multiple ASIC units being controlled by StarMiner.
  

• Updated all of the StarMiner scripts accordingly to work with the previously noted configuration profiles.
• Updated Raspberry Pi Linux kernel/firmware.
• Applied security updates to Raspbian including recent OpenSSL issues (05 June 2014 announced ones).

Possible issues and considerations:

• Due to Zeus Miner ASIC units being released with cgminer v3.1.1 (versus a "more recent" version such as currently v4.3.4), thus using an older API version, the webUI will not display the individual ASIC miner units at this time. We are aware of this. However, everything else should function "normally".
• Due to StarMiner being able to support Gridseed and Zeus Miner ASICs, it is strongly advised NOT to attempt to use a single StarMiner Raspberry Pi unit to control a mix of both types of ASIC units. This is due to the limitations of a Raspberry Pi being just an ARM CPU with 512MB of RAM running a single mining application and webUI with statistical data reporting. Unfortunately, this "little guy" (the Raspberry Pi that is) can only handle so much.

@Suika:

Thanks for the compliments.  For reference, we are doing an updated release that should incorporate specific Gridseed and Zeus Miner (or GAW Miner's rebranded warez) to help facilitate easier start up.  Your note above though is a good suggestion since there were a few people on the LitecoinTalk.org thread inquiring about similar.

As for the "improved web front end performance", we are also looking into that as well.  However, (granted, there is some latency), the webUI currently "works".  So the recent priority is for better and easier "get going and start mining now with <insert your ASIC unit here>" for the general masses of "StarMiner groupies".

04 June 2014 version release notes and change log:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Fixes the Zeus Miner configuration file to match the StarMiner test configuration properly.

We are awaiting some information from beekeeper to help with the webUI here at this time.  We apologize for the delay (we were hoping to have a version out late last week    ), but wanted the release to have a majority (if not all) of the current webUI functioning versus partially.

This release will actually be specific for FPGA (versus ASIC) mining units for reference due to the changes potentially needed to the webUI.

More to come soon.  Thanks for everyone's patience and support as well.

The recent release is now up on SourceForge under the Files available for download.  

Do note, since Linux ETC does not have any Zeus Miner ASIC units on hand (with the recent threads on the LitecoinTalk forums, I am a little glad as well     ), so we have only done some testing and thus quality control/analysis with a few members in the community indirectly.  Any testing and/or feed back outside of "the webUI is slow" is quite welcomed.  If someone wants to donate a Blizzard (or GAW's Fury, with out the PSU melting or pieces falling off of the ASIC of course ), we do welcome such.

The initial settings for the Zeus Miner ASIC is also for the "Blizzard" unit (= GAW's "Fury" unit), so this will need to be changed (the chips-count parameter) for other ASIC units slightly.  These should be as follows going from Zeus Miner's web page:

• Blizzard (= GAW's Fury) = 6
• Hurricane X3 (=GAW's Black Widow) = 64
• Thunder X2 (= unknown GAW unit) = 96
• Thunder X3 (= GAW's Falcon) = 128
• Unknown unit (= GAW's War Machine) = 256

02 June 2014 version release notes and change log:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Added Zeus Miner ASIC support to command line scripts and webUI profiles.
• Fixed OpenSSH and OpenSSL issues so that end users attempting to run apt-get upgrade will not "muck up" either service as reported on Bitcoin Talk forum.
• Security updates to the base Linux system.
• Raspberry Pi firmware updates.

I would like to extend a "thank you" to schnauzr for posting a Review (five stars as well!) on StarMiner's SourceForge project page. 

Happy and profitable mining to all!

Actually, it sounds like you broke Raspbian (which is the OS being used here, not "our OS", a community made one for reference) by doing apt-get upgrade and thus, is not suggested nor advised due to reasons like this.  I would suggest re-imaging StarMiner with the 12 May 2014 release and starting over to correct the issues from doing the apt-get upgrade.

The releases we push out on SourceForge are done to correct issues with the base OS (= Raspbian) for reference and update other aspects not covered by the OS's package manager.  Just because something is perceived to be "slow" (in this case) is NOT a good reason to try and do a manual upgrade on a system.  We do quite a bit of QA and testing prior to putting out a release as well, however we are also human and do not catch everything possible.  We aim for the best case scenario which is a stable and working version of StarMiner.

As noted previously, we are aware of the "slowness" with the webUI.  However, the miner application runs properly and at full capacity which is the more important aspect.  Any webUI in general is in the end "eye candy" and a layer on top of the actual mining application itself.  Granted, the webUI is meant to make things "easier" for the end user, yes.

Sounds like SSH did not start properly on StarMiner.

If you can access the Raspberry Pi via a terminal (i.e., plug a USB keyboard and HDMI monitor into it), you can start SSH by service ssh restart.  Worst case, restart the Raspberry Pi system as a whole since SSH is set to start by default.

This is something we are quite aware of and are working on.  The webUI is Perl based running on Apache at this time, both of which take a bit of system resources to run (not including a mining application also running at the same time).  A Raspberry Pi is just an ARM CPU with 512MB of RAM as well.

More to come on this, so stay tuned.

Run starhelpme and send us the URL provided at the end of such directly via private message here or via a Support Ticket on SourceForge.

Here are a few screen shots of a Linux ETC client's x9 (#10 has a bad plug unfortunately ) Gridseed Mini ASIC units + StarMiner working quite nicely.  The Gridseed Mini's are not modified, running at 850Mhz (so ~360kh/s per ASIC unit).



The blue shows the consistent combined hash rate of all x9 ASIC units (have to love consistency! ).  The green is the number of shares accepted by the mining pool(s) at that time.  



Just an image of one of the nine Gridseed ASIC mini stats.  Same color scheme depiction as well.  

Also do note, the "uptime" since there are miners out there citing issues with other controller images/software who cannot consistently mine for more than a few hours.  We have had this system running for a few days actually.  The "uptime" is actually for the specific ASIC mining profile ("cgminer-gridseed" in this case) running, which unfortunately resets if one changes the profile.  

Files for the recent release (12-May-2014) are available now for download from SourceForge and can be found here.

You can try our StarMiner image for a Raspberry Pi which does work quite nicely and is pretty much "plug and mine" oriented.  We will be releasing an updated version that addresses a few items with Gridseed ASIC units in the next day or two as well (just posted this on our StarMiner thread here as well).

This is an announcement of the a version "12May2014" release (to be available on the noted date as well, yes ).  More details can be found on our SourceForge project Blog page.

You can download the updated image via the SourceForge project Files page.

From the Blog post:
Thanks to sling00 for doing most of the "heavy lifting" with IFMI (the webUI portion of StarMiner), StarMiner will be releasing an updated version of StarMiner.

ChangeLog for 12 May 2014 Gridseed version:

• Properly IDs the ASIC units noted as "GSD" on all IFMI pages.
• Properly creates and displays the Overview graph information including accepted shares and hash rate.
• Properly creates and displays graph of the individual Gridseed Mini ASIC unit.
• Security updates to the base Linux system.
• Raspberry Pi firmware updates.
• Addition of Gridseed specific mining profile within IFMI.

Coming soon:

• Scriptor 8X FPGA unit support with IFMI specific mining profile within IFMI.
• Updated HowTo use StarMiner documentation.

---

03 July 2014 version release notes and change log:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Modifications to the Gridseed configuration files removing the "per_chip_stats" as noted in StarMiner SourceForge ticket #7.
• Updated modules/drivers for both Gridseed and Zeus Miner ASIC units.
• With respects to the "newer" Zeus Miner "batch 2" ASIC units, the ability to use the provided serial number to have specific settings per individual ASIC unit if using USB mode via libusb (versus --scan-serial mode).
• With respects to the "newer" Zeus Miner "batch 2" ASIC units, the ability to ID the individual ASIC unit based off of the number of chips within each unit. These will have the Zeus Miner ASIC names by default instead of the rebranded names.

---

27 June 2014 version release notes and change log:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Patch of the mining application by dmaxl that addresses "wall of rejects" with mining pools that have network latency issues.
• Fix of the Gridseed ASIC configuration files so that they appear when editing via the webUI.

---

25 June 2014 version release notes and change log:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Improved Gridseed and Zeus Miner ASIC unit support via an improved mining application and related driver/modules.
• Updated configuration profiles for individual and multiple Gridseed, Scriptor, and Zeus Miner ASIC units to parallel with the updated and improved driver/modules.
• The webUI being HTTP by default, though HTTPS can be enabled if desired to address some latency issues.
• Updated all of the StarMiner scripts accordingly to work with the previously noted configuration profiles.
• Updated Raspberry Pi Linux kernel/firmware.

---

15 June 2014 version release notes and change log:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Scriptor 8x FPGA support.
• Created multiple configuration profiles for individual Gridseed, Scriptor, and Zeus Miner ASIC units including the following:

• Gridseed "Mini".
• Gridseed "Blade".
• Scriptor, "Scriptor 8x".
• Zeus Miner "Blizzard".
• Zeus Miner "Cyclone".
• Zeus Miner "Hurricane X2".
• Zeus Miner "Hurricane X3".
• Xeus Miner "Thunder X2".
• Zeus Miner "Thunder X3".

and also included profiles matching the Zeus Miner ASIC units rebranded by GAW Miners.  The defaults are made for using up to ten (10) ASIC units at once.  Depending on the ASIC brand, the end user will need to adjust accordingly to account for multiple ASIC units being controlled by StarMiner.

• The webUI is running on lighttpd which should have some improvement on the previous latency issues.  Thanks to sling00 on Github for this work here.
• The additional of a "if the mining application stops" script and related scheduled checking of such to restart a "dead miner".  Thanks to worldly on LitecoinTalk for this work here.
• The webUI will now show the Zeus Miner ASIC units on the "Overview" page (below the Pools, above the graph).
• Updated all of the StarMiner scripts accordingly to work with the previously noted configuration profiles.
• Updated Raspberry Pi Linux kernel/firmware.

Possible issues:

• Due to StarMiner being able to support Gridseed, Scriptor, and Zeus Miner ASICs, it is strongly advised <strong>NOT</strong> to attempt to use a single StarMiner Raspberry Pi unit to control a mix of both types of ASIC units.  This is due to the limitations of a Raspberry Pi being just an ARM CPU with 512MB of RAM running a single mining application and webUI with statistical data reporting.  Unfortunately and once again, this "little guy" (the Raspberry Pi that is) can only handle so much.

---

07 June 2014 version release notes and change log:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Created multiple configuration profiles for individual Gridseed and Zeus Miner ASIC units including the following:
  
  • Gridseed Mini.
  • Gridseed Blade.
  • Zeus Miner Blizzard.
  • Zeus Miner Hurricane X2.
  • Zeus Miner Thunder X3.
  and also included profiles matching the Zeus Miner ASIC units "rebranded" by GAW Miners.  These default configurations are made for using only one (1) ASIC unit.  Depending on the ASIC brand, the end user will need to adjust accordingly to account for multiple ASIC units being controlled by StarMiner.
  

• Updated all of the StarMiner scripts accordingly to work with the previously noted configuration profiles.
• Updated Raspberry Pi Linux kernel/firmware.
• Applied security updates to Raspbian including recent OpenSSL issues (05 June 2014 announced ones).

Possible issues and considerations:

• Due to Zeus Miner ASIC units being released with cgminer v3.1.1 (versus a "more recent" version such as currently v4.3.4), thus using an older API version, the webUI will not display the individual ASIC miner units at this time. We are aware of this. However, everything else should function "normally".
• Due to StarMiner being able to support Gridseed and Zeus Miner ASICs, it is strongly advised NOT to attempt to use a single StarMiner Raspberry Pi unit to control a mix of both types of ASIC units. This is due to the limitations of a Raspberry Pi being just an ARM CPU with 512MB of RAM running a single mining application and webUI with statistical data reporting. Unfortunately, this "little guy" (the Raspberry Pi that is) can only handle so much.

---

02 June 2014 version release notes and change log:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Added Zeus Miner ASIC support to command line scripts and webUI profiles.
• Fixed OpenSSH and OpenSSL issues so that end users attempting to run apt-get upgrade will not "muck up" either service as reported on Bitcoin Talk forum.
• Security updates to the base Linux system.
• Raspberry Pi firmware updates.

---

12 May 2014 version release notes and change log:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Properly IDs the ASIC units noted as "GSD" on all IFMI pages.
• Properly creates and displays the Overview graph information including accepted shares and hash rate.
• Properly creates and displays graph of the individual Gridseed Mini ASIC unit.
• Security updates to the base Linux system.
• Raspberry Pi firmware updates.
• Addition of Gridseed specific mining profile within IFMI.

---

25 April 2014 version release notes:
Files for download from SourceForge can be found here.

• Raspbian is the lastest stable (via Debian Wheezy) version with patches to OpenSSL to address any concerns about HeartBleed.
• bfgminer is version 3.99.0 and compiled for Gridseed and scrypt use only.
• SeedManager includes updates from LinuxETC's GitHub fork with contributions from sling00.
• wicd is installed for those with wireless network connection to help with configuration using the ncurses version.

[/list]

Description
StarMiner (also known as *Miner) is a Linux based image design to be used for the digital currency or "crypto currency" mining purposes.

The Logic
Most people in the "crypto currency" arena want to be able to "plug and play" (or "mine" in this case) an ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) device to a simple system, put in the desired mining pool targets, and have this device "just do it". This means keeping things as simple as possible. StarMiner is designed for such purposes.

Under The Hood
StarMiner includes the following Projects that are Open Source based:

• Raspbian, http://www.raspbian.org/
• cgminer, https://github.com/dmaxl/cgminer
• Linux SeedManager, https://github.com/starlilyth/Linux-SeedManager
• wicd, https://launchpad.net/wicd

Screenshots
Everyone loves visual images for examples plus "show and tell".  These can be found on the Summary SourceForge page.

Files
The StarMiner image (.img; ~3.5GB in size), bzip2 (.bz2; ~65% of the image size), and zip (.zip; ~61% of the image size) versions of the release with MD5SUM information can be found on SourceForge under the Files section.  The file naming convention will be using the release date in the name and version, so do use the most recent accordingly.

Documentation
Currently being made and put up on SourceForge in the Wiki section.

Discussion and Support
We have both forum based and support tickets via SourceForge under the project's Discussion and Tickets sections.

Donations and Contributions
One can donate and/or contribute to the project in a few ways:

• (US residents only) Purchase a Raspberry Pi StarMiner kit (with USB wifi or without USB wifi) from us directly. The Raspberry Pi comes from a distributor who contributes a majority of the sales back into the Raspberry Pi organization.
  Note: We cannot ship Raspberry Pi StarMiner kits internationally without a cause for headaches with various customs, VAT, import/export related issues unfortunately. Believe us...we would love to send you one! (Temporarily suspended until further notice.)
• Download our image from SourceForge here under Files. The run the startest command which will use a default "test" configuration to donate mining hashrate to one of our wallets. Since you are operating the miner, you may run startest for as long as you desire. This is also a simple way to test (hence, the command name startest) your ASIC miner with our image.
• Use and write a Review (preferably positive of course) on SourceForge StarMiner. If there are issues, open up a Support Ticket on SourceForge so that said issues may be addressed (prior to any Reviews preferred of course ).
• Join the Discussions and add your thoughts, comments, and feedback accordingly.
• Donate some Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, and/or Vertcoin to the following addresses:
  
  • Bitcoin: 1Ac9TYKxGEvwe4ECM84BEZTWzCn3HZhMFN
  • Litecoin: LTFKFPkVw3kXdzg7JQibPd7ZFQe11brADB
  • Dogecoin: DRaMFszv9bgDPUKiE6mfcM8cHxkRQ5wNXG
  • Vertcoin: VpMfewgraj4QCNSFLnfErY7xnf9EUhVYuM
  Do send us an email if you wish to be noted for such as well.