GekkoScience Compac BM1384 Stickminer Official Support Thread

[sidehack]

Groovy. Glad you got 'em working. Hopefully there's nothing serious causing BFG incompatibility (that's not something we test for). Definitely let me know if you have any more trouble. I guarantee what I build, which means fix or replace.

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[drew_ii]

Biodom - I don't know how to forum very well. What kind of 2.0 bridge are your using?  I think mine is an iogear I got from frys.com like 1.5 years ago.  I'll see about the superbag, glad to know your git it to work  at least the pi is recognizing the stick over usb  I can't even use kbd or mouse on 3.0!!; (but RaspNicBit works fine??!?!)

Thanks!!!

I used cheap Sabrent usb 2.0 as a bridge and connected keyboard, mouse, kanex usb to ethernet adapter (got it at microcenter; it is only needed for pi zero, no need for it if you use pi2) and Superbpag usb 3.0 powered hub to it. i used either kootek 5V 2.5A powersupply or canakit 2.5A powersupply for zero and pi2. Make sure that superbpag is powered, otherwise sticks will suck so much power that pi restarts.
I used sabrent specifically because rasp pi description said NOT to use usb 3.0 with keyboard and mouse (something about slow devices).
sabrent:
http://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-4-Port-Individual-Switches-HB-UMLS/dp/B00BWF5U0

SUCCESS!!!

The Superbpag hub runs beautifully on standard Raspberrian w/cgminer-gekko installed.  Ran it through an unplugged powered 2.0 hub.  I may try direct later jyst to see.  Thank ypu very much!! (the Sabrent arrives tomorrow, and the 3 more compacs arrive Mon)

[Biodom]

Biodom - I don't know how to forum very well. What kind of 2.0 bridge are your using?  I think mine is an iogear I got from frys.com like 1.5 years ago.  I'll see about the superbag, glad to know your git it to work  at least the pi is recognizing the stick over usb  I can't even use kbd or mouse on 3.0!!; (but RaspNicBit works fine??!?!)

Thanks!!!

I used cheap Sabrent usb 2.0 as a bridge and connected keyboard, mouse, kanex usb to ethernet adapter (got it at microcenter; it is only needed for pi zero, no need for it if you use pi2) and Superbpag usb 3.0 powered hub to it. i used either kootek 5V 2.5A powersupply or canakit 2.5A powersupply for zero and pi2. Make sure that superbpag is powered, otherwise sticks will suck so much power that pi restarts.
I used sabrent specifically because rasp pi description said NOT to use usb 3.0 with keyboard and mouse (something about slow devices).
sabrent:
http://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-4-Port-Individual-Switches-HB-UMLS/dp/B00BWF5U0

SUCCESS!!!

The Superbpag hub runs beautifully on standard Raspberrian w/cgminer-gekko installed.  Ran it through an unplugged powered 2.0 hub.  I may try direct later jyst to see.  Thank ypu very much!! (the Sabrent arrives tomorrow, and the 3 more compacs arrive Mon)

Glad it worked out for you. Where are you getting sticks? I thought that they are sold out/almost sold out by now?

[drew_ii]

Biodom - I don't know how to forum very well. What kind of 2.0 bridge are your using?  I think mine is an iogear I got from frys.com like 1.5 years ago.  I'll see about the superbag, glad to know your git it to work  at least the pi is recognizing the stick over usb  I can't even use kbd or mouse on 3.0!!; (but RaspNicBit works fine??!?!)

Thanks!!!

I used cheap Sabrent usb 2.0 as a bridge and connected keyboard, mouse, kanex usb to ethernet adapter (got it at microcenter; it is only needed for pi zero, no need for it if you use pi2) and Superbpag usb 3.0 powered hub to it. i used either kootek 5V 2.5A powersupply or canakit 2.5A powersupply for zero and pi2. Make sure that superbpag is powered, otherwise sticks will suck so much power that pi restarts.
I used sabrent specifically because rasp pi description said NOT to use usb 3.0 with keyboard and mouse (something about slow devices).
sabrent:
http://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-4-Port-Individual-Switches-HB-UMLS/dp/B00BWF5U0

SUCCESS!!!

The Superbpag hub runs beautifully on standard Raspberrian w/cgminer-gekko installed.  Ran it through an unplugged powered 2.0 hub.  I may try direct later jyst to see.  Thank ypu very much!! (the Sabrent arrives tomorrow, and the 3 more compacs arrive Mon)

Glad it worked out for you. Where are you getting sticks? I thought that they are sold out/almost sold out by now?

bitcoinware.net/.ca  Its priced in CAD but the US exchange rate is good for us  at the moment but the shipping is expensive.  Still prices not as good as ASICPuppy but any port in a storm as they say...

[drew_ii]

Ok, a question..

I'm at 785mv and when I run at 400mHz I get up to and over 24, long term average tho is around 20-22 I think
However, when I bump it to 410mHz, there are no HW errors, but my hash rate drops to 12
Its on the Superbpag 70w 7 port 14amp in slot 7, the only other draw would be the Arctic USB fan keeping it cool (in slot 2) and the RPI 0 (in slot1).
What is causing this?  V drops?  How do you calc the draw on a port via mv + mHz?
I can possibly power up the 2.0 hub and  move the RPI 0 and Fan to the 2.0, and leave the 3.0 only running the Compac.  Was hoping to run two fans 4 sticks and the RPI 0 off the Superbpag...

Thanks,

Drew

Still learning, I'd post pics, but I cant copy and paste them from the clipboard.

[sidehack]

Could be a code error and the PLL runs 205 instead of 410, which would put you at a hair over 11GH. Dunno.

[drew_ii]

Could be a code error and the PLL runs 205 instead of 410, which would put you at a hair over 11GH. Dunno.

It's gekko's tar, could it be a newer version of a USB driver or something?  I did a bunch of updates to Raspberrian and had so ap get a bunch of USB libs pre make. Still a little lost in *nix but slowly working my way up from n00B

[Deezil]

I received my 10 sticks (in addition to the two I already had) and got them setup on Minera using the cgminer-gekko custom version.  I've been slowly increasing the clockrate/voltage but seem to be maxed out at 275 MHz with the voltage set at 700mV (drops to about 685mV when they are running).  Even cranking the voltage up to 800mV I cannot get the hashrate higher than 275MHz without significant HW errors or complete stick failure (according to cg-miner).  When I was only running two stick I had no issues running 433MHz at 800mV on the pot.  I'm no hardware guy and I don't know crap about electricity, but my current setup includes 3 sets of 4 sticks, each set of four sticks are on a 12V / 3A powered USB 3.0 hub.  They are all connected to my Sony VAIO laptop running ubuntu and Minera (that's all it does).  I'm thinking at 12V / 3A I should have about 9watts available to each of the 4 sticks, which should be plenty, but I have no idea if that's correct or not.  I can't seem to figure out how to calculate a basic formula for the consumption based on hashrate, or the other way to calculate maximum hashrate based on supply power.    COoling is not an issue I have two 80mm fans on each set of four hashers and they are warm but not hot and have been running for days.

Also,  I seem to have issues with COMPC 9, as you can see in the Screenshot link below.  I get lots of HW errors. This stick is setup identically to the other 11 sticks but it is the only one that gives trouble, even when I switch it around to different ports/hubs it's always the troublemaker. 

I also haven't considered limitations of cgminer (if any) in regards to running so many sticks on one instance of the program.  Any help / pointers / suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I am new to all this and eager to learn.

http://imgur.com/yp5oYsc

[Landy1264]

I received my 10 sticks (in addition to the two I already had) and got them setup on Minera using the cgminer-gekko custom version.  I've been slowly increasing the clockrate/voltage but seem to be maxed out at 275 MHz with the voltage set at 700mV (drops to about 685mV when they are running).  Even cranking the voltage up to 800mV I cannot get the hashrate higher than 275MHz without significant HW errors or complete stick failure (according to cg-miner).  When I was only running two stick I had no issues running 433MHz at 800mV on the pot.  I'm no hardware guy and I don't know crap about electricity, but my current setup includes 3 sets of 4 sticks, each set of four sticks are on a 12V / 3A powered USB 3.0 hub.  They are all connected to my Sony VAIO laptop running ubuntu and Minera (that's all it does).  I'm thinking at 12V / 3A I should have about 9watts available to each of the 4 sticks, which should be plenty, but I have no idea if that's correct or not.  I can't seem to figure out how to calculate a basic formula for the consumption based on hashrate, or the other way to calculate maximum hashrate based on supply power.    COoling is not an issue I have two 80mm fans on each set of four hashers and they are warm but not hot and have been running for days.

Also,  I seem to have issues with COMPC 9, as you can see in the Screenshot link below.  I get lots of HW errors. This stick is setup identically to the other 11 sticks but it is the only one that gives trouble, even when I switch it around to different ports/hubs it's always the troublemaker.  

I also haven't considered limitations of cgminer (if any) in regards to running so many sticks on one instance of the program.  Any help / pointers / suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I am new to all this and eager to learn.

Your ambient temp seems to high -> minera shows 143 degree Fahrenheit

[sidehack]

I'd guess it's a per-port current limitation or the port voltage dropping low. If fewer sticks works just fine, likely it's a power limit with your hub. I run cgminer with 20 sticks at 200MHz and get full speed out of 'em so it's not a software limit. Even if it was, you wouldn't see errors as a result - the sticks just don't get as much work, probably due to a USB packet limitation, so they run starved and just report low hashrates because the hash cores spend some time idling and that's actually all the work they're doing.

7W per stick should get you up to 300MHz cleanly, but 7W per stick is 1.4A (or potentially up to 1.6A if your voltage is sagging) and not every hub can do that. If the voltage drops below about 0.4, even momentarily, the regulator will reset and your ASIC will trip up. How much power is going into a hub doesn't matter nearly as much as how much power the hub is capable of putting out through a single port, or collectively on several ports. You could drive that thing off a car battery with a couple hundred amps capacity and it might not behave any better if the ports themselves can't push more than one amp reliably. Or, more likely since you could push two sticks well enough, the internal 12->5V is sagging or current-limited such that it'll drive two sticks well but can't handle the power required for four.

433MHz at 0.8V is probably about 3A per stick, so your hub is pushing 30W internally. Try setting the sticks to about 740mV and 300MHz, which should draw something like 6.8W per stick; four would then be about 27W total. See if it'll keep up. If you can, plug up first one stick, then two, then three, then four; after each stick, measure the 5V coming out of the hub ports and see if it's starting to drop. If you don't have an inline meter, use the meter you use to check core voltage and measure across the outside two pins on the USB plug.

[Jake36]

^+1^

What kind of hub?

Sounds like some kind of limit on the power. 2 sticks is not drawing enough to trip the limit, but 4 sticks hit's the limit and some kind of protection cut's the power down (?, just guessing).

[Deezil]

Your ambient temp seems to high -> minera shows 143 degree Fahrenheit

That's the temp of the laptop itself though, not the miner sticks.  It runs hot, always has.  I think it's a Sony thing.  The fan is barely going and it will sometimes get up near 200+ degrees and sounds like a jet engine when I'm running a bunch of stuff on it.  Had it for 3+ years though and no problems with CPU or GPU and I use to do windows 7 development on it, and anything microsoft is a resource hog.

[Deezil]

433MHz at 0.8V is probably about 3A per stick, so your hub is pushing 30W internally. Try setting the sticks to about 740mV and 300MHz, which should draw something like 6.8W per stick; four would then be about 27W total. See if it'll keep up. If you can, plug up first one stick, then two, then three, then four; after each stick, measure the 5V coming out of the hub ports and see if it's starting to drop. If you don't have an inline meter, use the meter you use to check core voltage and measure across the outside two pins on the USB plug.

Awesome!  Thanks Sidehack,  I'll keep trying and see if I can find the magic combo.

^+1^

What kind of hub?

Sounds like some kind of limit on the power. 2 sticks is not drawing enough to trip the limit, but 4 sticks hit's the limit and some kind of protection cut's the power down (?, just guessing).

It's an Orico 10 port 12V 3A USB 3.0, just like this one on amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CBEVTKI?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00

Maybe it distributes the power per-port so using only four I can't utilize all of the available power??

[Jake36]

433MHz at 0.8V is probably about 3A per stick, so your hub is pushing 30W internally. Try setting the sticks to about 740mV and 300MHz, which should draw something like 6.8W per stick; four would then be about 27W total. See if it'll keep up. If you can, plug up first one stick, then two, then three, then four; after each stick, measure the 5V coming out of the hub ports and see if it's starting to drop. If you don't have an inline meter, use the meter you use to check core voltage and measure across the outside two pins on the USB plug.

Awesome!  Thanks Sidehack,  I'll keep trying and see if I can find the magic combo.

^+1^

What kind of hub?

Sounds like some kind of limit on the power. 2 sticks is not drawing enough to trip the limit, but 4 sticks hit's the limit and some kind of protection cut's the power down (?, just guessing).

It's an Orico 10 port 12V 3A USB 3.0, just like this one on amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CBEVTKI?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00

Maybe it distributes the power per-port so using only four I can't utilize all of the available power??

I didn't see anything on Amazon (even looked around on Orico site) about the power "output" for either per port or hub total. Did see something about 12V 2.5A power brick, so kind of leaning towards the hub not supplying enough power and they tried to fix it by going with a 12V 3A brick.

So I would do like sidehack said. Just start adding 1 stick at a time at 300MHz and see what it does.

[user356546]

I received my 10 sticks (in addition to the two I already had) and got them setup on Minera using the cgminer-gekko custom version.  I've been slowly increasing the clockrate/voltage but seem to be maxed out at 275 MHz with the voltage set at 700mV (drops to about 685mV when they are running).  Even cranking the voltage up to 800mV I cannot get the hashrate higher than 275MHz without significant HW errors or complete stick failure (according to cg-miner).  When I was only running two stick I had no issues running 433MHz at 800mV on the pot.  I'm no hardware guy and I don't know crap about electricity, but my current setup includes 3 sets of 4 sticks, each set of four sticks are on a 12V / 3A powered USB 3.0 hub.  They are all connected to my Sony VAIO laptop running ubuntu and Minera (that's all it does).  I'm thinking at 12V / 3A I should have about 9watts available to each of the 4 sticks, which should be plenty, but I have no idea if that's correct or not.  I can't seem to figure out how to calculate a basic formula for the consumption based on hashrate, or the other way to calculate maximum hashrate based on supply power.    COoling is not an issue I have two 80mm fans on each set of four hashers and they are warm but not hot and have been running for days.

Also,  I seem to have issues with COMPC 9, as you can see in the Screenshot link below.  I get lots of HW errors. This stick is setup identically to the other 11 sticks but it is the only one that gives trouble, even when I switch it around to different ports/hubs it's always the troublemaker. 

I also haven't considered limitations of cgminer (if any) in regards to running so many sticks on one instance of the program.  Any help / pointers / suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I am new to all this and eager to learn.

http://imgur.com/yp5oYsc

YMMV but my four sticks, each running at 750mV @ 350 MHz consume about 41 Watts at the wall on my Superbpag hub. As most have said here, I think it is the hub. If you have a Kill-A-Watt meter you can see how much the whole hub is pulling and that may give you some additional insight.

Also, my Superbpag 7 port says it is capable of 60 W but at 40 it starts to get very warm. I have a fan on it now and its elevated to get more airflow and I have seen a significant drop in Zombie sticks and HW error rate. May be coincidental, but temperature of the hub could play a role.

I am new to all of this too, but hopefully this may help.

[Deezil]

433MHz at 0.8V is probably about 3A per stick, so your hub is pushing 30W internally. Try setting the sticks to about 740mV and 300MHz, which should draw something like 6.8W per stick; four would then be about 27W total. See if it'll keep up. If you can, plug up first one stick, then two, then three, then four; after each stick, measure the 5V coming out of the hub ports and see if it's starting to drop. If you don't have an inline meter, use the meter you use to check core voltage and measure across the outside two pins on the USB plug.

I split and rigged up an old USB cable to the leads on my DMM to check the hub voltage.  With no sticks I get 5.28V volts at the end near the power source and it gradually drops to 5.26V on the other end.  I set the sticks all at 740mV and cgminer at 300 MHz.  After plugging one stick in there was no drop in voltage on any of the other ports.  Same thing for sticks 2, 3, and when I plug in 4 I do see a drop form 5.26 to 5.24 on the last port.  I start to get HW errors though on any one of the sticks 1-3 when I plug in the 4th.  After that they start to reset and I end up with duplicate dead compacs in the list.  I repeated this process and stepped down the clockrate to 295, 285, 280, and still got major errors on only one device, and it's a different one (different port location and stick) each time I do the trial.  At 275MHz it works great with no errors, the limit seems to be identical to when the pot was set lower at 700MHz.  I guess my hub's power is limited to whatever it takes to run four sticks at 275MHz.  I don't want to buy any more hubs so I guess I'll stick to 275MHz  for 12 miners at ~182GH/s (was hoping to tinker and break 200 GH/s with my current setup).  Upping the voltage to 740mV did fix the issue I had with the single miner giving HW errors.

[Biodom]

Trying again by moving from raspberry to (finally!) uefi installed Ubuntu 15.10 on Win 8.1 PC.

However when loading libjannson-dev it says E: unable to locate the package libjannson-dev

Why/ is this really needed?

should I go ahead trying to build cgminer without this package and why it could be unavailable?

EDIT: tried to load the same package in raspbian-no go as well

Can someone independently test if this (libjannson-dev) went missing for some reason?

[Jake36]

Trying again by moving from raspberry to (finally!) uefi installed Ubuntu 15.10 on Win 8.1 PC.

However when loading libjannson-dev it says E: unable to locate the package libjannson-dev

Why/ is this really needed?

should I go ahead trying to build cgminer without this package and why it could be unavailable?

EDIT: tried to load the same package in raspbian-no go as well

Can someone independently test if this (libjannson-dev) went missing for some reason?

It's libjansson-dev

[philipma1957]

I received my 10 sticks (in addition to the two I already had) and got them setup on Minera using the cgminer-gekko custom version.  I've been slowly increasing the clockrate/voltage but seem to be maxed out at 275 MHz with the voltage set at 700mV (drops to about 685mV when they are running).  Even cranking the voltage up to 800mV I cannot get the hashrate higher than 275MHz without significant HW errors or complete stick failure (according to cg-miner).  When I was only running two stick I had no issues running 433MHz at 800mV on the pot.  I'm no hardware guy and I don't know crap about electricity, but my current setup includes 3 sets of 4 sticks, each set of four sticks are on a 12V / 3A powered USB 3.0 hub.  They are all connected to my Sony VAIO laptop running ubuntu and Minera (that's all it does).  I'm thinking at 12V / 3A I should have about 9watts available to each of the 4 sticks, which should be plenty, but I have no idea if that's correct or not.  I can't seem to figure out how to calculate a basic formula for the consumption based on hashrate, or the other way to calculate maximum hashrate based on supply power.    COoling is not an issue I have two 80mm fans on each set of four hashers and they are warm but not hot and have been running for days.

Also,  I seem to have issues with COMPC 9, as you can see in the Screenshot link below.  I get lots of HW errors. This stick is setup identically to the other 11 sticks but it is the only one that gives trouble, even when I switch it around to different ports/hubs it's always the troublemaker.  

I also haven't considered limitations of cgminer (if any) in regards to running so many sticks on one instance of the program.  Any help / pointers / suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I am new to all this and eager to learn.

this is easy  get a fourth hub..



here is why  3 amps x 12 volts = 36 watts  / 4 sticks = 9 watts no wrong..

the 12 volts converts to 5 volts inside the hubs 5% loss at best so  36 x .95 = 34.2 watts at best.  but you are running 24/7/365 so de rate by 80 percent so 34.2 x .8 =

27.36 watts at the absolute best.  divide by 4 =  if you are lucky a max of 6.84 watts per stick.

now that is one issue.

second issue is  6.84 watts is  1.368 amps per port  

the hub may exceed that with 2 sticks even 3 stick but not 4 sticks.

Try running 3 sticks on each hub and see how high they go.

lastly  all my windows 7 ,8 ,10  said fuck you when I raised my sticks over 7.  and my hubs are studs.  my 19 port hubs can do 16 sticks at 300freq.

my 49 port hub can so 20 sticks at 300 freq.

 I use linux and can run 20 sticks at 300 easy.

I am down to 13 sticks and run at 250.

[Biodom]

Trying again by moving from raspberry to (finally!) uefi installed Ubuntu 15.10 on Win 8.1 PC.

However when loading libjannson-dev it says E: unable to locate the package libjannson-dev

Why/ is this really needed?

should I go ahead trying to build cgminer without this package and why it could be unavailable?

EDIT: tried to load the same package in raspbian-no go as well

Can someone independently test if this (libjannson-dev) went missing for some reason?

It's libjansson-dev

Thanks..stupid typo.
However, after everything (including going to gekko file) loaded:

cd cgminer-gekko results in
bash: cd: cgminer-gekko: No such file or directory