Summertime! Sun’s shining, temp’s rising. Hard times for miners (especially for GPU-rigs). Graphic cards overheat, rigs hang, SICKs and DEADs other nasty stuff happens. While there is CGWatcher to solve the latter two problems, the dead hang can’t be cured with software. The process of tuning to summertime clocks and voltages is really painfull, I’ve lost about 40 hours of uptime on my two rigs (4500KH/s each) for the last 2 weeks, which equals for about $10 loss at the time and at the current difficulty on LTC. These troubles are ruining the whole concept of “plug & forget” that makes mining such a pleasuring kind of income, not to forget those many ours of machine-time spent for rig fine tuning.
Obviously, the problem can’t be solved with pure software and requires some external piece of hardware. There are several possible solutions available:
1) GSM outlet, comes to mind first but does not really fit. One will have to monitor and reset the rig manually, there may be considerable downtime if one checks the rig not frequently enough. Also GSM outlet cannot possibly tell the reason of malfunction, wether it’s system hang or power supply emergency protection. My 1200W Chieftec once went into protection halt and the replugging it ended with firework show and power outage on the whole floor. All the fuss with SIMs, balance, signal level does not count in favor of GSM too. Also most GSM outlets have only one channel, so either you plug one per each system, or reset the whole rig set to reanimate a single system.
2) POS-terminal watchdogs and other industrial solutions. Good for automatical check and reset functions. However they are hard to find, expensive, single-channel.
3) Various USB power ralays. Same cons as GSM outlets: manual functioning, need for extra watching computer. Also, most of them are not galvanically decoupled (you’ll have to add decoupling yourself).
I’ve ordered a couple of POS watchdogs, but it turned out there are problems these things can’t handle. One of my systems (Socket 1155, 3x7970) hung so deep that not even RESET button could wake it up, only long press on POWER to switch off and repeated press to start helped.
I wish my rigs restart automatically without my intervention in any emergency situations, so I’ve designed a new device to meet all my demands, and I’ve called it USBWatchDOGE.
It is a small usb-stick sized device, which needs standart drivers and a lightweight application for the rig. The principle of operation is simple: the application running on the rig periodically send “I am alive” message to USBWatchDOGE, which receives it and resets the watchdog timer. If there is no messege for a given (1 to 9 minutes adjustable) time, the rig is considered dead and is reset by shortening the RESET button circuit (‘selfreset’ channel). Manual control is also supported. One device can control up to 4 channels (more would make a mess of wires).
There is a POWER cycle mode to bring to life the rigs which can’t be reset normally. The control channels are galvanically decoupled to ensure safety. There are two variants of connector: tipical USB-A plug and PBD connector for mothreboard USB extention port (which I found really handy). There are LEDs indicating current status. The application and device firmware are both too simple (and thorougly tested) to hang themselves. If the OS does not boot after reset, USBWatchDOGE will try to restart it again in 5 minutes.
USBWatchDOGE in two modifications:
If you experience the same troubles and you’d like to use USBWatchDOGE in your rig, you can order the device:
1 channel - $20
2 channel - $25
3 channel - $30
4 channel - $35
( + shipping )
Cryptocurrency accepted:
BTC: 1CdQe3uNCbtMEDH2WHrK9Y2kuGozAgygQ8
LTC: LW69MBV9rWQTtBPbunXCuPaVn5dUEnN3LD
DOGE: DM6XXpHXJmnAPEDLJyBzaVTntFDy6ZNpiM
VTC: VmQ8XhpjGDYZmab3kiqhBJda2Dno78JeE9
(other pay options may be considered)
Please, specify the modification you need (number of channels and connector type)!!!
For orders use PM or email
Downloads:
Drivers for Windows:
http://www.silabs.com/Support%20Documents/Software/CP210x_VCP_Windows.zip(Win8 already have it by default, Linux does not need any drivers)
Application:
Exe: will be added soon
Source:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sp0lb7kkfmin9h5/110414-wdt-pc.zip(On Win8 run with admin rights! For linux no app is needed)
Instructions will be added here
