Raspberry Pi alternatives that can run multiple BFL singles, ASICs ?

[bitcoindaddy]

Just an update: I got my MK802 II working with CGMiner pretty easily, and it's been great for several days now, but I've only got 1 Single to test on. I'm actually gonna move it today, but should be good. I'm very happy with this thing.

Have you measured how many watts it uses (without the single)?

[crazyates]

Just an update: I got my MK802 II working with CGMiner pretty easily, and it's been great for several days now, but I've only got 1 Single to test on. I'm actually gonna move it today, but should be good. I'm very happy with this thing.

Have you measured how many watts it uses (without the single)?

No I havn't, as my killawatt is hooked up to my main PC, so I'd have to shut it down to check. I'll do that tomorrow, and let you know. It is powered off a microUSB charger, so it can't be more than a couple of watts.

[stevegee58]

Regarding power consumption, I did some research and here's what I found from various Interwebs sources:

Raspberry Pi Model B: 3.5 Watts (Wikipedia)
BeagleBone:              1.5 @idle, 2.5 @peak during boot (BeagleBone reference manual PDF)
MK802:                    3 Watts peak (Couldn't find definitive source. This from http://romanrm.ru/en/a10/mk802-server)

All of these devices are designed to be powered from USB which puts a hard limit of 500-900 mA @5 volts = 2.5-4.5 watts.
So based purely on the USB power you can put a high estimate of power consumption at 4.5 watts for all of these little USB-powered board computers.
The BeagleBone has lowest power consumption probably because it doesn't have a video output.

If someone wants to get all patriotic about it, Raspberry Pi is developed in the UK, BeagleBone is manufactured in the US and the MK802 is Chinese.

[SLok]

Got a Hp Mini 700 without a harddisk from ebay for €57, plus a 16GB SSD for €18 (not in yet). With a usb harddisk with Hp-Mini-Mie (linux) on it, I get almost 4 hours fiddling around with it, some surfing. This with a 4400mAh 11.1V battery, 12.5Watt with screen never off, screen takes 3Watt according HP service manual. Not bad.

[Carlton Banks]

Not seen a mention of these boards: http://www.hardkernel.com

The only bad thing about these things is that the site doesn't accept BTC. Otherwise, they sound fantastic: 2GB of RAM and 6 USB connectors kind of sold it for me. And it's using the Samsung Exynos SOC, so it should have plenty of CPU (and RAM) left over for other stuff. From the complaints I hear from people using these mini-boards, stale shares and reliability are not an insignificant problem. I'd love to hear some first hand experience of the latter with an Odroid offering (I reckon the CPU and RAM should solve the stales issue). I may even dip my toe myself, but not until they appear on Bitmit or something.

[crazyates]

One of the reasons I choose the MK802 II was that it's cheap! You set a budget of $200, $150, or even $100, and you could put together any number of systems that would do the trick. Below $100 is still quite possible, but that's why the Rpi is so popular: It can be had for under $50. I got my MK802 II for $41 shipped.

[Carlton Banks]

One of the reasons I choose the MK802 II was that it's cheap! You set a budget of $200, $150, or even $100, and you could put together any number of systems that would do the trick. Below $100 is still quite possible, but that's why the Rpi is so popular: It can be had for under $50. I got my MK802 II for $41 shipped.

That's the only other trouble with the O-Droids I guess, they're $89 and $139 for each of the two models. Though I reckon it would be worth it if they could overcome uptime/stales issues.

[Kuusou]

Regarding power consumption, I did some research and here's what I found from various Interwebs sources:

Raspberry Pi Model B: 3.5 Watts (Wikipedia)
BeagleBone:              1.5 @idle, 2.5 @peak during boot (BeagleBone reference manual PDF)
MK802:                    3 Watts peak (Couldn't find definitive source. This from http://romanrm.ru/en/a10/mk802-server)

All of these devices are designed to be powered from USB which puts a hard limit of 500-900 mA @5 volts = 2.5-4.5 watts.
So based purely on the USB power you can put a high estimate of power consumption at 4.5 watts for all of these little USB-powered board computers.
The BeagleBone has lowest power consumption probably because it doesn't have a video output.

If someone wants to get all patriotic about it, Raspberry Pi is developed in the UK, BeagleBone is manufactured in the US and the MK802 is Chinese.

You really press for that BeagleBone don't you? haha. There is something to be said about the cost of each thing though. Isn't the BB more than double the cost of the RPi? And the MK802 is only a little bit less than the BB. Though crazyates they got theirs for 41 shipped. I don't know where they got theirs though.

And any time anyone talks about another alt, such as the odroids that were just posted, they are always like 100 bucks. Why would anyone want any of those options when you could spend under 50 dollars on something that will work just as well. I understand the want for something better if you are going to toy around with it a lot and use it for many different projects, but we are talking about buying something that by all rights should be sitting in a drawer forever.

As I posted before, I picked up SYLVANIA SYNET7WIC for 47 shipped. Anything that I could find that had better specs cost at least double. And unlike the RPi and a few others that had the same exact specs, this idea/product has a build in screen/keyboard/mouse as well as full wireless out of the box. It also has 3 USB ports on it instead of the 1.

I'm obviously a little bias here as this is the one that I  ended up buying, but I did look at all of the alternatives posted here as well as a few other ones.

I'm actually really glad I got it when I did too because it went out of stock only a day or two after I got mine. I know that you can get it for pretty much the same price in a few other places though, so it might still be an option for other people depending on where you live.

I think I'm going to take a little time today (probably right after I post this) to get a proper OS onto the device and get a miner on there. I really wish I had a USB miner to test out as well. I'm thoroughly impressed with the build quality too. I expected it to feel like really cheap plastic, but it doesn't. It feels solid, like any other netbook.

I also can't currently comment on the watt usage but seeing as it's not even a full netbook (I guess they call it a smartbook, like a cross between a netbook and a smart phone?) and those use very few watts, I'm going to assume that it's quite low. It will take it quite some time before it costs me that extra 40+ dollars that I didn't spend on another option. I might even mod it a little bit to see if I can save a few watts here and there, but the effort that would take might outweigh the savings. We are really talking about cents per year here.

I do think this thread is evolving a bit as well all start to get our hands on our purchases. I think we should stop comparing models and products, especially ones that we already own, because we already have all of that information. I would love to start seeing pictures of setups and devices here. I will be taking some today I guess.

[stevegee58]

You really press for that BeagleBone don't you? haha. There is something to be said about the cost of each thing though. Isn't the BB more than double the cost of the RPi? And the MK802 is only a little bit less than the BB. Though crazyates they got theirs for 41 shipped. I don't know where they got theirs though.

Availability.  At the time I got my BB, lead times on RPis were weeks/months.  BBs shipped from stock in days.  Plus they're "murrican" F yeah.

Reliability.  I'm not interested in being a first adopter for every new whizbangy thing that comes along.  I know that new hardware is almost guaranteed to have problems and RPi had its share.  I saw some chatter on message boards regarding USB issues with RPi and BFL mining.

Maybe RPis ship from stock in days now and maybe they've worked out the early problems.  I don't know.

[crazyates]

Aaaand it's working! Got everything together tonight, and now I'm just waiting for ASICs.

[hardcore-fs]

One of the reasons I choose the MK802 II was that it's cheap! You set a budget of $200, $150, or even $100, and you could put together any number of systems that would do the trick. Below $100 is still quite possible, but that's why the Rpi is so popular: It can be had for under $50. I got my MK802 II for $41 shipped.

That's the only other trouble with the O-Droids I guess, they're $89 and $139 for each of the two models. Though I reckon it would be worth it if they could overcome uptime/stales issues.

I also looked at them......
The other issue is this:

U2:
USB3503A: Communication is  I2c or HSIC
LAN9730: "The internal device controller is USB 2.0-compliant and the HSIC interface is HSIC USB Electrical Specification Revision 1.0-compliant." so actually it is a 1.0 bottleneck, but can "talk" at USB2.0

Ultimately no matter how many "ports" you have, they all bottle neck at a single port on the 4412, so you may as well forget about the "6" port jobbies, buy a 2 port and add an external hub.. saving yourself 60 bucks!!!

what is even worse, is that the one with 6 ports actually hang 4 of those ports off the ethernet chip.... problem is that a 100Base T can saturate a usb2.0 connection, so basically the other 4 ports are fighting for bandwidth.

[Carlton Banks]

That's the only other trouble with the O-Droids I guess, they're $89 and $139 for each of the two models. Though I reckon it would be worth it if they could overcome uptime/stales issues.

I also looked at them......
The other issue is this:

U2:
USB3503A: Communication is  I2c or HSIC
LAN9730: "The internal device controller is USB 2.0-compliant and the HSIC interface is HSIC USB Electrical Specification Revision 1.0-compliant." so actually it is a 1.0 bottleneck, but can "talk" at USB2.0

Ultimately no matter how many "ports" you have, they all bottle neck at a single port on the 4412, so you may as well forget about the "6" port jobbies, buy a 2 port and add an external hub.. saving yourself 60 bucks!!!

what is even worse, is that the one with 6 ports actually hand 4 of those ports of the ethernet chip.... problem is that a 100Base T can saturate a usb2.0 connection, so basically the other 4 ports are fighting for bandwidth.

Ah, that's a shame, I was hoping they'd be in with a fighting chance. The "desktop-like performance" claims are credible, but not if it's only got 2 USB roots that are old spec and sharing resources on the board

[crazyates]

I just got a newsletter email about APC, which looks like a decent possibility. If we could get Linux on this thing, I'm sure we could mine on it. http://apc.io/

Model   APC 8750
Software   Android 2.3 (PC System)
Chip   VIA 800MHz Processor
Memory   DDR3 512MB Memory
2GB NAND Flash
Graphics   Built-in 2D/3D Graphic
Resolution up to 720p
Input and Output   HDMI
VGA
USB 2.0 (x4)
Audio out / Mic in
microSD Slot
Network   10/100 Ethernet
Size   170 x 85mm (W x H)
Neo-ITX Standard*

[SAC]

If we could get Linux on this thing,

Been done already and does look damn promising..

http://www.raspbian.org/ApricotImages

[hardcore-fs]

If we could get Linux on this thing,

Been done already and does look damn promising..

http://www.raspbian.org/ApricotImages

I looked at it some time ago.
Trust me the VIA sucks for support.... its like the manufacturer in TW does not give a shit about the chips they sell.
Check out this link:
http://apc.io/8750-known-issues/

It is ALSO having issues with the USB ports, so is it really worth taking the risk and running a mining network off it?
AND it won't boot unless you have the HDMI/VGA connected!!
Then there are issues with the driver source not being released......

[crazyates]

If we could get Linux on this thing,

Been done already and does look damn promising..

http://www.raspbian.org/ApricotImages

I looked at it some time ago.
Trust me the VIA sucks for support.... its like the manufacturer in TW does not give a shit about the chips they sell.
Check out this link:
http://apc.io/8750-known-issues/

It is ALSO having issues with the USB ports, so is it really worth taking the risk and running a mining network off it?
AND it won't boot unless you have the HDMI/VGA connected!!
Then there are issues with the driver source not being released......

A few resistors can fool it into turning the VGA port into a dummy plug, right? And are there actually issues with the USB ports, or with the mSD adapter? Either way, it looks like you're right, as this isn't quite as polished as I'd hoped. Maybe in time.

[hardcore-fs]

Really I'm spending a lot of time looking for suitable boards , that will scale AND have support.

I have personally brought-up raw hardware under linux and have contributed to the kernel for a number of boards, and I can say that if you work alone... it is NO fun, and as in the case of the  APC IF you do not have MANUFACTURERS FULL data-sheets (not the redacted shite they are giving away with this board), then you really are stuffed.

If you dig into the makers of this chipset... you will see continual complaints from the community that they will not release data needed to do the most basic of things, this is always a problem with Taiwanese manufacturers not wanting their products to be copied/ripped of by China, so they hold back critical configuration data.

I don't want to spend my life getting a coronary, because I managed to save $50 bucks on a suitable mining controller, but have to sort out bugs/support on a poorly supported  motherboard.

HC

[Chalkbot]

Thanks hardcore-fs,

I was wondering how we could still be facing the same problems in 2012. Didn't realize there was motivation to create them.

[hardcore-fs]

Thanks hardcore-fs,

I was wondering how we could still be facing the same problems in 2012. Didn't realize there was motivation to create them.

There will ALWAYS be motivation for the people who pay for the electricity when mining, every extra Watt & hardware cost has to be absorbed ,and whilst it is less of an issue now it is better to have your "game face on" when it is an issue in the future.

Basically 4 years of research is going to be invaluable when it hits 12.5 and I think that if "fees" don't start coming into play then there really is a danger of someone having more that 51% of the network as people pull out.


 

[Bigal]

Not seen a mention of these boards: http://www.hardkernel.com

The only bad thing about these things is that the site doesn't accept BTC. Otherwise, they sound fantastic: 2GB of RAM and 6 USB connectors kind of sold it for me. And it's using the Samsung Exynos SOC, so it should have plenty of CPU (and RAM) left over for other stuff. From the complaints I hear from people using these mini-boards, stale shares and reliability are not an insignificant problem. I'd love to hear some first hand experience of the latter with an Odroid offering (I reckon the CPU and RAM should solve the stales issue). I may even dip my toe myself, but not until they appear on Bitmit or something.

I ordered the U2 last week and I also just got a Pi I'll do a comparison assuming if and when I ever get a couple of asic's to to run on them.