You were asking for buying advice without giving us the most important part of the equation.  If we said it was "worth it"... and you paid $10K... we'd all be fools.  It's "worth" is what you are willing to pay, and what you will recoup out of it over a period of time.

What does "worth it" mean to you?  Are you happy with a potential to recoup your capital in 120 days?  180 days?  365 days?

Is it worth $10K?  Sure, if you are willing to wait a very long time.  Is it worth $2K?  Sure.  Is it worth $1K?  Yeah, even better than $2K.

If this happens often to you, you should setup or adjust a rule based upon Accepted progress.  If the accepted rate doesn't increase after X number of minutes, then have AM apply a template (or you could do another pool) so it will mine something else.

There are limitations, but yes.  It depends on what you mean by "miner goes down".  If you mean the mining software crashes, but the rig is otherwise fine... then yes... AM will restart the mining software.  You can adjust the rule about this to also reboot the rig for good measure if you like.

If you mean that the rig locks up, then AM will not be able to communicate with the Remote Service to issue a reboot command.  In this case you'd want to setup further automation via AM like my (shameless plug)... Puwaha's Poor Man's Networked PDU: Using Smart Plugs and Awesome Miner...  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2866608.0

Yes, you need to add the uploaded custom mining software to the Managed Software section in AM.  After doing so, you'll see it listed under the profit profile properties.



There's multiple places to add additional commands.  Where you add them depends on where you want to apply it.  The simplest is adding the -i 25 at the Custom Pool level.  But this may not work if you have rigs that need different intensities... so you can add it at the rig level.  You can even add it at the online services pool level.

Is the only thing people talk about on here is money?  When Lambo?  Dream House?

What is the price they are asking?

A little bit, yeah.  That's why when Nicehash got hacked, and they shutdown the ability to rent hashrate, profits on altcoins shot up for independent miners.  Nicehash renters will automate swooping in right before a block ends, and begins to get a giant dose of shares on pools that do PPS.  This causes them to have a gigantic portion of the shares without putting in the full block effort and get a nice portion of the block rewards.  Pool luck affects this greatly, and the total hashrate at the pool matters to make this technique work.

I thought I'd share this with everyone since I think this is a problem we can all relate to.  While it would be nice to have a networked PDU, they are quite expensive... even on the used market.  So I thought about it and came up with this solution.


I'm sure we all have a rig or two where it may work fine, but every now and then it needs to be rebooted.  It always seems to happen at the worst of times... like when you are at work... or out of town.  Trying to get your spouse to reset a rig over the phone can sometimes be just as frustrating as when you are away and can't do anything about it.

I also use Awesome Miner, which is fantastic, and can do a lot of automation to keep your rigs running.  But if your rigs need a hard reboot, the only real solution is to "pull the plug" and reboot.  Awesome Miner has "rules" that you can define to watch for triggers like an offline miner, hashrate thresholds, dead GPUs, and a lot more... and then perform an action.  It's kind of like an IFTTT (IF This Then That) solution for mining.

IFTTT... hey wait a minute... I could use the online service IFTTT to control a smart plug.  I could have Awesome Miner watch for some condition, then send a signal to IFTTT, where in turn IFTTT could turn off and then on a smart plug.

I started out with a Wemo Insight smart plug that I had laying around, and after a bit of tweaking, I got this working well.  The problem is that the Wemo Insight smart plug is only rated for 120V, and all of my miners run off of my 24 amp 220V PDU that I got for real cheap off Ebay.  I then trolled around to find some cheaper parts to do a 220V equivalent to the Wemo Insight smart plug.

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Parts you'll need:

• Cheap 220V PDU from Ebay (I'll let you find these to suit your liking. You could even do this with 120V PDUs)
• Cheapo 240V capable Smart Plugs like these at Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078CPYQYS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
  )
• My PDU uses C14 connectors, and the Smart Plugs are 5-15P, so you'll need some good C14 to 5-15R adaptors like these at Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004OC579E/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
• Good quality 5-15P to C13 power cables.  These are your regular power cables that come with every power supply you've ever bought... you probably already have a few... so free!
• IFTTT account (it's free)
• Smart phone to setup the smart plugs (Smart Life app, and IFTTT app)... not free, but you probably already have one... so free
• Awesome Miner... it's free for up to two "miners" to give it a go, but easily worth the license cost in other feature you need to cover all your miners

Note:  if your setup requires the C14 to 5-15R adapters, do not get the crappy 18AWG 1 foot "monitor extensions".
  The wires are not meant to carry high amperage that your rigs usually require.

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Now, to put it all together.

First thing, go setup an IFTTT account.  You'll need that before integrating with Smart Life.

Let's go ahead and setup your first Smart Plug.  If you didn't pick the ones I did above in the Amazon link, just make sure they are compatible with the Smart Life app.  This is pretty simple to setup.  I suggest you do them one at a time so you can mark them with a pen, and edit the entry in the Smart Life app... like "Plug 1", and "Plug 2".

After setting up the Smart Plug in Smart Life, give it a few whacks to make sure you can turn it off and on.  In the Smart Life app go to Profile settings and click Integration.  Select IFTTT, and it will give you further instructions on how to integrate.  You'll need to sign in using your Smart Life account to integrate.  You can either use the IFTTT app on your smartphone, or the IFTTT web page... same results.

It's time to build the first IFTTT applet.  Go to your IFTTT app or webpage and click on "My Applets", then "New Applet".  You are now going to setup a trigger (the "This" in IFTTT), and then an action (the "That" in IFTTT).  Click on the +this logo... you will need to choose a service.  Type email in the search area and then click on the email logo.  Choose the "Send IFTTT an email tagged" option.  We want the tagged option, you'll see why in just a second.  This trigger will kick off when you send an email to the trigger@applet.ifttt.com with the tag that you supply.  Our first trigger we will setup will be #plug1off so put that in the field where it says tag, then click create trigger.

Now, we need to add an action to the applet... so click on the word +that logo.  Now search for Smart Life, and then click the Smart Life icon.  You'll see a couple of options to turn a device or group on, and another to turn a device or group off.  If you think about that for a moment, you may realize that you can group smart plugs together in the Smart Life app on your phone, so you could control multiple plugs with some of these steps.  But for now, we will just finish setting up the applet for our first smart plug.  Since our trigger tag was #plug1off, then we need to click on the option to turn a device off.  IFTTT then will present you with your drop down list of Smart Plugs that you setup in the Smart Life app.  Since this is our first one, we will select Plug 1 and click the create action button.  Finally, click the finish button, and you've just created your first applet in IFTTT!  Make sure it's turned on.

Repeat setting up a new applet in IFTTT, use the same trigger of "email" and use a new tag called #plug1on, and an action from Smart Life to turn on a device or group.  Select your Plug 1 device and finish the applet steps.

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If you've never used Awesome Miner before, the bare minimums you need here are a pool, a managed miner, and a rig.  Once your rig is being controlled by Awesome Miner, you can automate it with a new user-defined rule.  There are some built-in rules to give you some ideas of what you can do, but for our networked PDU concept, we will create a new one.  First, go into the Options, and under the Rules section go to the Email & SMS section.  You'd want to setup your email account here anyway, for notifications from Awesome Miner in general, but the most important part is that you use the same email account that you used to setup your IFTTT account.

You see, the IFTTT applets you created are expecting an email from your email account.  If you use the same email account in Awesome Miner, then when you setup the user-defined rule to send an email... it matches... and the trigger is set.

Now that you have Awesome Miner setup to use your email account, go to the Rules section in the Options in Awesome Miner.

You'll give it a fancy name like Plug 1 Reset.  If you have more than one rig, then click the "only apply to selected miners", and select your rig that will be connected to the Smart Plug.  Now, add a trigger for this Awesome Miner rule.  If your rig crashes in a way so that it doesn't respond to pings, then make the trigger to be a Ping (on timeout) function.  In my case, I chose to make my trigger "activate" if the rig isn't responding to pings after 9 seconds.  There are other triggers you could use, and you can even stack them for different conditions, either selecting the "Match all" (for an AND function), or the "Match at least on" option (for an OR function).  Sounds complex?  Nah, it's easy.

Finally, you need to set an Action in the Awesome Miner rule.  In our case we are going to stack a bunch of functions to be run in sequence.   The first action is to send an email to the IFTTT email address (trigger@applet.ifttt.com) with a #plug1off in the subject line.  Then I put a Wait action for 10 seconds.  Then put another email action to send an email to the IFTTT email address with a #plug1on in the subject line.  Finally, I put 6 individual wait actions for 60 seconds each.  It basically runs like this:

If no response from IP address for 9 seconds then
    Send and email with #plug1off in the subject line
    wait 10 seconds
    send another email with #plug1on in the subject line
    wait for 60 seconds
    wait for 60 seconds
    wait for 60 seconds
    wait for 60 seconds
    wait for 60 seconds
    wait for 60 seconds

You need the waits in there between the off and on action to give your rig a chance to fully power down.  You also need the waits in there after the turn on action so that your rig has a chance to boot up and start responding to pings again.  I put six waits of 60 seconds each which is plenty of time for an SSD rig to boot up and start responding to pings... but it also means that the Awesome Miner rule won't run again for 6 minutes in case something is wrong.

Here's a quick shot of the Awesome Miner rule setup:



If you click the option in the Awesome Miner rule at the bottom to "Support manual activation" then you can run the rule actions at will from the main Awesome Miner mining rig list under the Actions dropdown.  And if you have a license that allows a web page interface for Awesome Miner, then you can remotely trigger this rule at will while you are away.  That's fine and all... and could be good for getting something unstuck.  

The whole point of using Awesome Miner is to allow your rigs to keep mining, and it allows some pretty incredible automation.  Couple Awesome Miner's already rich feature set for automation with Smart Plugs and IFTTT and you've got Puwaha's Poor Man's Networked PDU!


There's probably a lot to absorb here, so I'm more than willing to answer any questions or help you out.

Yes, you got it mostly.  The time is just the amount of time that will pass before AM re-calculates "best coin or algo" profit values from the statistics it gets from either Whattomine (if you are mining individual pools or pool groups)... or it rechecks the enabled Online Services that you have enabled on profit miners.  If you are mining individual pools or pool groups, there is also another time setting to pay attention to on the Statistics tab in the Options.  That time setting is how often AM will check Whattomine or Coinwarz for updated statistics.



I'll just requote what I wrote a few weeks (and a few pages) back:

Are all the S9s on the same subnet as the computer that runs AM?  Are there any conflicting IPs?

Yes, it's built in.



You don't need to set it up.  AM will set the command line correctly.  You just need to define a pool, a miner, and then tell the miner to use EWBF on that pool.  AM does all the work from there.



Not especially, no.  I run it on a simple virtual machine on one of my low-end vmware nodes.  The node has a low-end Athlon 5350 CPU.  I gave the VM two cores and 4GB of RAM.  It runs fine... runs an average of 15% CPU on that piddly VM with the resources given to it.

Exactly.  There are tons of different strategies out there.  For me, I usually mine a few speculation coins for a week, then "profitable" coins for about 2 weeks, then finally my favorite coins for a week.  I like to diversify my strategies.

When coins are on a downswing in exchange rate, the difficulty usually follows.  For me, that's when I mine some of those "profitable" coins.  If it's not a total crap coin, it will eventually go back up.  If not, then I cut bait and find another one.

If you dig around enough and hold,  you'll find some winners.  If you sell them all for "profit" as soon as you mine them, you could be dumping what could be a winner later on.  Speculation coins are fun, you never know how they turn out, and you can typically get a giant pile of them in no time.

You would need a computer with at least 4GB of RAM, and a disk large enough to run the software and some swap space.  I suggest at least 4GB of swap space.  CPU generally doesn't matter, unless it affects your challenge times.

Most people just rent VPS instances in the cloud.  Some providers are better than others.  I have a few from the same provider, in different locations... one runs on 4GB with no swap with no issue.  Another needed me to upgrade to 8GB to keep it from crashing.  Your mileage will vary.

If the pool mines a coin that doesn't come out of the box in AM, you go to the Coins & Profit tab in the options and define a new user defined coin.  Then on the Statistics tab, you can add the coin's JSON URL from Whattomine (if it exists) to help AM glean information about this coin.

A pool group is a set of pools.  They can consist of different algos, or a bunch of pools for one coin (or both)... that part is up to you.   Online Services MPH and Zpool is a single pool with multiple algos/coins.

With a pool group, you can setup your own pseudo-online service, and use profit switching based on the Coins tab... which is whattomine's data.  Whereas with an Online Service, you will use their data.

For me, I have pool groups with maybe the top 5 coins that I really like to mine.  On another pool group I will have a bunch of pools that mine the same coin.  Some of the pools I mine to are dodgy, so if they are offline, AM will go to the next one.

A single bump to keep this thread available to the weekday crowd.  (I rarely go beyond the first 5 pages on this sub-forum myself)

If I do any profit switching, I'm typically doing a pool group, not online services like zpool, MPH, etc.  Online services switch too much for my tastes.

Now, for a service being down, there are rule actions like Miner command.  This has options like "Change pool", or "Change Pool Group" that might help you.  There's also a rule action to apply template.  I would have a good reliable pool to mine a single coin as a template ready to go, or do the Change Pool or Pool Group action setup on all your miners as a fall back.  It's better to mine a good reliable coin for a few hours until you get a chance to check out the problem with the Online Service than to have your miner sitting idle.



AM's whole point is to try to keep your rigs doing what they do best... mining.  You can get really complex with your automation, or keep it simple.  That part is up to you.

If your mining software stalls or crashes, your should troubleshoot why that is happening.  Maybe the mining software is buggy, you might have driver issues, a bad riser, or power supply issues?  Trying to force AM to compensate for these problems will always have you going down a rabbit hole of trying to resolve edge cases.

In theory, yes.  This is what some Nicehash renters do, they will swoop in before a block ends and after a block begins with a lot of rented hashrate to build up a large amount of shares and then move on.  On smaller to medium size pools they take a good portion of shares and thus a good portion of the block rewards, especially if the pool is lucky.

You are correct.  Yiimp style pools like zpool or ahashpool provide 24hr actual in their APIs.

Why in the world would you put your miner in a DMZ?  If you absolutely have to do this, it uses port 9630 by default.