Help visualizing how a mining rig is setup?

[endlesscummute100]

So I’m a newb and I’m trying to visualize how a mining rig is hooked up. From browsing around, I’ve gotten a general idea of what the rig looks like, but not sure how everything (or what else is need) connects to each other.

So I’m imagining something like a black metal shoe box, that is the actual mining rig….from there, what else is needed and how do they connect to each other?

Also, is a mining rig a “stand-alone” type thing? As in….I plug the power cord into a wall and connect the Ethernet and it is good to go? or do I need to have it connected to a computer at all times?

[TheRealSteve]

I'm afraid that's a generic question for an issue that has specifics.

Some miners you only hook up to a USB port (StickMiners) and (after software set-up) off they go.  Connection can be to a desktop computer, a laptop, or (as an example) a Raspberry Pi (a small computing device).

Other miners you have to hook up to a power supply and USB or (more commonly) Ethernet.  That ethernet connection either going to a desktop computer/laptop/rpi (with appropriate software) or - if the miner basically has its own small computing device and software on-board - straight to a router/modem.

In terms of connecting to each other - most of them don't.  They all work individually.  There are some designs that 'string' together - mostly for the benefit of needing less hardware (e.g. one computing device to control several) - which is often just a matter of putting cables between them and making sure each miner knows which one in the string it is.

Some miners you can only get feedback from through common mining software, other miners offer a complete web interface that you can browse to.

If you want to see some specifics of how some miners are connected to each other / computers / the internet / the user, I'd say check out Dogie's guides: http://www.dogiecoin.com/

[endlesscummute100]

Thank you, that helps a ton.

So i'll add more details. I'm interested in building a rig but for Darkcoin. Would it be realistic to build a rig that was fully contained so that I could literally plug-and-go with it?

I say realistic, because i'm sure it could be done, but within a reasonable budget?

[TheRealSteve]

Realistic that you could do it?  As you mention: sure.  DarkCoin (wrong forum section for this, btw - it'll probably get moved) is a CPU+GPU type coin, so while there's some constraints there (can't exactly plug a beefy graphics card into a Raspberry Pi), your basic goal would be to build a bare bones computer.

I don't know if you can do so on a reasonable budget.  You'd have to price a lot of items from the motherboard to the case to the graphics card (s) (keeping in mind resale value vs projected earnings, etc.
If you want it fully stand-alone, you probably need a small LCD for status read-outs, you still need some way for the user to enter mining (pool) data - odds are you'd have to write some software to make all this happen.
Probably better to offer a web interface to it.. not fully stand-alone, but most people have *some* form of computer they could use to access it anyway.

Of course, there have been (are? haven't looked at GPU rigs in a long time) companies that did this, so for some values of reasonable...