Phil, where did you get those USB bridge thingies?

I'm talking about that board that has two male plugs that power a single female plug in the top middle.

I assume that one side is power only?

I haven't run cgminer-gekko without minera, but my guess is that there would be no actual difference (other than usability). The mining itself is handled by cgminer.

Minera is just the management application. It makes it easier to change the config (if you like GUI interfaces over config files) and it provides a nice summary of statistics in a nice looking web GUI. It also takes care of things like starting the miner at boot, auto starting if it crashes, and stuff like that.

But under the hood it's still just cgminer running under screen.

Have you tried cgminer-gekko?

I've been running it for about 5 days on a Pi. Very stable.

Thanks for getting back to me. Here's the options I'm using:


Note that the frequency option is for the Compac stick. I'm also using cgminer-gekko as a custom miner. As you and I have talked about previously, this is just cgminer with Novak's changes for the stick.

You're welcome.

Note that if you go the Minera route, you don't need the above config. Minera makes the config file for you.

All you have to do is this:

• Copy the image to your SD card
• Boot your Pi
• Log into the Minera web page (assuming you know your Pi's IP address)
• Add your pools
• Add the --balance option (if you want load balancing of pools instead of fail over), and remove the donation pool
• Press the "Save and Restart" button

That's all there is to it, although there's extra stuff you can do if you want, like changing your passwords or personalize the GUI.

In case it's helpful, here's my command line and config file (pulled straight out of minera).

First the command line. Note that your paths will be different, and you'd have to decide if you want to use "screen" or not.:


And the config file contents (replace with your other pool URLs and worker addresses):


Not much to it, really.

Of course, you could just use Minera and have it work out of the box, including starting at boot, auto starting if the miner crashes, and a nice web GUI for stats. But maybe that's less fun than tinkering.

Given that only the whole number counts, it seems like a high noise to signal ratio. Do we really need 12 digits of precision?

Also it's a bit depressing when there's twice as many digits in the fractional value as the whole number. My Compac sticks have got a long way to go

Here's a dumb question. Why is there a decimal point in the reported bestshare stats for a given worker?

I'm seeing some oddities with pool balancing. My interest is to split hash rate between two user addresses on the same pool.

I know it's sounds like an odd use case, but it is real world. I've got two Compac sticks pointed at CK's solo pool. The effect I'm looking for is to have one stick in a "club" (a collective solo mining effort) and the other solo mining on its own.

I was able to get this to work by passing the --balance option under "Manual options". But the information displayed by the widgets on the desktop is a bit funky.

I've seen two different display behaviors. In one case, Minera shows both pools as active under "Local Pool details". While this is correct, Minera incorrectly reports the full hash rate of the hardware for both pools (effectively double the actual capacity of the hardware). I suspect this is because both pools have the same URL, but with different users. Maybe this is confusing Minera's display code.

The second display behavior that I've seen is that it shows one pool as the primary and the second pool as a failover. This is not correct since the miner is in balance mode, not failover mode. Also, the primary pool shows all of the hash rate and the secondary shows zero hash rate, rather than an accurate split between the two pools.

The widget display seems to flip flop between the two above anomalous display patterns on its own. Sometimes I check and it's the first behavior. Later I check and it's the second. It can't seem to make up its mind.

I've verified that the poolside numbers are accurate. That is, there's a pretty even split of hash rate between the two user addresses on the same pool. So the mining software itself is working as expected. It's just the Minera display of the statistics that's strange.

It would be nice if Minera directly supported the balance option and displayed what was happening on the pools accurately.

J4bberwock, I'm interested in picking up some cables too.

Since you indicated it will be about 3 weeks till they're back in stock, I'll ping you towards the end of the month.

Wow! Thanks for taking the time to get us this great info, pictures, and video.

Much appreciated!

No problem. Note that Minera doesn't work with the sticks out of the box yet. Instead you should use my Minera/cgminer-gekko mod. That's what I'm using and it's stable.

The URL for the mod download is on the main stick support page. But here's another copy for convenience:

https://dbtbmm05cubzd.cloudfront.net/cryptocurrency/mods/minera_compac_mod.zip

There's a read me in the zip archive that will get you going.

Note that it contains a complete bootable Pi image, so the download is large (close to 2 GB).

FYI, this works fine with Minera, even though the app doesn't have direct support for configuring the pools for balance. I now have two sticks on the same Pi with load balancing between the club address and my own address on CK's solo pool.

If you're using Minera, here's what you do:

• Go to Settings -> Pools and configure only the pools that you want to load balance. Remove your failover pools.
• Press the "Save" button to save your pools (but don't restart the miner yet).
• Go to Settings -> Local Miner -> Manual options and add this option: --balance
• Scroll down then press the "Save & Restart Miner" button.

Note that it takes a bit of time for Minera to gather and display the stats in the widgets. Once it's been running a while, it will accurately report the split of hash rate in the Local Miner Details widget. But it erroneously double reports the hash rate in the Local Pools Details widget. No big deal...

As an alternative way to check your poolside hash rate spit, you can use the "workers" URLs like Phil demonstrated. For example, here's the one for my club stick worker:

http://solo.ckpool.org/workers/1JiWuyX94wrCr7JhkAn7x5qNMCEef1KhqX.edonkeystick

To look at your other workers on CK's solo pool, use the same URL but with your receive address.

Note it takes a while before the numbers returned resemble reality.

Nice! A museum shelf.

It will also be nice when that shelf is full someday. Maybe with the first Compac Blade, Compac Tube, etc

Ah, that's a clever idea! When I first signed up, I had 2 sticks pointing at the club worker URL.

Now I've added the "--balance" option to the command line and specified two URLs (one for the club worker and the other my own address on CK's solo pool). It seems to be working, but of course my club worker will now show half the hash as before.

I've never used the --balance option under Minera before. I'm not sure it's going to work, but it's worth playing with. We'll see...

OK, I'm in:

http://solo.ckpool.org/workers/1JiWuyX94wrCr7JhkAn7x5qNMCEef1KhqX.edonkeystick

I was already pointing my sticks at CK's solo pool, but this seems like more fun.

Nice idea Philip!

Thanks in advance for the sneak peek!

Can you confirm that the controller has 9 18-pin jacks, the same as the S5+? There are a number of us interested in trying to control multiple S7s from a single S7 controller.

I assume that it's the same controller, given the pictures from Bitmain. But it would be nice to have actual confirmation from someone with an S7 in hand.

Also, how long are the controller ribbon cables? Any chance that they would reach to an adjacent S7 next to a center unit?

Note that there's there's already a separate thread around obtaining extra or longer ribbon cables:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1173573.0

Have you looked at the sidehack stick?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1141518.0

Sold! Thanks!

Good idea. Thanks!