Mining on Rapberry PI

[Meech]

Well, 3xU3 give me enough BTC so I can actually pay for something

I have a bunch of 333Mhs and they're still running for fun, because the fractions of BTC they make will never be useful.

The U3 will pay for themselves if not the electricity they use (i'll post a screenshot of their power usage tomorrow as I monitor them closely)

Fractions of Btc are important and you someday may be biting your tongue on that thought.  Short term isn't the best way to plan your venture and I wouldn't recommend Btc now as a payment method or an income....just acquire and hold if you can but for most of us it is tough to do.

[notlist3d]

Well, 3xU3 give me enough BTC so I can actually pay for something

I have a bunch of 333Mhs and they're still running for fun, because the fractions of BTC they make will never be useful.

The U3 will pay for themselves if not the electricity they use (i'll post a screenshot of their power usage tomorrow as I monitor them closely)

Fractions of Btc are important and you someday may be biting your tongue on that thought.  Short term isn't the best way to plan your venture and I wouldn't recommend Btc now as a payment method or an income....just acquire and hold if you can but for most of us it is tough to do.

It's actually pretty good on payment. I mean I have used it on quite a few miners, it's neat to use some of it at times.

But I agree longterm your goal is to collect as many BTC as possible and hold longterm.  Even if you look last few weeks it's had a decent jump on price. I think and hope long term keeps looking promising.

[bestcoin_59]

On hub it was in a different language I did not translate.  Main thing to look at is power it provides to each port or overall.  You want a good amount of power.

According to the specs it looks as if this hub can deliver up to 3A per port.

Regards,

Jeff.

[Jake36]

On hub it was in a different language I did not translate.  Main thing to look at is power it provides to each port or overall.  You want a good amount of power.

According to the specs it looks as if this hub can deliver up to 3A per port.

Regards,

Jeff.

You might want to double check that 3A per port.

I think it's the power supply that does 3A.

[notlist3d]

On hub it was in a different language I did not translate.  Main thing to look at is power it provides to each port or overall.  You want a good amount of power.

According to the specs it looks as if this hub can deliver up to 3A per port.

Regards,

Jeff.

You might want to double check that 3A per port.

I think it's the power supply that does 3A.

This is honestly the best comparsion on hubs still.  I'm sure there are some other ones not on list but here - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=253749.0

You can look at all those hubs.  And a modded hub could go higher.  I personally have not modified any of my hubs though.

[bestcoin_59]

You might want to double check that 3A per port.

I think it's the power supply that does 3A.

I didn't paid much attention but after checking i think you are right

I might want to reconsider my choice, although this device should theorically be able to power 5 miners.
The typical hash rates for the Gekoscience compac (if not overclocked) is about 8Gh/s. Efficiency is .31-.35 watts per Gh/s,
so each device need 2,8W. The transformer seems to be able to deliver 5V with a maximal intensity of 3A, that is
a total power of 15W max. The maximal number of compacs which can be connected to the HUB should be: 15/2.8, that is 5.

That beeing said, the calculation is perhaps too optimistic and theorical. Not to mention that the transformer might become
out of shape quite quickly...

[bestcoin_59]

Hello everyone

I don't know if it related to the Zombie we were talking about, but someone noticed that when using Antminer & bfgminer software, crashes can be fixed by adding the line:

slub_debug=FP

in the following text file:

/boot/cmdline.txt

For more info, visit:
http://hawkcreation.com/raspberry-pi-miner-bitcoins-cles-antminer/

P.S.: Feel free to move this post in the software section if necessary. Thanks.

[zOU]

Not related to zombie

This is to avoid raspberry pi crashing (details not provided)

And he's using u2 not u3

[bestcoin_59]

Not related to zombie

This is to avoid raspberry pi crashing (details not provided)

And he's using u2 not u3

Ok, thanks zOU 

[zOU]

My pleasure, being french helped a bit understanding it

[bestcoin_59]

Hello everybody:)

Knowing that the raspberry pi only supports USB 2.0 hub (and not 3.0), i was wondering if this limitation would impact the mining performances...

Cheers,

Jeff.

[alh]

Hello everybody:)

Knowing that the raspberry pi only supports USB 2.0 hub (and not 3.0), i was wondering if this limitation would impact the mining performances...

Cheers,

Jeff.

No, the actual data transfer over the USB port is small. It could probably be handled with USB 1.1. USB 3.0 is complete overkill in terms of transfer rate.

[notlist3d]

Hello everybody:)

Knowing that the raspberry pi only supports USB 2.0 hub (and not 3.0), i was wondering if this limitation would impact the mining performances...

Cheers,

Jeff.

No, the actual data transfer over the USB port is small. It could probably be handled with USB 1.1. USB 3.0 is complete overkill in terms of transfer rate.

The only thing is some usb 3's tend to have more power for usb sticks it would be nice.  But RPI does not like a lot of powered hubs and usb 3.0 at all.   

But if usb hub needed for U3's you can use cheap no power usb hubs to RPI.  And you will have no issues with it.

[bestcoin_59]

Hello everybody

Thanks for your answers.

But if usb hub needed for U3's you can use cheap no power usb hubs to RPI.  And you will have no issues with it.

In fact, i bought a GekkoScience Compac recently. The device arrived at the forwarding company warehouse and is in transit to Europe. I can't wait, but i should get it soon I had the felling that i will have more fun with the compac rather than the Antminer U3. That beeing said, i might have more difficulties in finding the right USB Hub, taking into account the Raspberry and the Gekko specifications.

Regarding the softwares, can you please let me know if my understandings are correct:
1) the official cgminer software should work, but novak wrote a custom cgminer for the compac and it's better to use it.
2) Minera is a software that can be used to monitor the device. Since i registered to Slush's pool
i didn't really need Minera. However, Minera will useful if i join the more confidential sidehack
stick pool. Binaries can be downloaded, but it is adivised to compile the source code with the right options.

Am i right?

Cheers,

Jeff.

[notlist3d]

Hello everybody

Thanks for your answers.

But if usb hub needed for U3's you can use cheap no power usb hubs to RPI.  And you will have no issues with it.

In fact, i bought a GekkoScience Compac recently. The device arrived at the forwarding company warehouse and is in transit to Europe. I can't wait, but i should get it soon I had the felling that i will have more fun with the compac rather than the Antminer U3. That beeing said, i might have more difficulties in finding the right USB Hub, taking into account the Raspberry and the Gekko specifications.

Regarding the softwares, can you please let me know if my understandings are correct:
1) the official cgminer software should work, but novak wrote a custom cgminer for the compac and it's better to use it.
2) Minera is a software that can be used to monitor the device. Since i registered to Slush's pool
i didn't really need Minera. However, Minera will useful if i join the more confidential sidehack
stick pool. Binaries can be downloaded, but it is adivised to compile the source code with the right options.

Am i right?

Cheers,

Jeff.

1) is 100 percent correct Novak did a amazing job with compac-cgminer.  It works great if you have a RPI to throw it on it's even better.
2) Not really Minera is like a miner OS for dummies (no offense to anyone using it).  It has great nice gui's, and there is a image that supports the copmpac.

So it really deepens on no 2  on what OS you want to run on a RPI. 

[bestcoin_59]

Thanks a lot for your quick answer notlist3d 

2) Not really Minera is like a miner OS for dummies (no offense to anyone using it).  It has great nice gui's, and there is a image that supports the copmpac.

So it really deepens on no 2  on what OS you want to run on a RPI. 

Ok, so i think i won't need Minera. I'm going to compile the cgminer source from Novak this afternoon (even if i don't have the compac in hand yet).

Cheers,

Jeff.

[notlist3d]

Thanks a lot for your quick answer notlist3d 

2) Not really Minera is like a miner OS for dummies (no offense to anyone using it).  It has great nice gui's, and there is a image that supports the copmpac.

So it really deepens on no 2  on what OS you want to run on a RPI. 

Ok, so i think i won't need Minera. I'm going to compile the cgminer source from Novak this afternoon (even if i don't have the compac in hand yet).

Cheers,

Jeff.

It's not a bad idea you can test it out and make sure you can get it compiled.   It should not be to hard if you are use to Linux.

But yea Minera is mainly for those who like the GUI.  I like having the OS there and just using terminal to run the cgminer instances.

[zOU]

I'm using 2 compac stick on a standard RPI minera image.
I've compiled the cgminer-gecko and it's running fine so far. (see https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1173963.msg12368480#msg12368480)

I'm using a Belkin F4U018-BLK with a 2.5A power supply

I'm using --compac-freq 180 (10.2Ghs), V set at +/- 0.75.

Note: order to delivery in France from ASICpuppy took less than 1 week.

[bestcoin_59]

Hello,

Thanks for the informations.

I'm using 2 compac stick on a standard RPI minera image.
I've compiled the cgminer-gecko and it's running fine so far. (see https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1173963.msg12368480#msg12368480)

I compiled the source files too and didn't had any troubles on the Raspberry Pi. However i noticed that a cgminer binary file is already existing in the folder downloaded, so the compilation may not be madatory, although it is probably better to do so since the binary file is "hardware optimized" that way.

Note: order to delivery in France from ASICpuppy took less than 1 week.

Lucky you Their oversea shipping costs are, in my opinion, quite high (more or less the price of a compac itself...). I prefered to have the compac shipped within the USA, and reshipped back to me in France (thanks to the forwarding company i currently use). If i remember well, i paid (taking into account both shipping charges) less than $7. That being said, my compac is still in transit

Btw, did you have to pay customs duty?

Still, i went a ahead and tested the cgminer-gecko software on my 330MH/s ASIC block erupter.

./cgminer -o stratum+tcp://stratum.bitcoin.cz:3334 -u Jeff_59.worker1 --?

[I didn't know which frequency paramater i should specified, so i didn't specify any ]

Although it seemed to work, the tasks given by the software were too difficult for this miner. In fact, the miner were just warm and not hot as it used to be when using the "regular" cgminer software...It didn't manage to mine anything...

Cheers,

Jeff.

[zOU]

No tax duty.
I ordered 4 more yesterday.

Paid 179$ shipping included.
Still better than bitshopper since they don't have any in stock anyway...

Custom miner go to /var/www/minera/minera.bin/custom (if you want to use them in minera UI)

The default cgminer is in /var/www/minera/minera.bin/ and doesn,t suport the sidehack sticks

With the 330Mhs you should use --icarus-options 115200:1:1

My 2 compac have been running at freq 210 with no problem for 24h (well ventilated too)