[See more screenshots, videos, latest version, and more at http://www.coinmyne.com/cgremote]

CGRemote - Remote Miner Management from the Developer of CGWatcher.


                   

               

               

   

See more screenshots, videos, latest version, and more at http://www.coinmyne.com/cgremote

After being in beta for several months, we feel we're ready to officially introduce CGRemote to the Bitcoin community. We remain in beta while we continue improving the software and adding features, but we are really happy with the current version and are confident users will feel the same. We've also seen CGRemote-related comments appearing in the CGWatcher thread, so felt it was the right time to post here. While we will monitor this thread, we've setup a support forum at http://www.coinmyne.com/support to make getting help and giving feedback quick and easy... no digging through dozens of pages of a single thread.

CGRemote is a desktop application allowing you to monitor and control all of your mining rigs from one place. It works with any miner running CGMiner, BFGMiner, SGMiner, VertMiner, or any other CGMiner fork, and does not require CGWatcher to be running on the miner. For miners that are running CGWatcher, there are several additional features available to those miners in CGRemote, but we are working on a solution to provide similar functionality to all miners - regardless of operating system.

CGRemote is not a simple monitoring application. It eliminates the need to remote into individual miners and aims to provide all of the functionality you would have if you were sitting at the miner itself. It will ultimately have all of the features found in CGWatcher, our popular miner GUI and monitoring software. This means you'll be able to set monitoring options like restarting the miner when a problem occurs, as well as having advanced scheduling capabilities to dictate what each miner should do and when it should do it. The profitability mining feature in CGWatcher will also be brought over to CGRemote. Combine this with the features it already has, and CGRemote is the most complete remote miner management software available.

CGRemote is still in beta, meaning it is not yet finished. The beta has grown to thousands of users and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. We've grown an awesome community of users and are working on things that will be coming in the next few months that we feel our users will absolutely love.

Windows only?

CGRemote is currently a Windows desktop application, but we are already working on the development of a web platform that will serve as the backbone to the CGRemote web and mobile apps we're working on. We're using the feedback from our beta users to create the perfect desktop application, then porting it to web and mobile apps. We're also working on software that will extend the miner's API - similar to what CGWatcher does - but with a smaller footprint and cross-platform support. So for any feature listed below exclusive to CGWatcher, these features will be available for all miners in the near future.

Current Features - here is what you can already do with CGRemote:

• Detailed Information - almost every piece of data reported by your miner is displayed somewhere in the interface, while remaining clean and organized enough for you to find it.
• Remote Control - restart and stop your miners remotely. For CGWatcher miners, start and switch profiles remotely.
• Device View - see every device on every miner in one place, with more detailed stats than any other monitor. Clicking a device opens the device detail window, showing even more information.
• Pool View - view all pools on all miners, as well as how much hashrate and hashrate percentage each one currently has. Easily see where your hashrate is being directed, and change it in a few clicks.
• Profile View - view all profiles on all miners, as well as which miners they're on, which miners are currently using them, and their total hashrate and hashrate percentage.
• Device Detail Window - view an individual device's details, and control the device using the control panel - change intensity, clock speeds, voltage, and enable/disable and restart devices.
• Pool Management - add pools to all or selected miners while assigning them each individual workers in just a few clicks using the Pool Setup Wizard. Switching all or selected miners to a pool is just as easy. The Pool Setup Wizard works for miners with and without CGWatcher, and gives you an option to save the pool changes to the config settings once their complete.
• Profile Management - edit CGWatcher profiles remotely, just as if you were sitting at your miner. Coming soon: profiles for miners not using CGWatcher.
• Remote File Explorer - navigate the file systems of your miners remotely, including support to cut, copy, and paste files, drag-and-drop support, create new files, delete files, view file properties, run remote programs, and remote Open/Save dialogs when editing files.*
• Remote Text Editor - edit config and other text files on your miners using CGRemote's built-in text editor. Similar to Notepad, the Remote Text Editor has one significant extra feature - you can open and save files on any of your miners.*
• Remote Task Manager - view a miner's running processes and their details, similar to Task Manager. Kill processes or launch new ones.*
• Restart Remote Computer - restart the computer remotely, with CGWatcher automatically making sure it is launched at startup to ensure you don't lose remote access after the restart.*
• Remote Screen Capture - at any time you can capture and view a screenshot of your miner to see what it's up to.*
• Config File Editor - with all of the new miners, forks, and versions, it's difficult to remember all of the possible config settings. With Config File Editor, you don't have to!
• Direct API Access - for more advanced users, you can send API commands directly to a single miner, or selected miners all at once... providing complete control over miners even for commands that haven't been built into CGRemote's interface yet.
• Coin Profitability Data - see which coins are most profitable using data from CoinChoose or CoinWarz. For miners running CGWatcher, you can also push coin profitability data to them automatically, reducing the need for each miner to use an API call. Your entire mining farm can be updated from one API call.
• Hostname Support - CGRemote supports hostnames as well as IP addresses, allowing for dynamic DNS services to be used for those with dynamic IP addresses.
• Security - when connecting to miners with CGWatcher, access is password-protected and data is encrypted and compressed. For connecting to miners directly, the existing IP address whitelist authentication ("api-allow" setting) is used.
• Speed and Reliability - CGRemote is much quicker and more responsive than a web application. With direct connections to your miners, there is no central point of failure. The beta does require it be able to connect to the Internet at startup, but this is related to it being in beta and CGRemote will work without depending on any website once it is released.
• Support - Our goal is to have the best software and the best support. We've setup a dedicated support forum where we provide help for our users, our users can help other users, and we receive feedback on how to improve our software. We will be growing our support staff in the coming months to ensure our support gets even better.
• Scalability - CGRemote uses multi-threading so each miner can do what it needs to without affecting, depending on, or waiting on other miners. CGRemote has been thoroughly tested with over 100 mining rigs and many users in the beta are using CGRemote on 100+ rig farms.

* Feature is currently only available for miners running CGWatcher, but we're working on providing this feature for all miners.

What We're Working On...

• Providing all features available for CGWatcher miners to all miners, regardless of operating system.
• Web and mobile applications, allowing you all of the functionality in CGRemote wherever you go. Not just a list of your mining rigs... complete control over your entire farm.
• Monitoring and scheduling options, including profitability mining.
• Built-in SSH support!
• Historical data capture and reporting, charts, etc.
• Translations - Chinese and Russian translations planned, others to follow.
• Comprehensive documentation.
• Whatever our users ask us to... we want to create the best miner management tools and encourage our users to tell us which features will help them most.
• Secret features... we're not even telling anyone the coolest stuff yet!

Frequently Asked Questions:

Q: Do I need to be using CGWatcher on my miners in order to use CGRemote?
A: No! CGRemote works with any CGMiner-based miner (BFGMiner, SGMiner, VertMiner, etc.) on any operating system, including self-contained mining devices. For miners that are running CGWatcher, there are some additional features available... but we're working on bringing those features to all miners.

Q: Can I connect to miners no matter where in the world they are located?
A: Yes, with CGRemote you can manage miners on your local network or anywhere in the world over the Internet.

Q: Is CGRemote free?
A: No, it costs $25 USD to join the beta, which gets you an immediate download, free updates, and the finished product when it is released for up to 5 miners.

Q: Why is CGRemote not free?
A: To create the best software possible, you need to have the resources to support full-time development and purchase devices to ensure the software supports them. We learned with CGWatcher that counting on donations alone would not get us to our goal.

Q: Is there any limit to the number of miners I can add while in beta?
A: No, you can add as many miners as you need to to ensure CGRemote works with all of them correctly.

Q: How much will additional miners (over 5) cost when CGRemote is released?
A: We're still working out the details of a pricing structure that is fair to everyone. We feel miners with five rigs shouldn't have to pay the same as someone with 100 rigs, so are tentatively basing it on number of miners. In this context, miners are miner instances... so when running two instances of CGMiner on the same computer, each instance is considered a miner by CGRemote.

Q: If I buy CGRemote, do I get free updates?
A: Yes. You also get CGRemote free when it is released for up to 5 miners.

Q: Will CGWatcher remain free?
A: Yes, CGWatcher will continue to be free and will continue to be actively developed.

Q: Is CGRemote open-sourced?
A: No, there are currently no plans to open-source CGRemote. All options were considered with CGRemote - including FOSS - and based on research and our experience with CGWatcher we felt that this model would give us the best chance to meet our goals with CGRemote. The beta is already doing better than we anticipated surpassing 10,000 users in the first 6 months, so we have big plans.

Q: Why should I trust CGRemote since I cannot see its source code?
A: We realize that this community is often a target for malicious programs and websites, and that all software creators should be considered guilty until proven innocent when it comes to applications involved with cryptocurrency. Our software has been around over a year now and has been running on over 100,000 mining computers, and we feel we've proven ourselves to be honest and trustworthy. Most developers familiar with .NET applications will be able to decompile CGRemote enough to see what it is doing. We're also a U.S. company with a real address and use our real names. We understand some people will never trust software they cannot compile themselves, and realize that unfortunately CGRemote may not be the right monitoring application for those people. There are far more honest software developers than dishonest ones, but the money involved here undoubtedly attracts those with bad intentions. That said, this community still has a large amount of honest developers working on legitimate projects.

Q: My antivirus software flags CGRemote as MSIL.Confuser.B (or similar). What does this mean?
A: CGRemote's code is mildly obfuscated to make it more difficult to copy. By nature, .NET applications are very easy to reverse engineer... in fact there are tools available that will turn a .NET application like CGRemote back into a Visual Studio project, allowing anyone to copy the code as their own. This would also make it much easier for someone to create a copy of CGRemote with malicious code inserted in it and attempt to distribute it over the Internet. The software we use to help protect our code is called Confuser, which is why antivirus software will flag it as MSIL.Confuser.B (MSIL stands for Microsoft Intermediate Language, which is an easily-reversible code CGRemote is compiled into). We take a very conservative approach to obfuscation, so we don't scramble things too much that someone is not able to see what CGRemote actually does in code. Obfuscated code does not mean ths software is malicious, but most malware does obfuscate its code... though for a different reason - to try to avoid detection. There are many safe, legitimate products and companies that use obfuscation to make it at least a little more difficult to steal their code.

Q: Is CoinMyne hiring?
A: Yes! We're currently looking for additional software and web developers to help us reach our goals sooner. We'll be posting what we're looking for on our website shortly.

Q: How soon until the web application?
A: We are hoping to have the web application completed in May.

Q: How soon until the mobile apps?
A: We anticipate the mobile apps to be released shortly after the web application.

Q: Which mobile platforms will CGRemote be available for?
A: We are working on the Android app, and will immediately follow with iOS and Windows Phone apps.

Q: What can I do to access my miners from anywhere while the mobile apps are being developed?
A: A temporary solution is to use remote desktop software like TeamViewer in combination with CGRemote. With CGRemote and TeamViewer on the same computer, you can use TeamViewer's web or mobile apps to remote into CGRemote instead of having to remote into each individual miner.

Q: Can I run CGRemote in a virtual machine/Wine/Parallels/etc?
A: We do have users running CGRemote in a virtual machine, and have some reports of it working in Parallels with few issues. We're not sure about Wine support but will be testing this soon, along with Parallels, to see if we can make any changes to improve support with them.

Q: What is port-forwarding and will I need to do it?
A: Despite how scary some people make it out to be, port-forwarding is very simply telling your router to allow connections coming in on a specific port, and which computer on the local network to pass those connections to. Your router typically blocks most connections coming in to protect you against attacks and malware. Port-forwarding is telling it to allow connections on a specific port (e.g. 4028) and which computer to send those connections to (e.g. 192.168.1.10). If you're only connecting to miners on the same local network as CGRemote, you don't need to worry about port-forwarding at all. And if your miners are running CGWatcher, you can use the "Map Port (UPnP)" button in the Remote tab to have CGWatcher take care of forwarding its port automatically! A great resource for learning more about port-forwarding is http://www.portforward.com, where you can find guides for specific router models. On a related note, our web and mobile applications will have an option where port-forwarding is not necessary even when connecting to miners over the Internet.

Q: Why still call it CGRemote when it works with so many other miners?
A: We may be changing CGRemote's name to MinerRemote in the future, but whatever we decide we'll give plenty of notice to avoid any confusion.

Q: Where can I get CGRemote?
A: You can buy and immediately download CGRemote on our website at http://www.coinmyne.com/cgremote

Q: What types of payments do you accept?
A: We currently accept Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, and PayPal payments.

Q: I purchased CGRemote, but I cannot download because my order still says pending or on-hold?
A: If you aren't able to download CGRemote within an hour of your purchase, please contact us at sales -at- coinmyne.com from the email you used during checkout. You can also try to reach us using the live chat feature on our website. We'll make sure you get the software as quickly as possible.

Q: I am in the beta and CGRemote is saying I need to upgrade to a newer version, but I have not received the new update via email. How can I download the new version?
A: We've temporarily disabled the auto-update feature inside of CGRemote and are sending updates out via email. If you didn't receive the latest update, first check your spam folder as this is often the culprit. If you still don't see it, contact us at sales-at-coinmyne.com from the email address you used when you joined the beta. We're also working on a way for you to download the latest version automatically by providing only the email address you used when you joined the beta, and this will be available very soon.

Real Feedback from Real CGRemote Users...

• "My hash rate went up 5% because I stopped using VNC and switched to CGRemote. Thank you!" - Mitchell
• "I've been using your software for about an hour, and WOW! Amazing work!" - Ryan
• "This is the kick-assiest app I have seen in a long time!... this has been a Godsend. Brilliant!" - Russell
• "Dude, this is... awesome and easy!!! I kinda ran my own thing for remote monitoring but it is so irrelevant compared to this." - Vlad
• "It... is... awesome. I must say, it is wonderful... 10/10 application." - David
• "You made mining much easier " - Alexander
• "It works like a charm... I couldn't be happier with my purchase." - Todd
• "Excellent application. It replaced a few programs I was using." - Kyle
• "I love how easy it is... it has made my life easier and I highly recommend it." - Colin
• "Legend. Works a treat." - Adam
• "I got it all setup and running smooth! Awesome work! Now I can void going to my miners to switch pools and change settings!" - Dale
• "I've installed the software and it works beautifully. Great work!" - Omar
• "It's really tempting me to go ahead and operate a full-blown farm just to see all the cool data and dink around. Thanks a lot!" - Ben
• "Wow, such brilliant software!... I can't believe I didn't find it any sooner!" - Nathan
• "You made an incredible piece of software... grateful for access!" - John
• "Wanted to say that it's possibly the most excited I've been about a software package in years!" - David

Looking for a free, Windows-based operating system for your miners in order to use CGWatcher and CGRemote? Check out CoinHub, a WinPE operating system built on Windows 8.1 with CGWatcher, drivers, miners, and more already loaded! This is not a CoinMyne project, but we like the direction this project is taking and will be following it closely.

[Advertise your product or service in CGWatcher and www.cgwatcher.com]

         

Advertise your product or service in CGWatcher and www.cgwatcher.com

I recently added the ability to display banner ads in CGWatcher, a free GUI and monitor for cgminer and bfgminer (most popular mining software), in order to advertise my new project, CGRemote. Being a GUI, CGWatcher is something that is watched or checked often throughout the day by most miners, and as of this post it is running on over 14,000 28,000 computers (the count shown on www.cgwatcher.com is updated in real-time and only includes version 1.3.1 and newer when I began collecting usage stats). I designed the banner ad system so that I could add additional ads at any time, without requiring a software update. Ads are displayed in rotation, one per hour. The default duration is 30 seconds. Both the duration and frequency are customizable. Ads can be closed by the user by clicking an X in the corner, or can be clicked on to open the website of the product.

Along with CGWatcher's in-app ads, I can also display banner ads on the CGWatcher download page, which is currently getting 10,000+ 20,000 views per week (and climbing).

If there are any problems that prevent the ads from being displayed, I will refund the full amount. I would suggest setting up landing pages to determine its effectiveness since it will not be apparent in referrals. This way you can decide if the ad is bringing you visitors when it comes time to renew it.

If you don't have thousands of dollars to spend on a Bitcointalk ad, want to throw some pocket change into additional marketing, or just want to support CGWatcher and CGRemote development while giving some attention to your product, CGWatcher may be a good platform. I am only looking to help legitimate products or services.


You can find more information on CGWatcher at http://www.cgwatcher.com or its Bitcointalk posts:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=185553.220 and https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=159267.340 (newbies)

More information on advertising specifically and how stats are collected: http://manotechnology.blogspot.com/p/advertise.html



Updated stats: CGWatcher is now running on 28,000 computers, and its download page is getting around 20,000 views/week. These stats have doubled in two weeks. If you're looking to reach miners, feel free to PM me. I'd like to get some feedback and want to help good products get some attention. I can verify all statistics are accurate. The platform is already there... I might as well do something with it.

468x60 banner ad in rotation inside CGWatcher: 0.1 BTC/month

Text ad at top of www.cgwatcher.com: 0.2 BTC/month

Open to offers, especially if I think you have a great product or service.

[Advertise your product or service in CGWatcher and www.cgwatcher.com]

         

Advertise your product or service in CGWatcher and www.cgwatcher.com

I recently added the ability to display banner ads in CGWatcher, a free GUI and monitor for cgminer and bfgminer (most popular mining software), in order to advertise my new project, CGRemote. Being a GUI, CGWatcher is something that is watched or checked often throughout the day by most miners, and as of this post it is running on over 14,000 28,000 computers (the count shown on www.cgwatcher.com is updated in real-time and only includes version 1.3.1 and newer when I began collecting usage stats). I designed the banner ad system so that I could add additional ads at any time, without requiring a software update. Ads are displayed in rotation, one per hour. The default duration is 30 seconds. Both the duration and frequency are customizable. Ads can be closed by the user by clicking an X in the corner, or can be clicked on to open the website of the product.

Along with CGWatcher's in-app ads, I can also display banner ads on the CGWatcher download page, which is currently getting 10,000+ 20,000 views per week (and climbing).

If there are any problems that prevent the ads from being displayed, I will refund the full amount. I would suggest setting up landing pages to determine its effectiveness since it will not be apparent in referrals. This way you can decide if the ad is bringing you visitors when it comes time to renew it.

If you don't have thousands of dollars to spend on a Bitcointalk ad, want to throw some pocket change into additional marketing, or just want to support CGWatcher and CGRemote development while giving some attention to your product, CGWatcher may be a good platform. I am only looking to help legitimate products or services.


You can find more information on CGWatcher at http://www.cgwatcher.com or its Bitcointalk posts:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=185553.220 and https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=159267.340 (newbies)

More information on advertising specifically and how stats are collected: http://manotechnology.blogspot.com/p/advertise.html



Updated stats: CGWatcher is now running on 28,000 computers, and its download page is getting around 20,000 views/week. These stats have doubled in two weeks. If you're looking to reach miners, feel free to PM me. I'd like to get some feedback and want to help good products get some attention. I can verify all statistics are accurate. The platform is already there... I might as well do something with it.

468x60 banner ad in rotation inside CGWatcher: 0.1 BTC/month

Text ad at top of www.cgwatcher.com: 0.2 BTC/month

Open to offers, especially if I think you have a great product or service.

This isn't a serious suggestion, just an idea and I'm curious to see what others think. Obviously if you are heavily invested in current (double sha256) ASICs you're not going to be in favor. I'm not trying to make anyone's blood boil... I have also purchased ASICs so this would be detrimental to my own investment too.

And this is also assuming the algorithm can be changed without causing any significant obstacles (other than raising a bounty for ck to implement it in cgminer  ). I realize it would also take a lot of work from the bitcoin/bitcoin-qt core developer(s), so maybe a bounty would be raised by everyone without ASICs to try to even the playing field every so often.

So, for example, the hashing algorithm changes every four years when the block reward halves. It would be unknown which algorithm it was going to use, maybe it would randomly choose from a pool or it would be left to bitcoin core developers who would hopefully keep it secret. But it would essentially send us all back to the stone age of CPU and GPU mining, followed by FPGAs and then ultimately ASICs. Then four years later it would start over again. All those GPUs you have sitting in your closet could be dusted off and have a purpose again... at least for a little while. Difficulty would essentially reset every four years.

It would add another variable into mining, so along with taking a gamble on which pool, coin, asic vendor, etc. to mine, you could also bet on which algorithm would be used next by trying to prepare for it early. Just think of all the additional ASIC companies that could spring up!  

Feel free to tell me how impractical or stupid it is... I don't mind. I mentioned it in the trollbox and some people added to it, but the conversation was mixed in with political debate and whether or not fontas is really satan and the end is near. I also realize this could be done with an alt-coin... but I'm not interested in that.

[Scheduled Actions]

Profitability Mining is mining whatever crypto-coin is most profitable at any given time based on how much it is worth in Bitcoins. This is not a new concept and has been in practice since the first alt-coin appeared. I did not come up with the idea, I just made it easier to do in CGWatcher. I realize Profitability Mining may not be the best name for it, as even mining one coin is done in hopes of being profitable. But I have to refer to it as something other than "switching coins often based on current profitability at the time of the switch".

CGWatcher 1.2.0 introduces profitability mining, the second most requested feature behind CGRemote (coming soon). This post will explain how this works, and how the Scheduled Actions used to control profitability mining work.


Scheduled Actions

The previous scheduling feature in CGWatcher provided a basic "start miner" and "stop miner" option, and meant that the scheduled mining would have to occur on the set days at the set times every week. I didn't want to just duplicate this feature a few times, and instead wanted to allow for unlimited control of scheduling the miner to perform a variety of actions. I think the Scheduled Actions (similar to Window's Scheduled Tasks but named differently to avoid confusion) provide that and allow for additional actions to be easily added in the future. They allow you to fine-tune what your miner does and when it does it, down to the exact.

The Scheduled Actions you create are displayed in the Schedule tab. They are sorted to display all enabled actions first, in chronological order of when they will next run. Disabled actions are displayed last.

Each action has an enable/disable checkbox, Edit button, and Delete button. Click Add Scheduled Action... to create a new action. The actions available at introduction are:

• Start Mining
• Stop Mining
• Restart Mining
• Restart Computer
• Change Intensity
• Switch Profile

When creating a scheduled action, think of creating a sentence instructing CGWatcher of what you want it to do. As you select one option, other available options may be changed or filtered.

After the action drop-down, the next field is the "value". For the Change Intensity action, this is the intensity you want to change to. For the Switch Profile action, a drop-down list of your profiles allows you to select which profile to switch to. There are some additional options at the bottom of this list related to profitability, which I'll go into more below.

The next option in the "sentence" you're creating is the frequency drop-down list. You can choose to have the action run daily, on a specific day, weekdays, or weekends. Using any of these options will lastly display a time option at which to start the action. The frequency drop-down also contains an Every... option, that when used changes the time option to a textbox where you can enter a number of hours at which to trigger the action. You can use a decimal if you wish to run the action at less-than-one-hour intervals.

You can create scheduled actions that run at the exact same time, but if you want to ensure one runs before another you should add at least one second to the one you want to run last because they are ran in order of the time you set. If you schedule a Start Mining action to run at 3:00:00 PM and a Change Intensity action to run at 3:00:01 PM, the Change Intensity action will run once the Start Mining action has completed (which takes more than one second), so you do not have to worry about timing actions depending on what they do.

When using Every... N hour(s) actions, the timer for each of these actions begins when CGWatcher is started. So creating an action to run every 4 hours would run first 4 hours after CGWatcher was started. Then it will run 4 hours after that, and so on. However, if you either edit an action or enable a disabled action, the timer's start time for it is reset.

If you move your mouse over a scheduled action in the Schedule tab, a tooltip will display the next time that action is set to run. (This only applies to enabled actions.)


Profitability Mining

So when using CGWatcher, profitability mining is using scheduled actions to automatically switch to mine the most profitable coin that you've setup to mine. It works by checking the current profitability of the various crypto-coins, and then switching to the profile with the most profitable coin. This means that you'll want to create a separate profile for each coin that you mine, and assign a coin to each profile in Profile Manager. If you do not assign a coin to a profile, the profile is ignored when determining which profile is most profitable.

The Profile Manager now includes a drop-down list to select the coin to associate to that profile. The coin data is collected from http://www.coinchoose.com, so new coins added to the website will become available in CGWatcher after the coin data is refreshed. CGWatcher also uses the data from coinchoose to determine profile profitability.

You'll need to assign a coin to at least two profiles in order for profitability mining to work. Otherwise if you did not assign a coin to any profiles, it would be unable to determine which is most profitable; and if you assign a coin to only one profile, that profile would always be the most profitable because there is nothing else to compare it to.

You can check profitability at any time by clicking an Other Tools... button and then selecting Profitability from the menu. There is also a Profitability button in the Settings tab. These open the Coin Profitability window, which displays current profitability data from coinchoose, along with some other information about each coin like hashing algorithm, difficulty, network hashrate, best price, and which exchange is currently offering the best price.

In the Coin Profitability window, you can sort columns by clicking on the column header cell once to sort ascending, then again to sort descending.

There are three columns relating to the coin profitability. The first, "Profitability", is the current profitability compared to Bitcoin. If profitability is 200%, mining that coin will earn you twice as many Bitcoins as mining Bitcoin itself. Obviously this value can change at any time, and you would need to convert the mined coins to Bitcoin immediately in order to preserve this increase. If you hold the coin and decide to convert to Bitcoins the next day when the coin's profitability is only at 50%, you've now lost the additional coins you made by profitability mining. Likewise, there is the possibility that holding the coins allows you to convert when the profitability is even higher, so it is a gamble. Yes, there are miners who are not interested in converting everything to Bitcoin. But that is an essential part of profitability mining, since all profitability is based on Bitcoin.

The second column is "Adjusted Profitability". This value has been adjusted for stales and is intended to give a more accurate estimate of profitability.

The third column is "Average Profitability", which is based on a 7-day average. This is useful if you are looking to mine something more continuously instead of jumping on whatever happens to be most profitable every couple hours.

So back in the Scheduled Action window, you'll see that if you select the Switch Profile action, there are three profitability options in the profiles drop-down list matching the three columns: {Most profitable}, {Most profitable - adjusted}, and {Most profitable - average}. Selecting one of these tells CGWatcher which profitability value you want it to use when determining which profile of yours is most profitable before switching to that profile.

By default, CGWatcher updates coin profitability data every 15 minutes. You can change this by editing the CoinRefreshInterval value in the [CGWatcher] section of the INI file. The minimum value is 5 minutes, and the maximum is 1380 (or 23 hours). When a scheduled action is triggered that switches profiles to most profitable, CGWatcher checks if the coin data has been refreshed in the past 15 minutes and if it hasn't, it attempts to refresh it to ensure it is selecting the current most profitable. If that refresh should fail and CGWatcher finds that the coin profitability data has not been updated in the past 24 hours, it cancels the action (which is why the maximum refresh interval is 23 hours.)

Some example scheduled actions:

Code:

[Switch Profile] to [{Most Profitable}] [Every...] [8] hour(s)

[Switch Profile] to [{Most Profitable - adjusted}] [Weekdays] at [8:00:00 AM]

[Switch Profile] to [{Most Profitable - average}] [Daily] at [5:00:00 PM]

[Start Mining] [] [Weekdays] at [10:00:00 PM]

[Stop Mining] [] [Daily] at [4:00:00 PM]

[Restart Mining] [] [Daily] at [12:00:00 PM]

[Restart Computer] [] [Monday] at [4:00:00 AM]

[Change Intensity] to [12] [Daily] at [8:00:00 AM]

Things to Think About

I'm not suggesting you should or shouldn't mine based on profitability. I've provided the tools to do it because it has been one of the most requested features. There are some things you should keep in mind when deciding whether profitability mining is right for you:

• Pool types: if you use PPLNS-type pools, switching pools often because of profitability changes could have a small negative effect on your earnings because these type of pools reward for consistent mining and try to penalize pool-hoppers, which is essentially what you are doing if you are constantly switching pools based on profitability. Therefore you should try to use PPS-type pools if you plan on switching profiles often.
• If everyone is switching with you, the coin may not stay most profitable for long. I don't expect this to be a big problem because CGWatcher probably doesn't have enough users to make a big impact on sending a bunch of miners to the same coin at the same time. As of this post, CGWatcher has over 2,500 (est) users (in over 65 countries! maybe translations are in order) and averages 100+ downloads per day, so there is the chance it has an effect in the future. But this assumes that all users are mining all coins. If Bob is only mining Bitcoin and Litecoin, his most profitable coin might be Litecoin even though DigitalCoin is most profitable. Tom has a DigitalCoin profile so when DigitalCoin is most profitable, profitability mining would switch him to DigitalCoin but Bob will still be back on Litecoin. Then you have to consider that how often you switch profiles based on profitability depends on how you setup your scheduled actions, so while Tom might switch every few hours, Bob might only switch once per week. So these lessen the odds of sending a wave of miners to the same coin at the same time.
• As I mentioned earlier, CGWatcher uses profitability values based on Bitcoin. So if you don't convert your more profitable coins to Bitcoin while they are still more profitable, you risk losing any gains you made by mining the more profitable coin.
  
• Because of these things, there is no guarantee that profitability mining will actually be more profitable. It depends a lot on how you set up your pools and when and if you convert your mined coins to Bitcoin. CGWatcher makes it much easier to do, but there is still work before and after coins are mined that CGWatcher cannot do for you.
• This is a new feature, so if you experience any problems with actions not running when they are supposed to, please let me know. I did quite a bit of testing, but there are always bugs that won't be found until it is released to users, especially with the wide range of setups miners use.
• I will probably add this ability to CGRemote for non-Windows users by adding and switching pools via the API, but it is too early to say for sure. It may be limited to coins of the same algorithm since CGRemote will not have the same abilities as CGWatcher does if running on a remote computer. I'll have more info on this in the future as CGRemote progresses.
• Only you can determine if profitability mining is a wise strategy for you. I am not suggesting it is or isn't. I take no responsibility for any losses, we all know how volatile prices can be. Likewise, I take no credit for gains... though you are still more than welcome to donate.

If you're not already using CGWatcher, you can find more info and download here:

http://manotechnology.blogspot.com/p/cgwatcher.html

16 Credits ($400 savings) for 2 BTC (~$200) or best reasonable offer.

[CGWatcher - a GUI/monitor for CGMiner and BFGMiner]

CGWatcher - a GUI/monitor for CGMiner and BFGMiner

Latest version: 1.4.0
Latest version release date: June 29, 2014


New in this version:

• Improved support for SGMiner 4.2.x.
• New setting to prevent CGWatcher from modifying config file to enable API in case this causes problems with new miners.
• SGMiner pool property settings better handled, able to use or not use "pool-" prefix depending on what names are used in the config file. Also a setting has been added to specify whether pool settings should begin with "pool-" by default.
• "Disable temporary config file creation" setting not being saved correctly fixed.
• Other minor fixes and improvements.

Description
CGWatcher is a GUI for bitcoin miners CGMiner and BFGMiner. Along with giving a graphical interface to the miner, it has several options to monitor the miner and correct problems when they are detected. It helps to minimize downtime while providing something a little easier to look at.

It works via the miner's API, which was created for this purpose - to allow other software to communicate with the miner. While there are several web applications to allow remote monitoring of these miners, that is not the purpose of CGWatcher. It is designed to run on the same computer as the miner, and will watch for the conditions you set to determine if the miner is working properly. If it is not, CGWatcher takes the appropriate actions to correct the problem (usually restarting the miner.) The idea is to create a program that does the monitoring for you, so you don't have to use those web applications to constantly check on your miners.

CGWatcher is a small and portable .NET application. It will run as a 32-bit application in 32-bit Windows, or a 64-bit application in 64-bit Windows so it can work with 64-bit miners. It can be run inside sandbox environments like Sandboxie if you don't trust it (although settings may not be saved after closing.) Included in the archive is the ReadMe text file, and libraries (links to library information are on the CGWatcher download page.) The program creates its own config file (CGWatcher.exe.ini), log (cgwatcher.log) and a couple data files once started to store profile and config file data. It also creates miner.log that records some mining-specific information like pool changes, hardware errors, GPU or pool status changes, etc. You can start CGWatcher while the miner is running, or use it to launch the miner (preferred).

                   

               

^{Screenshots of each tab in CGWatcher as of version 1.2.0}

Profiles
CGWatcher allows you to create mining profiles using different miners, config files, and/or arguments. When you first use it, it will create a default profile and try to locate a miner if one is running or one is located in the same directory or subdirectories of CGWatcher. If it cannot find a miner, you will have to manually specify where it is located and (optionally) a config file and/or arguments you want to use. You can do this by clicking the 'Manage Profiles...' button in the Settings tab. You can create as many profiles as you'd like for the different crypto-currencies you mine. You can also rename the default profile if you'd like, it just names the first one Default because I had to name it something. When you switch to a new profile ("activate" a profile), CGWatcher will use that profile's settings any time it starts or restarts the miner. However, if you switch profiles while a miner is running, you will obviously need to restart the miner in order for the new profile to be used. You can see which profile a currently running miner is using on the Status tab. Ideally it would always be the same as the active profile you've set... but if you changed profiles while mining and chose not to restart the miner when prompted, keep in mind that the miner will still be running on the previous profile until it is restarted (or stopped and started).

Monitor
The main purpose of CGWatcher is to keep the miner running properly. To do this, the monitor must be enabled (default). You can enable it by checking the first option on the Monitor tab, and set the interval (seconds) for how often it checks the miner's status and refreshes information. Monitor options include:

• Restart the miner if the total hashrate falls below X <Khs/Mhs/Ghs> for a specified number of seconds.
• Restart the miner after X hours of continuous mining to cover any problems that other checks may have missed. That ensures that should all other checks fail to detect a temporary problem, at worst the downtime should be limited to the number of hours you set here.
• Restart the miner if accepted shares or total shares do not increase for X number of minutes.
• Restarting the miner or computer when a sick or dead GPU is detected since sometimes the miner is unable to restart it itself.
• Restart the miner if it had full API access but now only has read-only (in the same miner process), as I've learned this usually indicates a problem. It will also restart if it had any API access to the miner process but now it has none.
• Ensure the miner stays running unless you pause or stop it inside CGWatcher. If this option is enabled and the miner is closed for any reason outside of CGWatcher (including you closing the miner window), it will be restarted.
• Scheduled mining - Scheduled actions give you complete control over what your miner does and when. Actions include start mining, stop mining, restart mining, restart computer, change intensity, switch profile, etc. Along with creating actions to run at specified times, you can create actions that run at set intervals.
  You can create profiles for each coin you mine, then set CGWatcher to switch to whatever is most profitable at the times or intervals you specify.
  You can also set CGWatcher to increase GPU intensities when the computer is idle or at certain times or intervals, and have it return them to their original values once you start using the computer again. You set the intensity, you set how long the computer must be idle before intensities are changed.

Statistics
These miners provide a lot of information. CGWatcher attempts to present it in an easier-to-read interface, using tabs to separate information. Ultimately I'd like it to record some data so you can see statistics over a given time period.

Control
You can easily change miner settings while it is running. Change GPU core, memory, voltage, or intensity. Re-prioritize and enable/disable pools. A large Pause/Resume button allows you to easily stop and resume mining (using "exit" command so GPUs and fans are returned to normal values.) Changing miner settings while it is running is temporary, as the changes will be lost when the miner closes. If you want to make the changes permanent, you can change the profile's settings or use the Config File Editor (or Notepad) to edit the profile's config file.

Overheat Protection
CGMiner provides overheat protection for AMD cards. Using the temp-target, temp-overheat, and temp-cutoff settings, it can adjust fan and clock speeds to maintain a target temperature and disable devices that get too hot (if auto-gpu is enabled.) CGWatcher now also provides similar protection for cards not protected by the miner (including Nvidia cards) by adjusting intensity to maintain the target temperature and disabling GPUs that get too hot. It will enable and/or slowly raise intensity back to their original values once temperatures cool down back into the target range. I'm not sure if anyone mines with Intel HD integrated graphics since modern CPUs have better OpenCL support. Currently CGWatcher does not support overheat protection for Intel devices, but I will be doing some tests to see whether the CPU temperatures it is now capable of getting are enough to provide similar support for these devices. You can see if the miner or CGWatcher is providing overheat protection for a GPU in the GPU tab next to the temperature.

For GPUs that miner is providing overheat protection for (AMD), CGWatcher takes a hands-off approach except for when the miner disables them for exceeding temp-cutoff. Although the miner tries to re-enable them once they return to target temperatures, this usually isn't successful so CGWatcher will restart the GPU once it has returned to temp-target temperature.

You can disable CGWatcher's overheat protection in the Monitor tab if you don't want it to perform any of these actions.

Config File Editor
The Config File Editor attempts to make editing your miner's configuration easier. To start, it displays the config file in a grid allowing you to see all available settings and a description of each. Settings that can only be enabled or disabled will have a true or false option. Settings that allow numbers only (not including lists of numbers) will only allow numbers. The 'Validate' button attempts to check your settings for errors that may prevent the miner from starting or working correctly. Some things to know about the Config File Editor:

• Settings that are set to default values are not written to the config file upon saving. They are also not converted to arguments, because they are set to default values and don't need to be explicitly set.
• To add, edit, or remove pools, locate Pools in the config file grid. (There may be a Pools category heading as well in Category view mode), but you want the Pools that says '(Collection)' in the cell next to it. Click on the word '(Collection)' and a small [...] button will appear in the cell. Click on this [...] button to open the pool window. If you've ever used a property grid in Microsoft or similar software, you will recognize this type of grid and the accompanying collection editor.
• When editing pools, you can create names for them as well so they are more easily identifiable when editing them later on. Pool names are saved inside the config file, but will not cause a problem with the miner. To change pool priorities, use the up and down arrows in the pools window to move pools up and down the list. The top of the list is the first priority, the bottom of the list is last priority.
• 'Name #' textbox - You can name your config files so when you're using them in profiles they will be easier to access. Enter a name for the config file in the Name textbox. Then when managing your profiles, you can select a Named config file from the Config File textbox drop-down instead of needing to browse your computer for it. After clicking out of the Config File textbox, it will be converted to the config file path automatically.
• 'Validate before saving' : By default, the Config File Editor will check most settings to make sure the values are valid and in the correct format. If you experience problems with validation failing due to your operating system's culture settings and are sure the values are correct, you can un-check this box to bypass validation.
• 'Ensure API is enabled upon saving' : If enabled, the API access needed by CGWatcher will always be enabled when saving the config file, regardless if these settings were enabled in the grid. It will not affect other groups/IP address in the api-allow setting, it only makes sure api-listen is enabled and that 127.0.0.1 is included in the W: group of api-allow.
• The Config File Editor Menu

         ■ File -> New - Create a new config file.
          ■ File -> Open - Open an existing config file.
          ■ File -> Save (As) - Save the current config file.
          ■ File -> Close - Close the Config File Editor.
          ■ Tools -> Import Settings -> From Config File... - select an existing config file to import settings from. The current settings will be overwritten, but will not be permanent until you save the config file.
          ■ Tools -> Import Settings -> From Named Config File -> <select> - if you've set names for config files using the Name textbox in Config File Editor, these config files can be loaded quickly by just this name, both in Config File Editor and in the Mining Profiles window. This is the same as the previous menu item, but quicker and easier.
          ■ Tools -> Import Settings -> From Arguments - enter or paste miner arguments to have them converted to a config file. If you have a config file open, you will be asked if you want to overwrite only the settings listed in the arguments, or if you want to create a new config file using only the settings listed in the arguments.
          ■ Tools -> Export Settings -> To Arguments - converts the current config file to miner arguments.
          ■ Tools -> Open this Config File in Notepad - opens config file in Notepad. There is also a button next to the config file's Path to open in Notepad.
          ■ Tools -> Validate this Config File - checks the config file for errors in the settings' formats or values.

Coin Profitability
See what coins are currently most profitable to mine and create scheduled actions to switch to mine those coins at specific times, days, or intervals.

Requirements
CGWatcher runs on Windows and requires the .NET framework 4.0. You can download the .NET framework using the link on the CGWatcher download page. It should work with the latest versions of CGMiner and BFGMiner, although changes to those miners may require changes to CGWatcher. Testing with most recent versions of both has worked without issue.
In order for CGWatcher to work properly, it needs full access to the miner's API. While you had to do this manually in previous versions, 1.1.5.0 and forward do this automatically. If the correct API settings are not set in the config file or arguments, CGWatcher will still make sure the API is enabled without modifying the profile's arguments or config file. This obviously only applies to miners started from CGWatcher using the Start Mining or Start button. If you start the miner outside of CGWatcher you will need to ensure the API is enabled for CGWatcher to detect and use it.


Remote Monitoring and Control

CGRemote (click image to go to CGRemote page for more information and screenshots)

       

CGRemote allows you to monitor and control your miners remotely, with or without CGWatcher. This includes miners on the same computer, on the same network, or in different locations over the Internet. All the control of CGWatcher for all of your miners in one program. CGRemote is currently in beta, more information can be found here:

http://www.coinmyne.com/cgremote


Latest version: 1.4.0 (Download)

More information and download link can be found at the CGWatcher page:
http://www.coinmyne.com/cgwatcher


Changelog

New in version 1.4.0

• "Do not modify original config file to enable API during miner start" setting will further prevent CGWatcher from modifying config files, but requires the user to ensure the API is properly enabled.
• SGMiner pool settings now use whatever name was found in config file (with or without pool- prefix). A setting has also been added to indicate the default - whether pool- prefix should be used by default for new settings that did not appear in the config file.
• Bug causing "Disable temporary config file creationg..." setting to not be saved after CGWatcher restarted has been fixed.

New in version 1.3.9

• "Disable temporary config file creation during miner start" setting added. If enabled, CGWatcher will not use a temporary config file when launching the miner, meaning it is less likely to have issues with new settings. Disabling the temporary config file may cause problems if sharing config files between miners, as one miner may modify the config file before launch thus affecting another miner using that file at the same time. It also means arguments do not get used over config files if the same setting is set in both, as CGWatcher applies arguments to the temporary config file to ensure arguments get priority.
• SGMiner pool settings added (e.g. pool-algorithm, pool-nfactor, etc.)

New in version 1.3.8

• UPnP Port Mapping improved. Adding port map will not remove other port maps. Removing port maps can be done for the current computer or for all computers.
• Fixed create new profile using CGRemote returning 'missing data' error if using a URL as config file.
• Fixed (completely re-wrote) increase/decrease text sizes in Settings -> Display
• Fixed bug causing coin data to not retrieve algorithm correctly when data is from CoinWarz
• Improved CGWatcher startup entry creation when CGWatcher restarts the computer and startup option is disabled to work on Windows 8/8.1 systems.
• Improved support with BFGMiner returning 'devs' response without numbering PGA devices.
• Added new ASIC config settings to Config File Editor, better organized existing settings.
• Additional ASIC device name support.
• Other minor fixes and improvements.

New in version 1.3.7 (experimental)

• Pool Guard feature added to help protect against miner hijacking.

New in version 1.3.6

• Fix CPU priority settings when using a batch file.
• Added vertminer to known miner names
• New 'Startup Batch file' option added for setting CGWatcher to start with Windows. This is recommended for Windows 8/8.1 where the other settings have known issues.
• Monitor setting to set maximum hashrate threshold
• New start mining failure option to restart computer if failed starts exceed threshold.
• Remove scrypt settings when miner is sgminer.
• Default gpu-thread value of 2 can now be disabled in Settings -> Miner tab.
• Xintensity,rawintensity, and cl-filename settings support added (no longer under Misc. Options)
• New troubleshoot mode setting will help start miner in such a way that it is easier to see errors and debug info.
• Force close other programs on computer restart setting in Settings -> CGWatcher
• Fixed Windows startup entries not being removed when changed to a different method.
• Startup entries now given identifiers in filename so in cases of multiple instances, one doesn't overwrite the other.
• Experimental increase/decrease text size is now a setting in Settings -> Display and persists through restarts.
• Coin 'never remove' flag and 'adjustment' field can now be imported from CGRemote during coin updates.
• Additional fields available for edit in Coin Manager.
• Additional support for VertMiner
• Email settings tab added, setting for default email address for use in notifications where email is not specified.

New in version 1.3.4

• Data output option in Settings -> Data tab to output stats to a file at a specified interval for creating reports in other software.
• api-network config setting changed to boolean data type (had been set as a string data type)
• Resizable main window and increase/decrease text sizes (drop-down list in Tests tab, considered beta) to accommodate Windows text

sizes larger than 100%. Changes do not persist until feedback is collected.

• Miner startup threshold (seconds) setting created/added to UI
• Kill miner process during restart (instead of sending quit command) option added to improve stability
• Option to always kill miner process instead of quit command for GPUs that bluescreen during miner shutdown (270, 290 series)
• Coin profitability data improvements to reduce api calls
• Coin data can now be sent from CGRemote, allowing all miners running CGWatcher to be updated with one API call.
• GPU-related numeric config settings changed to strings to accommodate variables.
• Create individual coin profitability adjustments in Coin Manager
• New (optional) feature to switch profiles without restarting the miner in possible.
• CGWatcher can show which coin you're mining on some multi-coin pools (additional pools support coming soon - min 5 minute updates)
• Fixed email not working if active profile did not have a coin assigned to it.
• Accepted/Rejected/Stale share count last change time reset if pool changes.
• Fixed api-allow not putting W: in front of localhost IP if it did not have it and other addresses were present.
• Fixed scheduled action failure threshold not being honored when actions were not successful.
• Coin symbol max length increased from 3 to 5 to allow new coins using 4-character symbols.
• Fixed start miner attempts and thresholds not working correctly in some scenarios.
• Fixed issue with coin profitability data formatting, and added an option to disable formatting in Coin Manager.
• Other fixes and improvements and stuff I forgot to write down.

New in version 1.3.3

• CoinWarz added as optional coin data provider (API key required, see http://coinwarz.com/v1/api for more info)
• Do not show CGRemote ads if user is using CGRemote.
• Drop-down list of coins in Coin Manager -> Custom Field -> Test sorted.
• Coin algorithm added to custom field value expression variables. Returns 1 for sha256, 2 for scrypt.
• On Status tab, Efficiency replaced with custom stat. You can leave it at Efficiency, select a different statistic, or create your own statistic.
• Fixed "when highest/lowest custom field value changes" event description not displaying correctly in scheduled actions list.
• Added "Device elapsed" to GPU and USB devices as added in miner API 1.32.
• Unrecognized remote commands will be tested by being sent to miner (if running) rather than just reporting that the command is unrecognized. This will allow new miner API commands to be used manually without necessarily requiring a CGWatcher update.
• Fixed "Manage Pools" button opening temporary config file instead of actual profile config file.
• Fixed causing "Switch Profile" in CGRemote to not start miner using new profile.
• Add "log" and "report" commands for CGRemote to get log and report data.
• Add "New Block average (seconds)" and "Found Block average (seconds)" values for custom profitability formula field and custom value expression.
• Add "Utility" and "Work Utility" values for custom profitability formula field.
• Current and average hashrates added to window title bar.
• Fixed icarus-timing option incorrectly mirroring usb option in Config File Editor.
• Tests tab reorganized, additional debug reports and utilities moved to drop-down list.
• 'Clear all Windows autorun entries' in Tests tab (drop-down) will remove all CGWatcher entries from Windows startup as a way to get a clean slate. It also disables the "Run when Windows starts" setting, which can be re-enabled afterward.
• Chart on Status tab now shows mining devices only, including FPGA/ASIC devices that report temperature.
• Setting created to ensure CGWatcher & miner are relaunched automatically after CGWatcher-initiated computer restart.
• "Restart CGWatcher" scheduled action created, which may help in situations where CGWatcher stops responding or crashes after running for X consecutive days on low memory computers. This has only been reported once, and I often check for memory leaks, but this is a simple alternative (temporary) solution.
• "Restart CGWatcher" command added for CGRemote.
• Miner auto-launch delay setting added to UI (Monitor -> Other -> Continuous Mining)
• Displayed hashrate formatting improved for consistency.
• CGRemote command to have CGWatcher automatically check and update itself added.
• Other minor fixes and improvements.

New in version 1.3.2

• Desktop folder added to protected directories list to notify user that CGWatcher, miner, and config files should not be stored there.
• Advanced Profile options to set CPU affinity and priority for miner process. Additional options to come in future versions.
• Profile matching relaxed during miner launch to reduce risk of miner being ignored (rare).
• Fixed ads only reloading after restarting CGWatcher.
• Button added to Tests tab to list all installed .NET updates for troubleshooting purposes.
• Option to restart computer if CGWatcher is unable to close or kill miner processes. Although rare, this indicates a more serious problem (Task Manager is also unable to kill the processes) and usually leads to a BSOD (crash). The only way to resolve this is to restart the computer.
• Pools truncated from miner's API response (~Pool 35+) will get info from config to avoid chinese-looking characters being shown for url/username/password. No stats are available for these pools though because the data is cutoff from the miner's response, which has a fixed maximum length.
• Fixed pools set in arguments being added twice to temp config file before miner starts.
• Added scheduled action to send specified API command(s) to miner.
• Settings tab added to Coin Manager, 'Remove coins no longer on CoinChoose' option moved to Settings tab of Coin Manager.
• Coin profitability data refresh interval setting now in Settings tab of Coin Manager.
• Setting created to base coin profitability on bitcoin or litecoin, located in Settings tab of Coin Manager.
• New coin notification option moved to Settings tab of Coin Manager.
• Scheduled action frequency added - 'When event occurs...' allowing you to select from a list of events that will trigger the action being run. Events currently consist of miner events, profile events, and coin profitability events. More events will be added in future updates.
• Create your own profitability formula in a custom coin field that can be used when creating scheduled actions that switch profile based on profitability. Instead of using an existing field (profitability, difficulty, etc) you can create your own mathematical expression using all existing fields and mathematical functions.
• Fixed CGWatcher not trying to start the miner indefinitely when the 'Keep trying indefinitely' failure option was selected. (It will try up to 2147843647 times.)
• Miner process not added to checked process list until it has been running for 60+ seconds to prevent incorrectly ignoring it.
• Added 'Send email' scheduled action. You can specify an email address for each action, the last used will be filled in automatically. Emails are currently limited to 25 per computer per day, but this may increase or decrease over time depending on usage. Counter is reset at midnight EST/EDT (U.S. Eastern). Emails will be coming from @cgwatcher.com, and you will need to ensure you can access http://minerremote.com for email to work correctly.
• More scheduled action events will be added, with additional options like 'when hashrate drops below/%', 'when miner restart fails X consecutive times, etc. I figured I'd add them in groups instead of trying to do it all at once.
• If CGWatcher is set to try starting the miner indefinitely (and it keeps failing), it will wait one second per 10 attempts in between attempts over 10, up to 60 seconds. So after 600 attempts it will wait one minute between each attempt.
• CGWatcher restarting GPUs that cgminer has disabled due to overheat no longer requires CGWatcher's overheat protection to be enabled. It will do this for all GPUs since the miner usually fails at re-enabling them.
• Before restarting computer, CGWatcher will temporarily set itself to start with Windows and launch miner at startup if these options are not enabled. It will reset the options back to their original settings the next time CGWatcher is started.
• Restart computer prompt changed to always use CGWatcher's prompt only, which provides a cancel option, rather than the Windows notification that the computer is restarting. This was already how scheduled computer restarts were handled, but is now done for all computer restarts.
• Profitability-based scheduled actions (switch profile based on profitability) will update coin data before selecting a profile unless it had been updated within the past minute instead of within the past 5 minutes.
• Added average time per share to Monitor tab to help in setting appropriate number of minutes without share increase for this monitoring option.
• Added "% of Avg" to Hashrate Cutoff monitoring option, which will restart the miner if the current hashrate drops below the specified percentage of the current average hashrate. This is in addition to being able to set actual hashrate values.
• Elapsed mining time added to Stats tab.
• In Pools tab, pool drop-down will default to current pool and revert to current pool if user has not selected a different pool to view within the last 5 minutes.
• Added support for pool quota option in CGMiner 3.4.3+
• Added config file and argument options up through CGMiner 3.5.0 and BFGMiner 3.2.1.
• Select a different value to display on the Status tab in place of Efficiency, or create your own value using existing values and mathematical functions to create a custom expression.

New in version 1.3.1

• add bitburner code/name to default mining devices.
• improved automatic API enabling to fix issues with api-allow option being modified incorrectly and locking out other API monitoring applications.
• thread sync locking on remote socket collection handling.
• fix default profiles and variables file paths being saved to CGWatcher.exe.ini which caused profiles and variables to not save correctly if the CGWatcher folder was moved or copied to another location because the paths would still point to the original location. These are now left blank unless you change them manually to non-default paths.
• CGRemote file explorer commands expanded to allow full directory navigation, file copy, file info, and existing commands improved.
• CGRemote commands to add, modify, and delete profiles improved.
• Ads may be displayed occasionally (30 seconds per hour, can be closed by clicking X) on CGWatcher's main window with the exception of donation miners.
• Update and version data backup sites added to (hopefully) get around the main site being blocked in certain countries.
• Pool elapsed time now recorded per pool, available in the Pools tab and Report tab. Also includes a percentage to see which pools were used and how much.
• Remote options window created to provide additional options for CGRemote in the future, and allow for setting a default miner path (which defaults to your most-used miner executable) to use with global profiles.
• Several other improvements (I lost track at some point).

New in version 1.3.0

• FIXED: CGWatcher closing unexpectedly without any error messages during hardware refresh. I believe I found the cause, please let me know if I haven't.
• FIXED: Ignore profile switching if profile being switched to is already active.
• CHANGED: Max wait time for miner to start doubled (30 seconds for exe, 60 seconds for batch files). This is the maximum wait time for API to initialize. If it initializes sooner or the miner window closes, it stops waiting.
• ADDED: Coin Manager allows you to add, edit, and remove coins and exchanges.
• ADDED: Scrollbars to tabs if necessary (if Windows text size is set to > 100%). It will still look ugly, but at least you can get to all controls.
• ADDED: Notifications when new coins appear on coinchoose, showing name, algorithm, and profitability info. This can be disabled by changing NotifyOnNewCoins=True to NotifyOnNewCoins=False in CGWatcher.exe.ini. (default is enabled).
• FIXED: Incorrect profile being shown for miner after prompted to create new profile (again).
• FIXED: Some minor issues fixed that may have caused API access failure in certain (rare) circumstances, particularly when starting CGWatcher while a miner was already running.
• ADDED: Additional logging when changing intensity on idle so the result is logged regardless of what happens, even if skipped. Remember that the intensity on idle is only changed if the idle intensity is higher than the current intensity, or either of the values are "D".
• CHANGED: Failed scheduled actions no longer disabled, but marked as Failed when their consecutive failures meet the limit set in Monitor tab. They will not be triggered when Failed=True. Failed flag is reset when the miner is successfully started/restarted or the action is modified or enabled.
• ADDED: Events created in preparation of creating scheduling options based on miner events.
• FIXED: pools using -userpass/-O option being applied to config file correctly.

New in version 1.2.9

• ADDED: settings for customizing how CGWatcher handles miner start failures.
• ADDED: setting for how many times a scheduled action should be tried if it fails the first time.
• ADDED: "start miner if not already running" option for certain scheduled actions.
• FIXED: spaces in config file path bug
• FIXED: variables not being replaced in arguments in some sitatuions.
• FIXED: scheduler logic part II. This may require additional work, but it's getting there.
• ADDED: Prompt for pool if no pool has been specified rather than trying to wait for user to enter in miner prompt.
• ADDED: coins to profile drop-down list in Settings tab.
• CHANGED: GPU status getting updated sooner after miner restart to ensure scheduled actions that modify a GPU's settings are not skipped because the GPU is thought to be inactive.
• ADDED: several more commands added for CGRemote.
• CHANGED: When data is requested from CGRemote while CGWatcher is in the middle of starting, restarting, or stopping the miner, a busy response is returned until the action is completed to avoid unnecessary messages.
• FIXED: hashrates showing XXX.9999 or XXX.0001 rounded to nearest whole number. This is caused by using single variables to store hashrates, which promote speed and therefore may slightly lose precision. This still may occur for some numbers, but less often. It is only a visual quirk and does not negatively affect mining.
• FIXED: Several other improvements or fixes were made that I forgot to write down. There are some new items on the to-do list as well, it's just a matter of getting to them.

New in version 1.2.8

• FIXED: Scheduler almost completely re-written to ensure new options peacefully coexist with old options.
• CHANGED: Scheduled actions will not persist through restart if they have a stop time that will occur within before the next estimated monitor check time.
• CHANGED: Scheduled action notifications are standardized for all options, and now followed by a result notification (green or red depending on success or failure).
• CHANGED: Scheduled actions set to persist through restarts will still persist if Pause Mining button is clicked by user. Stop button and Restart button cancels persistance.
• CHANGED: All monitor checks will not be performed during the first 30 seconds of mining or after CGWatcher starting to ensure the miner is able to start properly. Any actions that fall within this time frame will be performed immediately following this grace period.
• CHANGED: CGremote notifications changed from gray to purple to make more visible.
• CHANGED: Variables moved from CGWatcher.exe.ini to variables.ini, whose file path can be changed in CGWatcher.exe.ini [Settings] VariablesDataFile=<path>
• FIXED: Variables not working correctly if you included the surrounding %...% in their names when creating them.
• FIXED: Bug causing variables not to be applied correctly to web config files.
• FIXED: Bug causing config file load error if pool names contained brackets.
• FIXED: Pool passwords not displayed when pool specified in arguments (no config file). This did not affect mining.
• ADDED: -v <port> command line argument allows setting miner API override port (miner will only use this port). This applies only while CGWatcher is running with this command used at launch or until user saves settings (it is not saved to INI file by using command alone).
• FIXED: Scheduled actions set to run on specific date not being triggered correctly.
• FIXED: Scheduled actions set to run on specific date that also have a stop time set are not deleted until after stopped.
• FIXED: Start mining and restart mining routines re-written to use temporary config files and batch files to ensure originals are not altered in case they are being shared by multiple miners.
• FIXED: Batch files given twice as long startup time since they can take a little longer to get going depending on other commands.
• CHANGED: "Restart miner when sick or dead GPUs detected" monitor option will now apply to FPGA and ASIC devices by default. Previously this was disabled by default to get some feedback without causing any problems.
• FIXED: "Hashrate cutoff" monitor option bugging you if you left the sha256 or scrypt hashrate at zero.
• ADDED: (Updater v1.2) MD5 Hash Check in Auto-Update utility to ensure auto-update files have not been modified.
• ADDED: If 2> log argument is found and miner not using batch/command file, a temporary one is created and used to launch the miner to fix .NET's problem with this argument.
• CHANGED: Minutes of inactivity before computer is considered idle on Schedule tab applies to all settings (included scheduled actions) so changed interface to make this clearer.
• CHANGED: Scheduled actions "program starts" and "program stops" changed to "program is running" and "program is not running" to make it clearer that these may be applied as long as the specified program is running/not running if action is set to persist through restarts.
• CHANGED: Scheduled action frequencies "is idle" and "is not idle" wording changed to better indicate these actions will be applied any time these conditions are true.
• FIXED: Scheduled actions resorted after each check in which actions are triggered to ensure they are always performed in chronological order.
• ADDED: Scheduled action "run program" that will launch a specified program (with optional specified arguments). This action can have a stop time, and like other actions can be triggered when a program stops running. (e.g. "run TeamViewer" when "TeamViewer" stops running). If a stop time is set, it will only close the instance it created and no other instances.
• CHANGED: Scheduled actions that are set to run when the computer is idle, not idle or when a program is running or not running are no longer persistable through restarts. These actions are applied any time the condition is true, including after restarts.
• FIXED: Notification that GPU was restarted after being disabled from overheat when it had actually been re-enabled by scheduler.
• CHANGED: Restart miner/computer when sick or dead GPU is detected now also includes FPGA and ASIC devices by default. Previously this had to be enabled manually in the ini file.

New in version 1.2.7
(some of these changes were made in 1.2.6.1)

• FIXED: When prompted to create new profile if miner found not matching one, new profile created successfully but miner assigned to wrong profile.
• TEST: Added ability to restart miner if sick or dead FPGA or ASIC is detected. Not sure if these devices are reported as sick or dead and if so, if restarting the miner is the best option (compared to restarting device). Can be enabled by changing [Monitor] RestartOnSickDeadUSBDevice=False to True.
• TEST: For 40+ devices, check that no devices have been truncated from devs command resulting in them not being reported. For these devices a separate command is sent to get data for each device. Some data is still unavailable for these last devices, specifically data that is truncated in the stats command.
• FIXED: thread-concurrency in arguments not being applied correctly to config file if it was a comma-separated list of values.
• ADDED: recent additions to config related to ASIC and FPGA devices now available in Config File Editor.
• ADDED: Certain scheduled actions can have stop times.
• FIXED: Scheduled action logs reporting actions were persisted through a restart when they weren't.
• FIXED: Notification showing miner command failed even when it succeeded.
• FIXED: Scheduled Action form showing wrong profile when editing scheduled action that switches to a specific profile (not profitability-related)
• ADDED: CGRemote capabilities extended to include modifying schedule and settings.
• ADDED: Option to set stop time for applicable scheduled actions. At stop time the action will restore item to its previous state.
• TEST: a bug was reported that when a scheduled action to stop mining occurred and the 'Ensure miner stays running' option is enabled, the miner would be restarted. I didn't find anything obvious that would cause this but rewrote some of the code involved, blew in it, and hit it a few times like an old Nintendo cartridge. In subsequent tests the issue seemed to be resolved.
• FIXED: Other minor bug fixes and improvements.

New in version 1.2.6

• Significant improvements when communicating with CGRemote.
• CGWatcher considers stop mining request from CGRemote as user initiated so if the "Ensure miner is running" option is enabled, it will not restart the miner.
• CGWatcher considers stop mining scheduled actions as user initiated so if the "Ensure miner is running" option is enabled, it will not restart the miner.
• Note added to acknowledge local IP address may be incorrect if more than one network adapter is present. I did change the method for getting the local IP to hopefully work better.
• Convert decimal place to period any time a decimal value is sent to CGRemote (not often as most data comes this way right from the miner and is passed on to CGRemote)
• Change Intensity When Idle option fixed so that if the miner is restarted while the computer is still idle (via CGRemote), the intensities will be changed again after the miner has been running for at least 30 seconds.
• New "Persist through miner restart" option available for certain scheduled actions like changing intensity or enabling/disabling a device and certain frequencies like on idle/off idle so if, for example, you create a scheduled action to raise intensity when the computer becomes idle, this intensity will be carried over if the miner is restarted by the Monitor, Scheduler, or CGRemote. This does not apply to user-initiated restarts like a user clicking the restart button.
• Miner can now be controlled using the following key combinations (to hopefully make it easier to stop the miner if intensity is set too high and mouse won't move):
          - Shift+M  start the miner
          - Shift+T  stop the miner
          - Shift+R  restart the miner (no confirmation prompt)
          - Shift+P  pause/resume miner
  
• For 'Change Intensities on Idle' option and 'Change Intensity/ies' scheduled actions, you can now specify two values separated by a backslash for SHA256/Scrypt. CGWatcher will use the value for the current algorithm.
• 'Restart miner if hashrate falls below' monitor option now has values for SHA256 and Scrypt, so the option doesn't have to be changed when switching algorithms.
• Fixed GPU reported as inactive if disabled by the miner for overheating and then the miner was restarted.
• Reduced need for modifying config files before miner start when using batch files to only when necessary to enable API or change api-port.
• Fixed autorun when Windows starts not being saved if auto-start miner was disabled.
• Preset and custom variables can be used inside batch/command files, arguments, and config files. (e.g. %USER% replaced with username)
• Increased potential value for difficulty since alt-coins may produce bizarre values
• Added new block and found block minute averages on Status tab
• Option to hide FPGA and ASIC devices if being reported incorrectly by the miner after device is unplugged and plugged back in. Open the device detail, click Hide in bottom left corner.
• Improved support for batch and command files, including additional time when waiting for start. Improved parsing also.
• Other improvements and fixes. Does anyone read these things? At a certain point I stopped writing down changes.

New in version 1.2.5

• Auto-update utility fixed
• Fixed Profile Manager open web config file/URL in Notepad 'file not found' error
• Minor fixes related to CGRemote

New in version 1.2.4

• Minor fixes related to CGRemote

New in version 1.2.3

• Fixed enable/disable GPU that may have changed incorrect GPU in certain cases.
• Fixed difficulty overflows caused by ridiculous amount of decimal places in difficulty values.
• Added {highest reward}, {lowest difficulty}, {lowest network hashrate}, and {lowest network hashrate (average)} to scheduled action profile options.
• When creating scheduled actions that switch to conditional profiles (e.g. most profitable), you can now select 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. to switch to 1st most profitable, 2nd most profitable, etc.
• Added edit device option to correct devices being reported incorrectly by miner (e.g. ASIC reported as FPGA). Click Edit this Device link in bottom left corner of device detail to edit the device's properties.
• Added average temperature to GPU data textbox in GPU tab. Currently this is a test for accuracy and will later be used to diagnose GPU issues where temperature drops suddenly because of problems with the miner.
• Changed cgwatcher to force close programs on restart (after giving 30-second countdown with cancel button).
• Improved program initialization speed (starts quicker).
• Improved performance of interface updates when the miner's status has changed.
• Coins no longer listed on coinchoose are now deleted *IF* they are not assigned to a profile in order to keep the coin list relatively clean as altcoins come and go.
• Scheduled action last run times are saved so if CGWatcher is closed and re-opened, they will not be reset and will attempt to run N hours after the last run time. If last run time + N hours is in the past, time will be added in increments of N hours until the next run time is in the future (or now).
• GPUs, FPGAs, and ASICs not enabled with status of ALIVE now have current hashrate set to 0 to give an accurate hashrate, even though a number may still be reported by the miner. Please let me know if this has unintended consequences.
• Scheduled actions are not performed during a miner restart. If a restart is taking place at the time a scheduled action is triggered, it will be performed after the restart is completed.
• Option to restart computer if accepted or total share counts do not change for N minutes added.
• Allow for URLs when setting profile config files. More information in Profiles section above.
• Rearranged schedule options to allow for more options and also create room for future options.

New in version 1.2.2

• Fixed bug preventing profiles from saving correctly that I introduced in changes to 1.2.1

New in version 1.2.1.0

• Profiles can now be sorted by the user or sorted automatically (alphabetically)
• Fixed 'Start with Windows' issue where autorun entry was duplicated in certain cases causing two instances to start with Windows. The first time you run version 1.2.1 (as well as future versions) the issue will be fixed automatically.
• Coins you mine are now bolded in black text to distinguish them from coins you don't mine in Coin Profitability window. You can also filter coins to just show the coins you mine (coins you have assigned to profiles).
• Miner detection relaxed to allow for Windows 8 permission issues causing Access Denied errors when CGWatcher attempts to get a process's filename. The best solution for this is to run CGWatcher as Administrator if you experience these problems. I will continue to look for a better solution once I get a Windows 8 miner setup.
• CGRemote improvements, including removal of 'coming soon' message and enable CGRemote option in preparation for upcoming closed beta. This version and future versions will be compatible with CGRemote, though future versions may have additional features.
• Misc. improvements and additional debugging info added for new features to help with any future troubleshooting.

New in version 1.2.0.0:

• Created Scheduled Actions option to replace and improve upon existing scheduling option.
• Improved socket code in preparation for CGRemote beta.
• Added Schedule and CGRemote notification types (blue and gray respectively).
• Added coin option to profiles, allowing user to assign to profiles which coin they are mining to allow for determining profitability.
• Added coin profitability window showing data from http://coinchoose.com (see above).
• Fixed overheat protection only re-enabling or raising intensity on overheated GPU when its temp returns to under temp-target. Now this occurs once temp is under temp-overheat.
• Fixed issue with overheat protection not properly raising intensity in certain cases.
• GPUs disabled by overheat (by CGWatcher or the miner) will now show OVERHEAT (disabled) as a status. Clicking Enable button in GPU tab will restart the GPU to re-enable it (although if the temp is still above temp-cutoff, it will be disabled again if overheat protection is enabled.
• Overheat protection info has been made clearer in the GPU tab.
• Added support for new ASIC API options in cgminer 3.3.1 (API 1.26), and asc|N option in ASIC device test to improve future support.
• Added debug logging to help resolve permission issues with Windows 8 related to accessing process info.
• Notification added on startup if you are running CGWatcher from within Program Files, Program Files (x86), ProgramData, or Windows folder without running as Administrator as this could cause permission issues when writing to files.
• Removed prompt on Stop button unless without full API access.
• Command arguments (-m start minimized, -s start miner on launch, -p NAME activate profile on launch). If profile NAME has spaces in it, surround the name with quotation marks.
• Fixed auto-start with Windows issue that may have prevented successful creation of HKCU startup entry if HKLM entry failed due to invalid permissions.
• Disabling auto-start will check both HKCU and HKLM and remove from both if necessary to ensure it is not ran at startup.
• Additional information regarding new features added to the Report tab.

Pre-1.2.0 changelog removed to stay within forum post character limit. This information is still available in the readme.

[CGWatcher - a GUI/monitor for CGMiner and BFGMiner]

This topic has been moved to Miners (software): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=185553.msg1923857#msg1923857  
I don't know why I keep updating it either.

CGWatcher - a GUI/monitor for CGMiner and BFGMiner

Latest version: 1.3.2 (ReadMe)
Latest version release date: October 3, 2013


New in this version:

• New event-triggered scheduled actions.
• 'Send API commands' scheduled action.
• 'Send email' scheduled action.
• CPU priority and affinity can be set for each profile.
• Select a different value to display on the Status tab in place of Efficiency, or create your own value using existing values and mathematical functions to create a custom expression.
• Option to restart computer if CGWatcher is unable to kill miner processes.
• Coin and profitability options moved to Settings tab in Coin Manager.
• Create your own profitability formula using coin profitability data and common mathematical operators and functions.
• Select to base profitability on Bitcoin or Litecoin.
• CGWatcher now restarts GPUs disabled by the miner for overheating regardless of whether or not CGWatcher's overheat protection is enabled.
• Monitoring option 'Restart if hashrate falls below' can now set a percentage of average hashrate as well as specific hashrates (for sha256 and scrypt separately).
• Quota support for CGMiner 3.4.3+
• Config and API options have been caught up to CGMiner 3.5.0 and BFGMiner 3.2.1.
• Other fixes, see changelog for most prominent ones.

Description
CGWatcher is a GUI for bitcoin miners CGMiner and BFGMiner. Along with giving a graphical interface to the miner, it has several options to monitor the miner and correct problems when they are detected. It helps to minimize downtime while providing something a little easier to look at.

It works via the miner's API, which was created for this purpose - to allow other software to communicate with the miner. While there are several web applications to allow remote monitoring of these miners, that is not the purpose of CGWatcher. It is designed to run on the same computer as the miner, and will watch for the conditions you set to determine if the miner is working properly. If it is not, CGWatcher takes the appropriate actions to correct the problem (usually restarting the miner.) The idea is to create a program that does the monitoring for you, so you don't have to use those web applications to constantly check on your miners.

CGWatcher is a small and portable .NET application. It will run as a 32-bit application in 32-bit Windows, or a 64-bit application in 64-bit Windows so it can work with 64-bit miners. It can be run inside sandbox environments like Sandboxie if you don't trust it (although settings may not be saved after closing.) Included in the archive is the ReadMe text file, and libraries (links to library information are on the CGWatcher download page.) The program creates its own config file (CGWatcher.exe.ini), log (cgwatcher.log) and a couple data files once started to store profile and config file data. It also creates miner.log that records some mining-specific information like pool changes, hardware errors, GPU or pool status changes, etc. You can start CGWatcher while the miner is running, or use it to launch the miner (preferred).

                   

               

^{Screenshots of each tab in CGWatcher as of version 1.2.0}

Profiles
CGWatcher allows you to create mining profiles using different miners, config files, and/or arguments. When you first use it, it will create a default profile and try to locate a miner if one is running or one is located in the same directory or subdirectories of CGWatcher. If it cannot find a miner, you will have to manually specify where it is located and (optionally) a config file and/or arguments you want to use. You can do this by clicking the 'Manage Profiles...' button in the Settings tab. You can create as many profiles as you'd like for the different crypto-currencies you mine. You can also rename the default profile if you'd like, it just names the first one Default because I had to name it something. When you switch to a new profile ("activate" a profile), CGWatcher will use that profile's settings any time it starts or restarts the miner. However, if you switch profiles while a miner is running, you will obviously need to restart the miner in order for the new profile to be used. You can see which profile a currently running miner is using on the Status tab. Ideally it would always be the same as the active profile you've set... but if you changed profiles while mining and chose not to restart the miner when prompted, keep in mind that the miner will still be running on the previous profile until it is restarted (or stopped and started).

Monitor
The main purpose of CGWatcher is to keep the miner running properly. To do this, the monitor must be enabled (default). You can enable it by checking the first option on the Monitor tab, and set the interval (seconds) for how often it checks the miner's status and refreshes information. Monitor options include:

• Restart the miner if the total hashrate falls below X <Khs/Mhs/Ghs> for a specified number of seconds.
• Restart the miner after X hours of continuous mining to cover any problems that other checks may have missed. That ensures that should all other checks fail to detect a temporary problem, at worst the downtime should be limited to the number of hours you set here.
• Restart the miner if accepted shares or total shares do not increase for X number of minutes.
• Restarting the miner or computer when a sick or dead GPU is detected since sometimes the miner is unable to restart it itself.
• Restart the miner if it had full API access but now only has read-only (in the same miner process), as I've learned this usually indicates a problem. It will also restart if it had any API access to the miner process but now it has none.
• Ensure the miner stays running unless you pause or stop it inside CGWatcher. If this option is enabled and the miner is closed for any reason outside of CGWatcher (including you closing the miner window), it will be restarted.
• Scheduled mining - Scheduled actions give you complete control over what your miner does and when. Actions include start mining, stop mining, restart mining, restart computer, change intensity, switch profile, etc. Along with creating actions to run at specified times, you can create actions that run at set intervals.
  You can create profiles for each coin you mine, then set CGWatcher to switch to whatever is most profitable at the times or intervals you specify.
  You can also set CGWatcher to increase GPU intensities when the computer is idle or at certain times or intervals, and have it return them to their original values once you start using the computer again. You set the intensity, you set how long the computer must be idle before intensities are changed.

Statistics
These miners provide a lot of information. CGWatcher attempts to present it in an easier-to-read interface, using tabs to separate information. Ultimately I'd like it to record some data so you can see statistics over a given time period.

Control
You can easily change miner settings while it is running. Change GPU core, memory, voltage, or intensity. Re-prioritize and enable/disable pools. A large Pause/Resume button allows you to easily stop and resume mining (using "exit" command so GPUs and fans are returned to normal values.) Changing miner settings while it is running is temporary, as the changes will be lost when the miner closes. If you want to make the changes permanent, you can change the profile's settings or use the Config File Editor (or Notepad) to edit the profile's config file.

Overheat Protection
CGMiner provides overheat protection for AMD cards. Using the temp-target, temp-overheat, and temp-cutoff settings, it can adjust fan and clock speeds to maintain a target temperature and disable devices that get too hot (if auto-gpu is enabled.) CGWatcher now also provides similar protection for cards not protected by the miner (including Nvidia cards) by adjusting intensity to maintain the target temperature and disabling GPUs that get too hot. It will enable and/or slowly raise intensity back to their original values once temperatures cool down back into the target range. I'm not sure if anyone mines with Intel HD integrated graphics since modern CPUs have better OpenCL support. Currently CGWatcher does not support overheat protection for Intel devices, but I will be doing some tests to see whether the CPU temperatures it is now capable of getting are enough to provide similar support for these devices. You can see if the miner or CGWatcher is providing overheat protection for a GPU in the GPU tab next to the temperature.

For GPUs that miner is providing overheat protection for (AMD), CGWatcher takes a hands-off approach except for when the miner disables them for exceeding temp-cutoff. Although the miner tries to re-enable them once they return to target temperatures, this usually isn't successful so CGWatcher will restart the GPU once it has returned to temp-target temperature.

You can disable CGWatcher's overheat protection in the Monitor tab if you don't want it to perform any of these actions.

Config File Editor
The Config File Editor attempts to make editing your miner's configuration easier. To start, it displays the config file in a grid allowing you to see all available settings and a description of each. Settings that can only be enabled or disabled will have a true or false option. Settings that allow numbers only (not including lists of numbers) will only allow numbers. The 'Validate' button attempts to check your settings for errors that may prevent the miner from starting or working correctly. Some things to know about the Config File Editor:

• Settings that are set to default values are not written to the config file upon saving. They are also not converted to arguments, because they are set to default values and don't need to be explicitly set.
• To add, edit, or remove pools, locate Pools in the config file grid. (There may be a Pools category heading as well in Category view mode), but you want the Pools that says '(Collection)' in the cell next to it. Click on the word '(Collection)' and a small [...] button will appear in the cell. Click on this [...] button to open the pool window. If you've ever used a property grid in Microsoft or similar software, you will recognize this type of grid and the accompanying collection editor.
• When editing pools, you can create names for them as well so they are more easily identifiable when editing them later on. Pool names are saved inside the config file, but will not cause a problem with the miner. To change pool priorities, use the up and down arrows in the pools window to move pools up and down the list. The top of the list is the first priority, the bottom of the list is last priority.
• 'Name #' textbox - You can name your config files so when you're using them in profiles they will be easier to access. Enter a name for the config file in the Name textbox. Then when managing your profiles, you can select a Named config file from the Config File textbox drop-down instead of needing to browse your computer for it. After clicking out of the Config File textbox, it will be converted to the config file path automatically.
• 'Validate before saving' : By default, the Config File Editor will check most settings to make sure the values are valid and in the correct format. If you experience problems with validation failing due to your operating system's culture settings and are sure the values are correct, you can un-check this box to bypass validation.
• 'Ensure API is enabled upon saving' : If enabled, the API access needed by CGWatcher will always be enabled when saving the config file, regardless if these settings were enabled in the grid. It will not affect other groups/IP address in the api-allow setting, it only makes sure api-listen is enabled and that 127.0.0.1 is included in the W: group of api-allow.
• The Config File Editor Menu

         ■ File -> New - Create a new config file.
          ■ File -> Open - Open an existing config file.
          ■ File -> Save (As) - Save the current config file.
          ■ File -> Close - Close the Config File Editor.
          ■ Tools -> Import Settings -> From Config File... - select an existing config file to import settings from. The current settings will be overwritten, but will not be permanent until you save the config file.
          ■ Tools -> Import Settings -> From Named Config File -> <select> - if you've set names for config files using the Name textbox in Config File Editor, these config files can be loaded quickly by just this name, both in Config File Editor and in the Mining Profiles window. This is the same as the previous menu item, but quicker and easier.
          ■ Tools -> Import Settings -> From Arguments - enter or paste miner arguments to have them converted to a config file. If you have a config file open, you will be asked if you want to overwrite only the settings listed in the arguments, or if you want to create a new config file using only the settings listed in the arguments.
          ■ Tools -> Export Settings -> To Arguments - converts the current config file to miner arguments.
          ■ Tools -> Open this Config File in Notepad - opens config file in Notepad. There is also a button next to the config file's Path to open in Notepad.
          ■ Tools -> Validate this Config File - checks the config file for errors in the settings' formats or values.

Coin Profitability
See what coins are currently most profitable to mine and create scheduled actions to switch to mine those coins at specific times, days, or intervals.

Requirements
CGWatcher runs on Windows and requires the .NET framework 4.0. You can download the .NET framework using the link on the CGWatcher download page. It should work with the latest versions of CGMiner and BFGMiner, although changes to those miners may require changes to CGWatcher. Testing with most recent versions of both has worked without issue.
In order for CGWatcher to work properly, it needs full access to the miner's API. While you had to do this manually in previous versions, 1.1.5.0 and forward do this automatically. If the correct API settings are not set in the config file or arguments, CGWatcher will still make sure the API is enabled without modifying the profile's arguments or config file. This obviously only applies to miners started from CGWatcher using the Start Mining or Start button. If you start the miner outside of CGWatcher you will need to ensure the API is enabled for CGWatcher to detect and use it.


Remote Monitoring and Control

CGRemote (click image to go to CGRemote page for more information and screenshots)

       

CGRemote allows you to monitor and control your miners remotely, with or without CGWatcher. This includes miners on the same computer, on the same network, or in different locations over the Internet. All the control of CGWatcher for all of your miners in one program. CGRemote is currently in beta, more information can be found here:

http://manotechnology.blogspot.com/p/cgremote.html


Source
Source scheduled for release on the same day as Half Life 3. (honestly, some day). The Kaspersky heuristic false-positive occurs with some updates, not with others. I've stopped submitting false-positive reports because they only whitelist that exact update, meaning any changes or new updates takes it off the whitelist.


Latest version: 1.3.2 (Download) (ReadMe)


More information and download link can be found at the CGWatcher page:
http://manotechnology.blogspot.com/p/cgwatcher.html


Changelog

New in version 1.3.2

• Desktop folder added to protected directories list to notify user that CGWatcher, miner, and config files should not be stored there.
• Advanced Profile options to set CPU affinity and priority for miner process. Additional options to come in future versions.
• Profile matching relaxed during miner launch to reduce risk of miner being ignored (rare).
• Fixed ads only reloading after restarting CGWatcher.
• Button added to Tests tab to list all installed .NET updates for troubleshooting purposes.
• Option to restart computer if CGWatcher is unable to close or kill miner processes. Although rare, this indicates a more serious problem (Task Manager is also unable to kill the processes) and usually leads to a BSOD (crash). The only way to resolve this is to restart the computer.
• Pools truncated from miner's API response (~Pool 35+) will get info from config to avoid chinese-looking characters being shown for url/username/password. No stats are available for these pools though because the data is cutoff from the miner's response, which has a fixed maximum length.
• Fixed pools set in arguments being added twice to temp config file before miner starts.
• Added scheduled action to send specified API command(s) to miner.
• Settings tab added to Coin Manager, 'Remove coins no longer on CoinChoose' option moved to Settings tab of Coin Manager.
• Coin profitability data refresh interval setting now in Settings tab of Coin Manager.
• Setting created to base coin profitability on bitcoin or litecoin, located in Settings tab of Coin Manager.
• New coin notification option moved to Settings tab of Coin Manager.
• Scheduled action frequency added - 'When event occurs...' allowing you to select from a list of events that will trigger the action being run. Events currently consist of miner events, profile events, and coin profitability events. More events will be added in future updates.
• Create your own profitability formula in a custom coin field that can be used when creating scheduled actions that switch profile based on profitability. Instead of using an existing field (profitability, difficulty, etc) you can create your own mathematical expression using all existing fields and mathematical functions.
• Fixed CGWatcher not trying to start the miner indefinitely when the 'Keep trying indefinitely' failure option was selected. (It will try up to 2147843647 times.)
• Miner process not added to checked process list until it has been running for 60+ seconds to prevent incorrectly ignoring it.
• Added 'Send email' scheduled action. You can specify an email address for each action, the last used will be filled in automatically. Emails are currently limited to 25 per computer per day, but this may increase or decrease over time depending on usage. Counter is reset at midnight EST/EDT (U.S. Eastern). Emails will be coming from @cgwatcher.com, and you will need to ensure you can access http://minerremote.com for email to work correctly.
• More scheduled action events will be added, with additional options like 'when hashrate drops below/%', 'when miner restart fails X consecutive times, etc. I figured I'd add them in groups instead of trying to do it all at once.
• If CGWatcher is set to try starting the miner indefinitely (and it keeps failing), it will wait one second per 10 attempts in between attempts over 10, up to 60 seconds. So after 600 attempts it will wait one minute between each attempt.
• CGWatcher restarting GPUs that cgminer has disabled due to overheat no longer requires CGWatcher's overheat protection to be enabled. It will do this for all GPUs since the miner usually fails at re-enabling them.
• Before restarting computer, CGWatcher will temporarily set itself to start with Windows and launch miner at startup if these options are not enabled. It will reset the options back to their original settings the next time CGWatcher is started.
• Restart computer prompt changed to always use CGWatcher's prompt only, which provides a cancel option, rather than the Windows notification that the computer is restarting. This was already how scheduled computer restarts were handled, but is now done for all computer restarts.
• Profitability-based scheduled actions (switch profile based on profitability) will update coin data before selecting a profile unless it had been updated within the past minute instead of within the past 5 minutes.
• Added average time per share to Monitor tab to help in setting appropriate number of minutes without share increase for this monitoring option.
• Added "% of Avg" to Hashrate Cutoff monitoring option, which will restart the miner if the current hashrate drops below the specified percentage of the current average hashrate. This is in addition to being able to set actual hashrate values.
• Elapsed mining time added to Stats tab.
• In Pools tab, pool drop-down will default to current pool and revert to current pool if user has not selected a different pool to view within the last 5 minutes.
• Added support for pool quota option in CGMiner 3.4.3+
• Added config file and argument options up through CGMiner 3.5.0 and BFGMiner 3.2.1.
• Select a different value to display on the Status tab in place of Efficiency, or create your own value using existing values and mathematical functions to create a custom expression.

New in version 1.3.1

• add bitburner code/name to default mining devices.
• improved automatic API enabling to fix issues with api-allow option being modified incorrectly and locking out other API monitoring applications.
• thread sync locking on remote socket collection handling.
• fix default profiles and variables file paths being saved to CGWatcher.exe.ini which caused profiles and variables to not save correctly if the CGWatcher folder was moved or copied to another location because the paths would still point to the original location. These are now left blank unless you change them manually to non-default paths.
• CGRemote file explorer commands expanded to allow full directory navigation, file copy, file info, and existing commands improved.
• CGRemote commands to add, modify, and delete profiles improved.
• Ads may be displayed occasionally (30 seconds per hour, can be closed by clicking X) on CGWatcher's main window with the exception of donation miners.
• Update and version data backup sites added to (hopefully) get around the main site being blocked in certain countries.
• Pool elapsed time now recorded per pool, available in the Pools tab and Report tab. Also includes a percentage to see which pools were used and how much.
• Remote options window created to provide additional options for CGRemote in the future, and allow for setting a default miner path (which defaults to your most-used miner executable) to use with global profiles.
• Several other improvements (I lost track at some point).

New in version 1.3.0

• FIXED: CGWatcher closing unexpectedly without any error messages during hardware refresh. I believe I found the cause, please let me know if I haven't.
• FIXED: Ignore profile switching if profile being switched to is already active.
• CHANGED: Max wait time for miner to start doubled (30 seconds for exe, 60 seconds for batch files). This is the maximum wait time for API to initialize. If it initializes sooner or the miner window closes, it stops waiting.
• ADDED: Coin Manager allows you to add, edit, and remove coins and exchanges.
• ADDED: Scrollbars to tabs if necessary (if Windows text size is set to > 100%). It will still look ugly, but at least you can get to all controls.
• ADDED: Notifications when new coins appear on coinchoose, showing name, algorithm, and profitability info. This can be disabled by changing NotifyOnNewCoins=True to NotifyOnNewCoins=False in CGWatcher.exe.ini. (default is enabled).
• FIXED: Incorrect profile being shown for miner after prompted to create new profile (again).
• FIXED: Some minor issues fixed that may have caused API access failure in certain (rare) circumstances, particularly when starting CGWatcher while a miner was already running.
• ADDED: Additional logging when changing intensity on idle so the result is logged regardless of what happens, even if skipped. Remember that the intensity on idle is only changed if the idle intensity is higher than the current intensity, or either of the values are "D".
• CHANGED: Failed scheduled actions no longer disabled, but marked as Failed when their consecutive failures meet the limit set in Monitor tab. They will not be triggered when Failed=True. Failed flag is reset when the miner is successfully started/restarted or the action is modified or enabled.
• ADDED: Events created in preparation of creating scheduling options based on miner events.
• FIXED: pools using -userpass/-O option being applied to config file correctly.

New in version 1.2.9

• ADDED: settings for customizing how CGWatcher handles miner start failures.
• ADDED: setting for how many times a scheduled action should be tried if it fails the first time.
• ADDED: "start miner if not already running" option for certain scheduled actions.
• FIXED: spaces in config file path bug
• FIXED: variables not being replaced in arguments in some sitatuions.
• FIXED: scheduler logic part II. This may require additional work, but it's getting there.
• ADDED: Prompt for pool if no pool has been specified rather than trying to wait for user to enter in miner prompt.
• ADDED: coins to profile drop-down list in Settings tab.
• CHANGED: GPU status getting updated sooner after miner restart to ensure scheduled actions that modify a GPU's settings are not skipped because the GPU is thought to be inactive.
• ADDED: several more commands added for CGRemote.
• CHANGED: When data is requested from CGRemote while CGWatcher is in the middle of starting, restarting, or stopping the miner, a busy response is returned until the action is completed to avoid unnecessary messages.
• FIXED: hashrates showing XXX.9999 or XXX.0001 rounded to nearest whole number. This is caused by using single variables to store hashrates, which promote speed and therefore may slightly lose precision. This still may occur for some numbers, but less often. It is only a visual quirk and does not negatively affect mining.
• FIXED: Several other improvements or fixes were made that I forgot to write down. There are some new items on the to-do list as well, it's just a matter of getting to them.

New in version 1.2.8

• FIXED: Scheduler almost completely re-written to ensure new options peacefully coexist with old options.
• CHANGED: Scheduled actions will not persist through restart if they have a stop time that will occur within before the next estimated monitor check time.
• CHANGED: Scheduled action notifications are standardized for all options, and now followed by a result notification (green or red depending on success or failure).
• CHANGED: Scheduled actions set to persist through restarts will still persist if Pause Mining button is clicked by user. Stop button and Restart button cancels persistance.
• CHANGED: All monitor checks will not be performed during the first 30 seconds of mining or after CGWatcher starting to ensure the miner is able to start properly. Any actions that fall within this time frame will be performed immediately following this grace period.
• CHANGED: CGremote notifications changed from gray to purple to make more visible.
• CHANGED: Variables moved from CGWatcher.exe.ini to variables.ini, whose file path can be changed in CGWatcher.exe.ini [Settings] VariablesDataFile=<path>
• FIXED: Variables not working correctly if you included the surrounding %...% in their names when creating them.
• FIXED: Bug causing variables not to be applied correctly to web config files.
• FIXED: Bug causing config file load error if pool names contained brackets.
• FIXED: Pool passwords not displayed when pool specified in arguments (no config file). This did not affect mining.
• ADDED: -v <port> command line argument allows setting miner API override port (miner will only use this port). This applies only while CGWatcher is running with this command used at launch or until user saves settings (it is not saved to INI file by using command alone).
• FIXED: Scheduled actions set to run on specific date not being triggered correctly.
• FIXED: Scheduled actions set to run on specific date that also have a stop time set are not deleted until after stopped.
• FIXED: Start mining and restart mining routines re-written to use temporary config files and batch files to ensure originals are not altered in case they are being shared by multiple miners.
• FIXED: Batch files given twice as long startup time since they can take a little longer to get going depending on other commands.
• CHANGED: "Restart miner when sick or dead GPUs detected" monitor option will now apply to FPGA and ASIC devices by default. Previously this was disabled by default to get some feedback without causing any problems.
• FIXED: "Hashrate cutoff" monitor option bugging you if you left the sha256 or scrypt hashrate at zero.
• ADDED: (Updater v1.2) MD5 Hash Check in Auto-Update utility to ensure auto-update files have not been modified.
• ADDED: If 2> log argument is found and miner not using batch/command file, a temporary one is created and used to launch the miner to fix .NET's problem with this argument.
• CHANGED: Minutes of inactivity before computer is considered idle on Schedule tab applies to all settings (included scheduled actions) so changed interface to make this clearer.
• CHANGED: Scheduled actions "program starts" and "program stops" changed to "program is running" and "program is not running" to make it clearer that these may be applied as long as the specified program is running/not running if action is set to persist through restarts.
• CHANGED: Scheduled action frequencies "is idle" and "is not idle" wording changed to better indicate these actions will be applied any time these conditions are true.
• FIXED: Scheduled actions resorted after each check in which actions are triggered to ensure they are always performed in chronological order.
• ADDED: Scheduled action "run program" that will launch a specified program (with optional specified arguments). This action can have a stop time, and like other actions can be triggered when a program stops running. (e.g. "run TeamViewer" when "TeamViewer" stops running). If a stop time is set, it will only close the instance it created and no other instances.
• CHANGED: Scheduled actions that are set to run when the computer is idle, not idle or when a program is running or not running are no longer persistable through restarts. These actions are applied any time the condition is true, including after restarts.
• FIXED: Notification that GPU was restarted after being disabled from overheat when it had actually been re-enabled by scheduler.
• CHANGED: Restart miner/computer when sick or dead GPU is detected now also includes FPGA and ASIC devices by default. Previously this had to be enabled manually in the ini file.

New in version 1.2.7
(some of these changes were made in 1.2.6.1)

• FIXED: When prompted to create new profile if miner found not matching one, new profile created successfully but miner assigned to wrong profile.
• TEST: Added ability to restart miner if sick or dead FPGA or ASIC is detected. Not sure if these devices are reported as sick or dead and if so, if restarting the miner is the best option (compared to restarting device). Can be enabled by changing [Monitor] RestartOnSickDeadUSBDevice=False to True.
• TEST: For 40+ devices, check that no devices have been truncated from devs command resulting in them not being reported. For these devices a separate command is sent to get data for each device. Some data is still unavailable for these last devices, specifically data that is truncated in the stats command.
• FIXED: thread-concurrency in arguments not being applied correctly to config file if it was a comma-separated list of values.
• ADDED: recent additions to config related to ASIC and FPGA devices now available in Config File Editor.
• ADDED: Certain scheduled actions can have stop times.
• FIXED: Scheduled action logs reporting actions were persisted through a restart when they weren't.
• FIXED: Notification showing miner command failed even when it succeeded.
• FIXED: Scheduled Action form showing wrong profile when editing scheduled action that switches to a specific profile (not profitability-related)
• ADDED: CGRemote capabilities extended to include modifying schedule and settings.
• ADDED: Option to set stop time for applicable scheduled actions. At stop time the action will restore item to its previous state.
• TEST: a bug was reported that when a scheduled action to stop mining occurred and the 'Ensure miner stays running' option is enabled, the miner would be restarted. I didn't find anything obvious that would cause this but rewrote some of the code involved, blew in it, and hit it a few times like an old Nintendo cartridge. In subsequent tests the issue seemed to be resolved.
• FIXED: Other minor bug fixes and improvements.

New in version 1.2.6

• Significant improvements when communicating with CGRemote.
• CGWatcher considers stop mining request from CGRemote as user initiated so if the "Ensure miner is running" option is enabled, it will not restart the miner.
• CGWatcher considers stop mining scheduled actions as user initiated so if the "Ensure miner is running" option is enabled, it will not restart the miner.
• Note added to acknowledge local IP address may be incorrect if more than one network adapter is present. I did change the method for getting the local IP to hopefully work better.
• Convert decimal place to period any time a decimal value is sent to CGRemote (not often as most data comes this way right from the miner and is passed on to CGRemote)
• Change Intensity When Idle option fixed so that if the miner is restarted while the computer is still idle (via CGRemote), the intensities will be changed again after the miner has been running for at least 30 seconds.
• New "Persist through miner restart" option available for certain scheduled actions like changing intensity or enabling/disabling a device and certain frequencies like on idle/off idle so if, for example, you create a scheduled action to raise intensity when the computer becomes idle, this intensity will be carried over if the miner is restarted by the Monitor, Scheduler, or CGRemote. This does not apply to user-initiated restarts like a user clicking the restart button.
• Miner can now be controlled using the following key combinations (to hopefully make it easier to stop the miner if intensity is set too high and mouse won't move):
          - Shift+M  start the miner
          - Shift+T  stop the miner
          - Shift+R  restart the miner (no confirmation prompt)
          - Shift+P  pause/resume miner
  
• For 'Change Intensities on Idle' option and 'Change Intensity/ies' scheduled actions, you can now specify two values separated by a backslash for SHA256/Scrypt. CGWatcher will use the value for the current algorithm.
• 'Restart miner if hashrate falls below' monitor option now has values for SHA256 and Scrypt, so the option doesn't have to be changed when switching algorithms.
• Fixed GPU reported as inactive if disabled by the miner for overheating and then the miner was restarted.
• Reduced need for modifying config files before miner start when using batch files to only when necessary to enable API or change api-port.
• Fixed autorun when Windows starts not being saved if auto-start miner was disabled.
• Preset and custom variables can be used inside batch/command files, arguments, and config files. (e.g. %USER% replaced with username)
• Increased potential value for difficulty since alt-coins may produce bizarre values
• Added new block and found block minute averages on Status tab
• Option to hide FPGA and ASIC devices if being reported incorrectly by the miner after device is unplugged and plugged back in. Open the device detail, click Hide in bottom left corner.
• Improved support for batch and command files, including additional time when waiting for start. Improved parsing also.
• Other improvements and fixes. Does anyone read these things? At a certain point I stopped writing down changes.

New in version 1.2.5

• Auto-update utility fixed
• Fixed Profile Manager open web config file/URL in Notepad 'file not found' error
• Minor fixes related to CGRemote

New in version 1.2.4

• Minor fixes related to CGRemote

New in version 1.2.3

• Fixed enable/disable GPU that may have changed incorrect GPU in certain cases.
• Fixed difficulty overflows caused by ridiculous amount of decimal places in difficulty values.
• Added {highest reward}, {lowest difficulty}, {lowest network hashrate}, and {lowest network hashrate (average)} to scheduled action profile options.
• When creating scheduled actions that switch to conditional profiles (e.g. most profitable), you can now select 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. to switch to 1st most profitable, 2nd most profitable, etc.
• Added edit device option to correct devices being reported incorrectly by miner (e.g. ASIC reported as FPGA). Click Edit this Device link in bottom left corner of device detail to edit the device's properties.
• Added average temperature to GPU data textbox in GPU tab. Currently this is a test for accuracy and will later be used to diagnose GPU issues where temperature drops suddenly because of problems with the miner.
• Changed cgwatcher to force close programs on restart (after giving 30-second countdown with cancel button).
• Improved program initialization speed (starts quicker).
• Improved performance of interface updates when the miner's status has changed.
• Coins no longer listed on coinchoose are now deleted *IF* they are not assigned to a profile in order to keep the coin list relatively clean as altcoins come and go.
• Scheduled action last run times are saved so if CGWatcher is closed and re-opened, they will not be reset and will attempt to run N hours after the last run time. If last run time + N hours is in the past, time will be added in increments of N hours until the next run time is in the future (or now).
• GPUs, FPGAs, and ASICs not enabled with status of ALIVE now have current hashrate set to 0 to give an accurate hashrate, even though a number may still be reported by the miner. Please let me know if this has unintended consequences.
• Scheduled actions are not performed during a miner restart. If a restart is taking place at the time a scheduled action is triggered, it will be performed after the restart is completed.
• Option to restart computer if accepted or total share counts do not change for N minutes added.
• Allow for URLs when setting profile config files. More information in Profiles section above.
• Rearranged schedule options to allow for more options and also create room for future options.

New in version 1.2.2

• Fixed bug preventing profiles from saving correctly that I introduced in changes to 1.2.1

New in version 1.2.1.0

• Profiles can now be sorted by the user or sorted automatically (alphabetically)
• Fixed 'Start with Windows' issue where autorun entry was duplicated in certain cases causing two instances to start with Windows. The first time you run version 1.2.1 (as well as future versions) the issue will be fixed automatically.
• Coins you mine are now bolded in black text to distinguish them from coins you don't mine in Coin Profitability window. You can also filter coins to just show the coins you mine (coins you have assigned to profiles).
• Miner detection relaxed to allow for Windows 8 permission issues causing Access Denied errors when CGWatcher attempts to get a process's filename. The best solution for this is to run CGWatcher as Administrator if you experience these problems. I will continue to look for a better solution once I get a Windows 8 miner setup.
• CGRemote improvements, including removal of 'coming soon' message and enable CGRemote option in preparation for upcoming closed beta. This version and future versions will be compatible with CGRemote, though future versions may have additional features.
• Misc. improvements and additional debugging info added for new features to help with any future troubleshooting.

New in version 1.2.0.0:

• Created Scheduled Actions option to replace and improve upon existing scheduling option.
• Improved socket code in preparation for CGRemote beta.
• Added Schedule and CGRemote notification types (blue and gray respectively).
• Added coin option to profiles, allowing user to assign to profiles which coin they are mining to allow for determining profitability.
• Added coin profitability window showing data from http://coinchoose.com (see above).
• Fixed overheat protection only re-enabling or raising intensity on overheated GPU when its temp returns to under temp-target. Now this occurs once temp is under temp-overheat.
• Fixed issue with overheat protection not properly raising intensity in certain cases.
• GPUs disabled by overheat (by CGWatcher or the miner) will now show OVERHEAT (disabled) as a status. Clicking Enable button in GPU tab will restart the GPU to re-enable it (although if the temp is still above temp-cutoff, it will be disabled again if overheat protection is enabled.
• Overheat protection info has been made clearer in the GPU tab.
• Added support for new ASIC API options in cgminer 3.3.1 (API 1.26), and asc|N option in ASIC device test to improve future support.
• Added debug logging to help resolve permission issues with Windows 8 related to accessing process info.
• Notification added on startup if you are running CGWatcher from within Program Files, Program Files (x86), ProgramData, or Windows folder without running as Administrator as this could cause permission issues when writing to files.
• Removed prompt on Stop button unless without full API access.
• Command arguments (-m start minimized, -s start miner on launch, -p NAME activate profile on launch). If profile NAME has spaces in it, surround the name with quotation marks.
• Fixed auto-start with Windows issue that may have prevented successful creation of HKCU startup entry if HKLM entry failed due to invalid permissions.
• Disabling auto-start will check both HKCU and HKLM and remove from both if necessary to ensure it is not ran at startup.
• Additional information regarding new features added to the Report tab.

Pre-1.2.0 changelog removed to stay within forum post character limit. This information is still available in the readme.

[CGWatcher - a GUI/monitor for CGMiner and BFGMiner]

CGWatcher - a GUI/monitor for CGMiner and BFGMiner

Latest version: 1.4.0
Latest version release date: June 29, 2014


New in this version:

• Improved support for SGMiner 4.2.x.
• New setting to prevent CGWatcher from modifying config file to enable API in case this causes problems with new miners.
• SGMiner pool property settings better handled, able to use or not use "pool-" prefix depending on what names are used in the config file. Also a setting has been added to specify whether pool settings should begin with "pool-" by default.
• "Disable temporary config file creation" setting not being saved correctly fixed.
• Other minor fixes and improvements.

Description
CGWatcher is a GUI for bitcoin miners CGMiner and BFGMiner. Along with giving a graphical interface to the miner, it has several options to monitor the miner and correct problems when they are detected. It helps to minimize downtime while providing something a little easier to look at.

It works via the miner's API, which was created for this purpose - to allow other software to communicate with the miner. While there are several web applications to allow remote monitoring of these miners, that is not the purpose of CGWatcher. It is designed to run on the same computer as the miner, and will watch for the conditions you set to determine if the miner is working properly. If it is not, CGWatcher takes the appropriate actions to correct the problem (usually restarting the miner.) The idea is to create a program that does the monitoring for you, so you don't have to use those web applications to constantly check on your miners.

CGWatcher is a small and portable .NET application. It will run as a 32-bit application in 32-bit Windows, or a 64-bit application in 64-bit Windows so it can work with 64-bit miners. It can be run inside sandbox environments like Sandboxie if you don't trust it (although settings may not be saved after closing.) Included in the archive is the ReadMe text file, and libraries (links to library information are on the CGWatcher download page.) The program creates its own config file (CGWatcher.exe.ini), log (cgwatcher.log) and a couple data files once started to store profile and config file data. It also creates miner.log that records some mining-specific information like pool changes, hardware errors, GPU or pool status changes, etc. You can start CGWatcher while the miner is running, or use it to launch the miner (preferred).

                   

               

^{Screenshots of each tab in CGWatcher as of version 1.2.0}

Profiles
CGWatcher allows you to create mining profiles using different miners, config files, and/or arguments. When you first use it, it will create a default profile and try to locate a miner if one is running or one is located in the same directory or subdirectories of CGWatcher. If it cannot find a miner, you will have to manually specify where it is located and (optionally) a config file and/or arguments you want to use. You can do this by clicking the 'Manage Profiles...' button in the Settings tab. You can create as many profiles as you'd like for the different crypto-currencies you mine. You can also rename the default profile if you'd like, it just names the first one Default because I had to name it something. When you switch to a new profile ("activate" a profile), CGWatcher will use that profile's settings any time it starts or restarts the miner. However, if you switch profiles while a miner is running, you will obviously need to restart the miner in order for the new profile to be used. You can see which profile a currently running miner is using on the Status tab. Ideally it would always be the same as the active profile you've set... but if you changed profiles while mining and chose not to restart the miner when prompted, keep in mind that the miner will still be running on the previous profile until it is restarted (or stopped and started).

Monitor
The main purpose of CGWatcher is to keep the miner running properly. To do this, the monitor must be enabled (default). You can enable it by checking the first option on the Monitor tab, and set the interval (seconds) for how often it checks the miner's status and refreshes information. Monitor options include:

• Restart the miner if the total hashrate falls below X <Khs/Mhs/Ghs> for a specified number of seconds.
• Restart the miner after X hours of continuous mining to cover any problems that other checks may have missed. That ensures that should all other checks fail to detect a temporary problem, at worst the downtime should be limited to the number of hours you set here.
• Restart the miner if accepted shares or total shares do not increase for X number of minutes.
• Restarting the miner or computer when a sick or dead GPU is detected since sometimes the miner is unable to restart it itself.
• Restart the miner if it had full API access but now only has read-only (in the same miner process), as I've learned this usually indicates a problem. It will also restart if it had any API access to the miner process but now it has none.
• Ensure the miner stays running unless you pause or stop it inside CGWatcher. If this option is enabled and the miner is closed for any reason outside of CGWatcher (including you closing the miner window), it will be restarted.
• Scheduled mining - Scheduled actions give you complete control over what your miner does and when. Actions include start mining, stop mining, restart mining, restart computer, change intensity, switch profile, etc. Along with creating actions to run at specified times, you can create actions that run at set intervals.
  You can create profiles for each coin you mine, then set CGWatcher to switch to whatever is most profitable at the times or intervals you specify.
  You can also set CGWatcher to increase GPU intensities when the computer is idle or at certain times or intervals, and have it return them to their original values once you start using the computer again. You set the intensity, you set how long the computer must be idle before intensities are changed.

Statistics
These miners provide a lot of information. CGWatcher attempts to present it in an easier-to-read interface, using tabs to separate information. Ultimately I'd like it to record some data so you can see statistics over a given time period.

Control
You can easily change miner settings while it is running. Change GPU core, memory, voltage, or intensity. Re-prioritize and enable/disable pools. A large Pause/Resume button allows you to easily stop and resume mining (using "exit" command so GPUs and fans are returned to normal values.) Changing miner settings while it is running is temporary, as the changes will be lost when the miner closes. If you want to make the changes permanent, you can change the profile's settings or use the Config File Editor (or Notepad) to edit the profile's config file.

Overheat Protection
CGMiner provides overheat protection for AMD cards. Using the temp-target, temp-overheat, and temp-cutoff settings, it can adjust fan and clock speeds to maintain a target temperature and disable devices that get too hot (if auto-gpu is enabled.) CGWatcher now also provides similar protection for cards not protected by the miner (including Nvidia cards) by adjusting intensity to maintain the target temperature and disabling GPUs that get too hot. It will enable and/or slowly raise intensity back to their original values once temperatures cool down back into the target range. I'm not sure if anyone mines with Intel HD integrated graphics since modern CPUs have better OpenCL support. Currently CGWatcher does not support overheat protection for Intel devices, but I will be doing some tests to see whether the CPU temperatures it is now capable of getting are enough to provide similar support for these devices. You can see if the miner or CGWatcher is providing overheat protection for a GPU in the GPU tab next to the temperature.

For GPUs that miner is providing overheat protection for (AMD), CGWatcher takes a hands-off approach except for when the miner disables them for exceeding temp-cutoff. Although the miner tries to re-enable them once they return to target temperatures, this usually isn't successful so CGWatcher will restart the GPU once it has returned to temp-target temperature.

You can disable CGWatcher's overheat protection in the Monitor tab if you don't want it to perform any of these actions.

Config File Editor
The Config File Editor attempts to make editing your miner's configuration easier. To start, it displays the config file in a grid allowing you to see all available settings and a description of each. Settings that can only be enabled or disabled will have a true or false option. Settings that allow numbers only (not including lists of numbers) will only allow numbers. The 'Validate' button attempts to check your settings for errors that may prevent the miner from starting or working correctly. Some things to know about the Config File Editor:

• Settings that are set to default values are not written to the config file upon saving. They are also not converted to arguments, because they are set to default values and don't need to be explicitly set.
• To add, edit, or remove pools, locate Pools in the config file grid. (There may be a Pools category heading as well in Category view mode), but you want the Pools that says '(Collection)' in the cell next to it. Click on the word '(Collection)' and a small [...] button will appear in the cell. Click on this [...] button to open the pool window. If you've ever used a property grid in Microsoft or similar software, you will recognize this type of grid and the accompanying collection editor.
• When editing pools, you can create names for them as well so they are more easily identifiable when editing them later on. Pool names are saved inside the config file, but will not cause a problem with the miner. To change pool priorities, use the up and down arrows in the pools window to move pools up and down the list. The top of the list is the first priority, the bottom of the list is last priority.
• 'Name #' textbox - You can name your config files so when you're using them in profiles they will be easier to access. Enter a name for the config file in the Name textbox. Then when managing your profiles, you can select a Named config file from the Config File textbox drop-down instead of needing to browse your computer for it. After clicking out of the Config File textbox, it will be converted to the config file path automatically.
• 'Validate before saving' : By default, the Config File Editor will check most settings to make sure the values are valid and in the correct format. If you experience problems with validation failing due to your operating system's culture settings and are sure the values are correct, you can un-check this box to bypass validation.
• 'Ensure API is enabled upon saving' : If enabled, the API access needed by CGWatcher will always be enabled when saving the config file, regardless if these settings were enabled in the grid. It will not affect other groups/IP address in the api-allow setting, it only makes sure api-listen is enabled and that 127.0.0.1 is included in the W: group of api-allow.
• The Config File Editor Menu

         ■ File -> New - Create a new config file.
          ■ File -> Open - Open an existing config file.
          ■ File -> Save (As) - Save the current config file.
          ■ File -> Close - Close the Config File Editor.
          ■ Tools -> Import Settings -> From Config File... - select an existing config file to import settings from. The current settings will be overwritten, but will not be permanent until you save the config file.
          ■ Tools -> Import Settings -> From Named Config File -> <select> - if you've set names for config files using the Name textbox in Config File Editor, these config files can be loaded quickly by just this name, both in Config File Editor and in the Mining Profiles window. This is the same as the previous menu item, but quicker and easier.
          ■ Tools -> Import Settings -> From Arguments - enter or paste miner arguments to have them converted to a config file. If you have a config file open, you will be asked if you want to overwrite only the settings listed in the arguments, or if you want to create a new config file using only the settings listed in the arguments.
          ■ Tools -> Export Settings -> To Arguments - converts the current config file to miner arguments.
          ■ Tools -> Open this Config File in Notepad - opens config file in Notepad. There is also a button next to the config file's Path to open in Notepad.
          ■ Tools -> Validate this Config File - checks the config file for errors in the settings' formats or values.

Coin Profitability
See what coins are currently most profitable to mine and create scheduled actions to switch to mine those coins at specific times, days, or intervals.

Requirements
CGWatcher runs on Windows and requires the .NET framework 4.0. You can download the .NET framework using the link on the CGWatcher download page. It should work with the latest versions of CGMiner and BFGMiner, although changes to those miners may require changes to CGWatcher. Testing with most recent versions of both has worked without issue.
In order for CGWatcher to work properly, it needs full access to the miner's API. While you had to do this manually in previous versions, 1.1.5.0 and forward do this automatically. If the correct API settings are not set in the config file or arguments, CGWatcher will still make sure the API is enabled without modifying the profile's arguments or config file. This obviously only applies to miners started from CGWatcher using the Start Mining or Start button. If you start the miner outside of CGWatcher you will need to ensure the API is enabled for CGWatcher to detect and use it.


Remote Monitoring and Control

CGRemote (click image to go to CGRemote page for more information and screenshots)

       

CGRemote allows you to monitor and control your miners remotely, with or without CGWatcher. This includes miners on the same computer, on the same network, or in different locations over the Internet. All the control of CGWatcher for all of your miners in one program. CGRemote is currently in beta, more information can be found here:

http://www.coinmyne.com/cgremote


Latest version: 1.4.0 (Download)

More information and download link can be found at the CGWatcher page:
http://www.coinmyne.com/cgwatcher


Changelog

New in version 1.4.0

• "Do not modify original config file to enable API during miner start" setting will further prevent CGWatcher from modifying config files, but requires the user to ensure the API is properly enabled.
• SGMiner pool settings now use whatever name was found in config file (with or without pool- prefix). A setting has also been added to indicate the default - whether pool- prefix should be used by default for new settings that did not appear in the config file.
• Bug causing "Disable temporary config file creationg..." setting to not be saved after CGWatcher restarted has been fixed.

New in version 1.3.9

• "Disable temporary config file creation during miner start" setting added. If enabled, CGWatcher will not use a temporary config file when launching the miner, meaning it is less likely to have issues with new settings. Disabling the temporary config file may cause problems if sharing config files between miners, as one miner may modify the config file before launch thus affecting another miner using that file at the same time. It also means arguments do not get used over config files if the same setting is set in both, as CGWatcher applies arguments to the temporary config file to ensure arguments get priority.
• SGMiner pool settings added (e.g. pool-algorithm, pool-nfactor, etc.)

New in version 1.3.8

• UPnP Port Mapping improved. Adding port map will not remove other port maps. Removing port maps can be done for the current computer or for all computers.
• Fixed create new profile using CGRemote returning 'missing data' error if using a URL as config file.
• Fixed (completely re-wrote) increase/decrease text sizes in Settings -> Display
• Fixed bug causing coin data to not retrieve algorithm correctly when data is from CoinWarz
• Improved CGWatcher startup entry creation when CGWatcher restarts the computer and startup option is disabled to work on Windows 8/8.1 systems.
• Improved support with BFGMiner returning 'devs' response without numbering PGA devices.
• Added new ASIC config settings to Config File Editor, better organized existing settings.
• Additional ASIC device name support.
• Other minor fixes and improvements.

New in version 1.3.7 (experimental)

• Pool Guard feature added to help protect against miner hijacking.

New in version 1.3.6

• Fix CPU priority settings when using a batch file.
• Added vertminer to known miner names
• New 'Startup Batch file' option added for setting CGWatcher to start with Windows. This is recommended for Windows 8/8.1 where the other settings have known issues.
• Monitor setting to set maximum hashrate threshold
• New start mining failure option to restart computer if failed starts exceed threshold.
• Remove scrypt settings when miner is sgminer.
• Default gpu-thread value of 2 can now be disabled in Settings -> Miner tab.
• Xintensity,rawintensity, and cl-filename settings support added (no longer under Misc. Options)
• New troubleshoot mode setting will help start miner in such a way that it is easier to see errors and debug info.
• Force close other programs on computer restart setting in Settings -> CGWatcher
• Fixed Windows startup entries not being removed when changed to a different method.
• Startup entries now given identifiers in filename so in cases of multiple instances, one doesn't overwrite the other.
• Experimental increase/decrease text size is now a setting in Settings -> Display and persists through restarts.
• Coin 'never remove' flag and 'adjustment' field can now be imported from CGRemote during coin updates.
• Additional fields available for edit in Coin Manager.
• Additional support for VertMiner
• Email settings tab added, setting for default email address for use in notifications where email is not specified.

New in version 1.3.4

• Data output option in Settings -> Data tab to output stats to a file at a specified interval for creating reports in other software.
• api-network config setting changed to boolean data type (had been set as a string data type)
• Resizable main window and increase/decrease text sizes (drop-down list in Tests tab, considered beta) to accommodate Windows text

sizes larger than 100%. Changes do not persist until feedback is collected.

• Miner startup threshold (seconds) setting created/added to UI
• Kill miner process during restart (instead of sending quit command) option added to improve stability
• Option to always kill miner process instead of quit command for GPUs that bluescreen during miner shutdown (270, 290 series)
• Coin profitability data improvements to reduce api calls
• Coin data can now be sent from CGRemote, allowing all miners running CGWatcher to be updated with one API call.
• GPU-related numeric config settings changed to strings to accommodate variables.
• Create individual coin profitability adjustments in Coin Manager
• New (optional) feature to switch profiles without restarting the miner in possible.
• CGWatcher can show which coin you're mining on some multi-coin pools (additional pools support coming soon - min 5 minute updates)
• Fixed email not working if active profile did not have a coin assigned to it.
• Accepted/Rejected/Stale share count last change time reset if pool changes.
• Fixed api-allow not putting W: in front of localhost IP if it did not have it and other addresses were present.
• Fixed scheduled action failure threshold not being honored when actions were not successful.
• Coin symbol max length increased from 3 to 5 to allow new coins using 4-character symbols.
• Fixed start miner attempts and thresholds not working correctly in some scenarios.
• Fixed issue with coin profitability data formatting, and added an option to disable formatting in Coin Manager.
• Other fixes and improvements and stuff I forgot to write down.

New in version 1.3.3

• CoinWarz added as optional coin data provider (API key required, see http://coinwarz.com/v1/api for more info)
• Do not show CGRemote ads if user is using CGRemote.
• Drop-down list of coins in Coin Manager -> Custom Field -> Test sorted.
• Coin algorithm added to custom field value expression variables. Returns 1 for sha256, 2 for scrypt.
• On Status tab, Efficiency replaced with custom stat. You can leave it at Efficiency, select a different statistic, or create your own statistic.
• Fixed "when highest/lowest custom field value changes" event description not displaying correctly in scheduled actions list.
• Added "Device elapsed" to GPU and USB devices as added in miner API 1.32.
• Unrecognized remote commands will be tested by being sent to miner (if running) rather than just reporting that the command is unrecognized. This will allow new miner API commands to be used manually without necessarily requiring a CGWatcher update.
• Fixed "Manage Pools" button opening temporary config file instead of actual profile config file.
• Fixed causing "Switch Profile" in CGRemote to not start miner using new profile.
• Add "log" and "report" commands for CGRemote to get log and report data.
• Add "New Block average (seconds)" and "Found Block average (seconds)" values for custom profitability formula field and custom value expression.
• Add "Utility" and "Work Utility" values for custom profitability formula field.
• Current and average hashrates added to window title bar.
• Fixed icarus-timing option incorrectly mirroring usb option in Config File Editor.
• Tests tab reorganized, additional debug reports and utilities moved to drop-down list.
• 'Clear all Windows autorun entries' in Tests tab (drop-down) will remove all CGWatcher entries from Windows startup as a way to get a clean slate. It also disables the "Run when Windows starts" setting, which can be re-enabled afterward.
• Chart on Status tab now shows mining devices only, including FPGA/ASIC devices that report temperature.
• Setting created to ensure CGWatcher & miner are relaunched automatically after CGWatcher-initiated computer restart.
• "Restart CGWatcher" scheduled action created, which may help in situations where CGWatcher stops responding or crashes after running for X consecutive days on low memory computers. This has only been reported once, and I often check for memory leaks, but this is a simple alternative (temporary) solution.
• "Restart CGWatcher" command added for CGRemote.
• Miner auto-launch delay setting added to UI (Monitor -> Other -> Continuous Mining)
• Displayed hashrate formatting improved for consistency.
• CGRemote command to have CGWatcher automatically check and update itself added.
• Other minor fixes and improvements.

New in version 1.3.2

• Desktop folder added to protected directories list to notify user that CGWatcher, miner, and config files should not be stored there.
• Advanced Profile options to set CPU affinity and priority for miner process. Additional options to come in future versions.
• Profile matching relaxed during miner launch to reduce risk of miner being ignored (rare).
• Fixed ads only reloading after restarting CGWatcher.
• Button added to Tests tab to list all installed .NET updates for troubleshooting purposes.
• Option to restart computer if CGWatcher is unable to close or kill miner processes. Although rare, this indicates a more serious problem (Task Manager is also unable to kill the processes) and usually leads to a BSOD (crash). The only way to resolve this is to restart the computer.
• Pools truncated from miner's API response (~Pool 35+) will get info from config to avoid chinese-looking characters being shown for url/username/password. No stats are available for these pools though because the data is cutoff from the miner's response, which has a fixed maximum length.
• Fixed pools set in arguments being added twice to temp config file before miner starts.
• Added scheduled action to send specified API command(s) to miner.
• Settings tab added to Coin Manager, 'Remove coins no longer on CoinChoose' option moved to Settings tab of Coin Manager.
• Coin profitability data refresh interval setting now in Settings tab of Coin Manager.
• Setting created to base coin profitability on bitcoin or litecoin, located in Settings tab of Coin Manager.
• New coin notification option moved to Settings tab of Coin Manager.
• Scheduled action frequency added - 'When event occurs...' allowing you to select from a list of events that will trigger the action being run. Events currently consist of miner events, profile events, and coin profitability events. More events will be added in future updates.
• Create your own profitability formula in a custom coin field that can be used when creating scheduled actions that switch profile based on profitability. Instead of using an existing field (profitability, difficulty, etc) you can create your own mathematical expression using all existing fields and mathematical functions.
• Fixed CGWatcher not trying to start the miner indefinitely when the 'Keep trying indefinitely' failure option was selected. (It will try up to 2147843647 times.)
• Miner process not added to checked process list until it has been running for 60+ seconds to prevent incorrectly ignoring it.
• Added 'Send email' scheduled action. You can specify an email address for each action, the last used will be filled in automatically. Emails are currently limited to 25 per computer per day, but this may increase or decrease over time depending on usage. Counter is reset at midnight EST/EDT (U.S. Eastern). Emails will be coming from @cgwatcher.com, and you will need to ensure you can access http://minerremote.com for email to work correctly.
• More scheduled action events will be added, with additional options like 'when hashrate drops below/%', 'when miner restart fails X consecutive times, etc. I figured I'd add them in groups instead of trying to do it all at once.
• If CGWatcher is set to try starting the miner indefinitely (and it keeps failing), it will wait one second per 10 attempts in between attempts over 10, up to 60 seconds. So after 600 attempts it will wait one minute between each attempt.
• CGWatcher restarting GPUs that cgminer has disabled due to overheat no longer requires CGWatcher's overheat protection to be enabled. It will do this for all GPUs since the miner usually fails at re-enabling them.
• Before restarting computer, CGWatcher will temporarily set itself to start with Windows and launch miner at startup if these options are not enabled. It will reset the options back to their original settings the next time CGWatcher is started.
• Restart computer prompt changed to always use CGWatcher's prompt only, which provides a cancel option, rather than the Windows notification that the computer is restarting. This was already how scheduled computer restarts were handled, but is now done for all computer restarts.
• Profitability-based scheduled actions (switch profile based on profitability) will update coin data before selecting a profile unless it had been updated within the past minute instead of within the past 5 minutes.
• Added average time per share to Monitor tab to help in setting appropriate number of minutes without share increase for this monitoring option.
• Added "% of Avg" to Hashrate Cutoff monitoring option, which will restart the miner if the current hashrate drops below the specified percentage of the current average hashrate. This is in addition to being able to set actual hashrate values.
• Elapsed mining time added to Stats tab.
• In Pools tab, pool drop-down will default to current pool and revert to current pool if user has not selected a different pool to view within the last 5 minutes.
• Added support for pool quota option in CGMiner 3.4.3+
• Added config file and argument options up through CGMiner 3.5.0 and BFGMiner 3.2.1.
• Select a different value to display on the Status tab in place of Efficiency, or create your own value using existing values and mathematical functions to create a custom expression.

New in version 1.3.1

• add bitburner code/name to default mining devices.
• improved automatic API enabling to fix issues with api-allow option being modified incorrectly and locking out other API monitoring applications.
• thread sync locking on remote socket collection handling.
• fix default profiles and variables file paths being saved to CGWatcher.exe.ini which caused profiles and variables to not save correctly if the CGWatcher folder was moved or copied to another location because the paths would still point to the original location. These are now left blank unless you change them manually to non-default paths.
• CGRemote file explorer commands expanded to allow full directory navigation, file copy, file info, and existing commands improved.
• CGRemote commands to add, modify, and delete profiles improved.
• Ads may be displayed occasionally (30 seconds per hour, can be closed by clicking X) on CGWatcher's main window with the exception of donation miners.
• Update and version data backup sites added to (hopefully) get around the main site being blocked in certain countries.
• Pool elapsed time now recorded per pool, available in the Pools tab and Report tab. Also includes a percentage to see which pools were used and how much.
• Remote options window created to provide additional options for CGRemote in the future, and allow for setting a default miner path (which defaults to your most-used miner executable) to use with global profiles.
• Several other improvements (I lost track at some point).

New in version 1.3.0

• FIXED: CGWatcher closing unexpectedly without any error messages during hardware refresh. I believe I found the cause, please let me know if I haven't.
• FIXED: Ignore profile switching if profile being switched to is already active.
• CHANGED: Max wait time for miner to start doubled (30 seconds for exe, 60 seconds for batch files). This is the maximum wait time for API to initialize. If it initializes sooner or the miner window closes, it stops waiting.
• ADDED: Coin Manager allows you to add, edit, and remove coins and exchanges.
• ADDED: Scrollbars to tabs if necessary (if Windows text size is set to > 100%). It will still look ugly, but at least you can get to all controls.
• ADDED: Notifications when new coins appear on coinchoose, showing name, algorithm, and profitability info. This can be disabled by changing NotifyOnNewCoins=True to NotifyOnNewCoins=False in CGWatcher.exe.ini. (default is enabled).
• FIXED: Incorrect profile being shown for miner after prompted to create new profile (again).
• FIXED: Some minor issues fixed that may have caused API access failure in certain (rare) circumstances, particularly when starting CGWatcher while a miner was already running.
• ADDED: Additional logging when changing intensity on idle so the result is logged regardless of what happens, even if skipped. Remember that the intensity on idle is only changed if the idle intensity is higher than the current intensity, or either of the values are "D".
• CHANGED: Failed scheduled actions no longer disabled, but marked as Failed when their consecutive failures meet the limit set in Monitor tab. They will not be triggered when Failed=True. Failed flag is reset when the miner is successfully started/restarted or the action is modified or enabled.
• ADDED: Events created in preparation of creating scheduling options based on miner events.
• FIXED: pools using -userpass/-O option being applied to config file correctly.

New in version 1.2.9

• ADDED: settings for customizing how CGWatcher handles miner start failures.
• ADDED: setting for how many times a scheduled action should be tried if it fails the first time.
• ADDED: "start miner if not already running" option for certain scheduled actions.
• FIXED: spaces in config file path bug
• FIXED: variables not being replaced in arguments in some sitatuions.
• FIXED: scheduler logic part II. This may require additional work, but it's getting there.
• ADDED: Prompt for pool if no pool has been specified rather than trying to wait for user to enter in miner prompt.
• ADDED: coins to profile drop-down list in Settings tab.
• CHANGED: GPU status getting updated sooner after miner restart to ensure scheduled actions that modify a GPU's settings are not skipped because the GPU is thought to be inactive.
• ADDED: several more commands added for CGRemote.
• CHANGED: When data is requested from CGRemote while CGWatcher is in the middle of starting, restarting, or stopping the miner, a busy response is returned until the action is completed to avoid unnecessary messages.
• FIXED: hashrates showing XXX.9999 or XXX.0001 rounded to nearest whole number. This is caused by using single variables to store hashrates, which promote speed and therefore may slightly lose precision. This still may occur for some numbers, but less often. It is only a visual quirk and does not negatively affect mining.
• FIXED: Several other improvements or fixes were made that I forgot to write down. There are some new items on the to-do list as well, it's just a matter of getting to them.

New in version 1.2.8

• FIXED: Scheduler almost completely re-written to ensure new options peacefully coexist with old options.
• CHANGED: Scheduled actions will not persist through restart if they have a stop time that will occur within before the next estimated monitor check time.
• CHANGED: Scheduled action notifications are standardized for all options, and now followed by a result notification (green or red depending on success or failure).
• CHANGED: Scheduled actions set to persist through restarts will still persist if Pause Mining button is clicked by user. Stop button and Restart button cancels persistance.
• CHANGED: All monitor checks will not be performed during the first 30 seconds of mining or after CGWatcher starting to ensure the miner is able to start properly. Any actions that fall within this time frame will be performed immediately following this grace period.
• CHANGED: CGremote notifications changed from gray to purple to make more visible.
• CHANGED: Variables moved from CGWatcher.exe.ini to variables.ini, whose file path can be changed in CGWatcher.exe.ini [Settings] VariablesDataFile=<path>
• FIXED: Variables not working correctly if you included the surrounding %...% in their names when creating them.
• FIXED: Bug causing variables not to be applied correctly to web config files.
• FIXED: Bug causing config file load error if pool names contained brackets.
• FIXED: Pool passwords not displayed when pool specified in arguments (no config file). This did not affect mining.
• ADDED: -v <port> command line argument allows setting miner API override port (miner will only use this port). This applies only while CGWatcher is running with this command used at launch or until user saves settings (it is not saved to INI file by using command alone).
• FIXED: Scheduled actions set to run on specific date not being triggered correctly.
• FIXED: Scheduled actions set to run on specific date that also have a stop time set are not deleted until after stopped.
• FIXED: Start mining and restart mining routines re-written to use temporary config files and batch files to ensure originals are not altered in case they are being shared by multiple miners.
• FIXED: Batch files given twice as long startup time since they can take a little longer to get going depending on other commands.
• CHANGED: "Restart miner when sick or dead GPUs detected" monitor option will now apply to FPGA and ASIC devices by default. Previously this was disabled by default to get some feedback without causing any problems.
• FIXED: "Hashrate cutoff" monitor option bugging you if you left the sha256 or scrypt hashrate at zero.
• ADDED: (Updater v1.2) MD5 Hash Check in Auto-Update utility to ensure auto-update files have not been modified.
• ADDED: If 2> log argument is found and miner not using batch/command file, a temporary one is created and used to launch the miner to fix .NET's problem with this argument.
• CHANGED: Minutes of inactivity before computer is considered idle on Schedule tab applies to all settings (included scheduled actions) so changed interface to make this clearer.
• CHANGED: Scheduled actions "program starts" and "program stops" changed to "program is running" and "program is not running" to make it clearer that these may be applied as long as the specified program is running/not running if action is set to persist through restarts.
• CHANGED: Scheduled action frequencies "is idle" and "is not idle" wording changed to better indicate these actions will be applied any time these conditions are true.
• FIXED: Scheduled actions resorted after each check in which actions are triggered to ensure they are always performed in chronological order.
• ADDED: Scheduled action "run program" that will launch a specified program (with optional specified arguments). This action can have a stop time, and like other actions can be triggered when a program stops running. (e.g. "run TeamViewer" when "TeamViewer" stops running). If a stop time is set, it will only close the instance it created and no other instances.
• CHANGED: Scheduled actions that are set to run when the computer is idle, not idle or when a program is running or not running are no longer persistable through restarts. These actions are applied any time the condition is true, including after restarts.
• FIXED: Notification that GPU was restarted after being disabled from overheat when it had actually been re-enabled by scheduler.
• CHANGED: Restart miner/computer when sick or dead GPU is detected now also includes FPGA and ASIC devices by default. Previously this had to be enabled manually in the ini file.

New in version 1.2.7
(some of these changes were made in 1.2.6.1)

• FIXED: When prompted to create new profile if miner found not matching one, new profile created successfully but miner assigned to wrong profile.
• TEST: Added ability to restart miner if sick or dead FPGA or ASIC is detected. Not sure if these devices are reported as sick or dead and if so, if restarting the miner is the best option (compared to restarting device). Can be enabled by changing [Monitor] RestartOnSickDeadUSBDevice=False to True.
• TEST: For 40+ devices, check that no devices have been truncated from devs command resulting in them not being reported. For these devices a separate command is sent to get data for each device. Some data is still unavailable for these last devices, specifically data that is truncated in the stats command.
• FIXED: thread-concurrency in arguments not being applied correctly to config file if it was a comma-separated list of values.
• ADDED: recent additions to config related to ASIC and FPGA devices now available in Config File Editor.
• ADDED: Certain scheduled actions can have stop times.
• FIXED: Scheduled action logs reporting actions were persisted through a restart when they weren't.
• FIXED: Notification showing miner command failed even when it succeeded.
• FIXED: Scheduled Action form showing wrong profile when editing scheduled action that switches to a specific profile (not profitability-related)
• ADDED: CGRemote capabilities extended to include modifying schedule and settings.
• ADDED: Option to set stop time for applicable scheduled actions. At stop time the action will restore item to its previous state.
• TEST: a bug was reported that when a scheduled action to stop mining occurred and the 'Ensure miner stays running' option is enabled, the miner would be restarted. I didn't find anything obvious that would cause this but rewrote some of the code involved, blew in it, and hit it a few times like an old Nintendo cartridge. In subsequent tests the issue seemed to be resolved.
• FIXED: Other minor bug fixes and improvements.

New in version 1.2.6

• Significant improvements when communicating with CGRemote.
• CGWatcher considers stop mining request from CGRemote as user initiated so if the "Ensure miner is running" option is enabled, it will not restart the miner.
• CGWatcher considers stop mining scheduled actions as user initiated so if the "Ensure miner is running" option is enabled, it will not restart the miner.
• Note added to acknowledge local IP address may be incorrect if more than one network adapter is present. I did change the method for getting the local IP to hopefully work better.
• Convert decimal place to period any time a decimal value is sent to CGRemote (not often as most data comes this way right from the miner and is passed on to CGRemote)
• Change Intensity When Idle option fixed so that if the miner is restarted while the computer is still idle (via CGRemote), the intensities will be changed again after the miner has been running for at least 30 seconds.
• New "Persist through miner restart" option available for certain scheduled actions like changing intensity or enabling/disabling a device and certain frequencies like on idle/off idle so if, for example, you create a scheduled action to raise intensity when the computer becomes idle, this intensity will be carried over if the miner is restarted by the Monitor, Scheduler, or CGRemote. This does not apply to user-initiated restarts like a user clicking the restart button.
• Miner can now be controlled using the following key combinations (to hopefully make it easier to stop the miner if intensity is set too high and mouse won't move):
          - Shift+M  start the miner
          - Shift+T  stop the miner
          - Shift+R  restart the miner (no confirmation prompt)
          - Shift+P  pause/resume miner
  
• For 'Change Intensities on Idle' option and 'Change Intensity/ies' scheduled actions, you can now specify two values separated by a backslash for SHA256/Scrypt. CGWatcher will use the value for the current algorithm.
• 'Restart miner if hashrate falls below' monitor option now has values for SHA256 and Scrypt, so the option doesn't have to be changed when switching algorithms.
• Fixed GPU reported as inactive if disabled by the miner for overheating and then the miner was restarted.
• Reduced need for modifying config files before miner start when using batch files to only when necessary to enable API or change api-port.
• Fixed autorun when Windows starts not being saved if auto-start miner was disabled.
• Preset and custom variables can be used inside batch/command files, arguments, and config files. (e.g. %USER% replaced with username)
• Increased potential value for difficulty since alt-coins may produce bizarre values
• Added new block and found block minute averages on Status tab
• Option to hide FPGA and ASIC devices if being reported incorrectly by the miner after device is unplugged and plugged back in. Open the device detail, click Hide in bottom left corner.
• Improved support for batch and command files, including additional time when waiting for start. Improved parsing also.
• Other improvements and fixes. Does anyone read these things? At a certain point I stopped writing down changes.

New in version 1.2.5

• Auto-update utility fixed
• Fixed Profile Manager open web config file/URL in Notepad 'file not found' error
• Minor fixes related to CGRemote

New in version 1.2.4

• Minor fixes related to CGRemote

New in version 1.2.3

• Fixed enable/disable GPU that may have changed incorrect GPU in certain cases.
• Fixed difficulty overflows caused by ridiculous amount of decimal places in difficulty values.
• Added {highest reward}, {lowest difficulty}, {lowest network hashrate}, and {lowest network hashrate (average)} to scheduled action profile options.
• When creating scheduled actions that switch to conditional profiles (e.g. most profitable), you can now select 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. to switch to 1st most profitable, 2nd most profitable, etc.
• Added edit device option to correct devices being reported incorrectly by miner (e.g. ASIC reported as FPGA). Click Edit this Device link in bottom left corner of device detail to edit the device's properties.
• Added average temperature to GPU data textbox in GPU tab. Currently this is a test for accuracy and will later be used to diagnose GPU issues where temperature drops suddenly because of problems with the miner.
• Changed cgwatcher to force close programs on restart (after giving 30-second countdown with cancel button).
• Improved program initialization speed (starts quicker).
• Improved performance of interface updates when the miner's status has changed.
• Coins no longer listed on coinchoose are now deleted *IF* they are not assigned to a profile in order to keep the coin list relatively clean as altcoins come and go.
• Scheduled action last run times are saved so if CGWatcher is closed and re-opened, they will not be reset and will attempt to run N hours after the last run time. If last run time + N hours is in the past, time will be added in increments of N hours until the next run time is in the future (or now).
• GPUs, FPGAs, and ASICs not enabled with status of ALIVE now have current hashrate set to 0 to give an accurate hashrate, even though a number may still be reported by the miner. Please let me know if this has unintended consequences.
• Scheduled actions are not performed during a miner restart. If a restart is taking place at the time a scheduled action is triggered, it will be performed after the restart is completed.
• Option to restart computer if accepted or total share counts do not change for N minutes added.
• Allow for URLs when setting profile config files. More information in Profiles section above.
• Rearranged schedule options to allow for more options and also create room for future options.

New in version 1.2.2

• Fixed bug preventing profiles from saving correctly that I introduced in changes to 1.2.1

New in version 1.2.1.0

• Profiles can now be sorted by the user or sorted automatically (alphabetically)
• Fixed 'Start with Windows' issue where autorun entry was duplicated in certain cases causing two instances to start with Windows. The first time you run version 1.2.1 (as well as future versions) the issue will be fixed automatically.
• Coins you mine are now bolded in black text to distinguish them from coins you don't mine in Coin Profitability window. You can also filter coins to just show the coins you mine (coins you have assigned to profiles).
• Miner detection relaxed to allow for Windows 8 permission issues causing Access Denied errors when CGWatcher attempts to get a process's filename. The best solution for this is to run CGWatcher as Administrator if you experience these problems. I will continue to look for a better solution once I get a Windows 8 miner setup.
• CGRemote improvements, including removal of 'coming soon' message and enable CGRemote option in preparation for upcoming closed beta. This version and future versions will be compatible with CGRemote, though future versions may have additional features.
• Misc. improvements and additional debugging info added for new features to help with any future troubleshooting.

New in version 1.2.0.0:

• Created Scheduled Actions option to replace and improve upon existing scheduling option.
• Improved socket code in preparation for CGRemote beta.
• Added Schedule and CGRemote notification types (blue and gray respectively).
• Added coin option to profiles, allowing user to assign to profiles which coin they are mining to allow for determining profitability.
• Added coin profitability window showing data from http://coinchoose.com (see above).
• Fixed overheat protection only re-enabling or raising intensity on overheated GPU when its temp returns to under temp-target. Now this occurs once temp is under temp-overheat.
• Fixed issue with overheat protection not properly raising intensity in certain cases.
• GPUs disabled by overheat (by CGWatcher or the miner) will now show OVERHEAT (disabled) as a status. Clicking Enable button in GPU tab will restart the GPU to re-enable it (although if the temp is still above temp-cutoff, it will be disabled again if overheat protection is enabled.
• Overheat protection info has been made clearer in the GPU tab.
• Added support for new ASIC API options in cgminer 3.3.1 (API 1.26), and asc|N option in ASIC device test to improve future support.
• Added debug logging to help resolve permission issues with Windows 8 related to accessing process info.
• Notification added on startup if you are running CGWatcher from within Program Files, Program Files (x86), ProgramData, or Windows folder without running as Administrator as this could cause permission issues when writing to files.
• Removed prompt on Stop button unless without full API access.
• Command arguments (-m start minimized, -s start miner on launch, -p NAME activate profile on launch). If profile NAME has spaces in it, surround the name with quotation marks.
• Fixed auto-start with Windows issue that may have prevented successful creation of HKCU startup entry if HKLM entry failed due to invalid permissions.
• Disabling auto-start will check both HKCU and HKLM and remove from both if necessary to ensure it is not ran at startup.
• Additional information regarding new features added to the Report tab.

Pre-1.2.0 changelog removed to stay within forum post character limit. This information is still available in the readme.