What's up ppl...hope yer all havin' a nice weekend.
So - regarding Gridseed miners - I've got the power thing figured out. But had questions pertaining to the utilization of a Raspberry Pi device to control your miners.
For those who have used these devices (and are operating Gridseeds), here are a few questions:
1. What is maximum amount of miners you can control? I was planning on buying ~50 Gridseeds very soon but figured I'd ask ahead of time.
2. I know you use the Raspberian OS - seems like it's more efficient at holding a steady hashrate from what I've read on the forums.
3. Are there any potential drawbacks vs. just plugging miners into a USB hub and connecting to your computer (for Windows 7/8) and mining that way? (E.g. slowing your system down, etc.)
4. Since I've got a network router with only 3 slots left and I'm going to be buying a lot of miners...I may need more slots...should I use a USB wireless attachment for the RPi to save on network cable space?
5. How long did it take you to set up all your miners from start to end (w/ or without RPi)?
6. Question regarding those 12V 30A 360w PSUs...do they emit any weird smell when running? I was thinking of powering the miners by ATX PSU instead if that's the case.
Thanks for any opinions/suggestions.
Depending on the Hubs, 1) can have a hard limit of 120 as some hubs out there will show as a USB device and thus lowers what's left for the PI
2) yep, and follow the steps for Linux compiling of BFGMiner ( on the Pi, in a terminal window ) as if you were going to do Erupters ( most of the settings for BFGMiner work for all of the USB ASICS as they show as usb to com port and just need a compatable protocol like Icarus )
3) Wall Octopuses - each usb hub NEEDS to be a powered hub so each one needs a wall wort or some kind of power rigging to all of them AND the Pi
4) NEVER!!! No one out there in the Linux or Pi comunity can guarentee 100% compatability for any usb wireless and you can always plug in another router ( regular link to the wan on the 2nd on ) with more ports. Keep in mind EACH Pi has the limit of ( conservatively ) 120 USB miners and an etherenet switch can add more ethernet ports.
5) weeks, but that was getting an ATI HD 4850 to do OpenCL 1.0, less than an hour for the Block Erupters, once that was working and I got AntMiners it was just plug in and make sure the USB hub had power and restart the miner with the right settings. Getting BFGMiner to work with the Erupters was actually less than an hour to work, there was more time messing with settings then finding it didn't change anything. I already had most of the ' extra ' files needed on my Ubuntu system ( sudo apt-get )
6) If an ATX power supply smells while running, unplug it and check with a power supply tester to ensure it's working properly. I bought a cheap one for GPU mining and didn't use my nose to let me know it couldn't handle the 12V drain to run the cards soo..... it blew..... As you plan on Pi mining, it's the total amps on all of the 5V lines you need to worry about. Take the time and do the math and only if you are short by half of what the 12V line's peak is consider a 12V to 5V power mod and fuses, lots of fuses.
Good luck with it, you can avoid some of the time consuming steps if you have the Pi already by doing the compiling and all the ' sudo apt-get ' stuff ahead of time.
