[Review] Avalon 6 Miner - Winter Mining - Notlist3d - Also FAQ and Help

[fanatic26]

If anyone can correct or embellish my understanding of what I am seeing, please do so.

I am not sure if anyone ever responded to this so I will go ahead. Just to be safe I would verify the 4 pin cable is good and change the micro usb cable but it sure looks like you are seeing a continuous restart loop of the AUC dongle. You will almost assuredly need to replace it. As far as power requirements go the Rpi should have at least a 1.5 amp power supply (I would recommend a minimum of 2amp personally). A 1 amp power supply will not support the AUC dongle and the RPi at the same time. The dongle will sit idle with just a single green LED on and the Pi itself will crash and only have its red power LEDs on. My impression is it is corrupt firmware on the dongle causing the boot loop. Avalon does has firmware for the AUC on its canaan creative site but I do not know how you would actually reflash the dongle itself or if that will even fix the problem.

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[philipma1957]

If anyone can correct or embellish my understanding of what I am seeing, please do so.

I am not sure if anyone ever responded to this so I will go ahead. Just to be safe I would verify the 4 pin cable is good and change the micro usb cable but it sure looks like you are seeing a continuous restart loop of the AUC dongle. You will almost assuredly need to replace it. As far as power requirements go the Rpi should have at least a 1.5 amp power supply (I would recommend a minimum of 2amp personally). A 1 amp power supply will not support the AUC dongle and the RPi at the same time. The dongle will sit idle with just a single green LED on and the Pi itself will crash and only have its red power LEDs on. My impression is it is corrupt firmware on the dongle causing the boot loop. Avalon does has firmware for the AUC on its canaan creative site but I do not know how you would actually reflash the dongle itself or if that will even fix the problem.

I have found this wall wart  can do 2 rasp pi's

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014ZMOZY0?

I have found this usb 2 cable to be very high quality



http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015MJLEUS?

If you do the usb cables above with the wall wart above and you have a fail then the little dongle converter is very likely no good.

but I would give them a try.

use two of the three usb cables
one for power to the rasp pi
one for power to the dongle

save the third
 one for back up

[notlist3d]

If anyone can correct or embellish my understanding of what I am seeing, please do so.

I am not sure if anyone ever responded to this so I will go ahead. Just to be safe I would verify the 4 pin cable is good and change the micro usb cable but it sure looks like you are seeing a continuous restart loop of the AUC dongle. You will almost assuredly need to replace it. As far as power requirements go the Rpi should have at least a 1.5 amp power supply (I would recommend a minimum of 2amp personally). A 1 amp power supply will not support the AUC dongle and the RPi at the same time. The dongle will sit idle with just a single green LED on and the Pi itself will crash and only have its red power LEDs on. My impression is it is corrupt firmware on the dongle causing the boot loop. Avalon does has firmware for the AUC on its canaan creative site but I do not know how you would actually reflash the dongle itself or if that will even fix the problem.

I have found this wall wart  can do 2 rasp pi's

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014ZMOZY0?

I have found this usb 2 cable to be very high quality



http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015MJLEUS?

If you do the usb cables above with the wall wart above and you have a fail then the little dongle converter is very likely no good.

but I would give them a try.

use two of the three usb cables
one for power to the rasp pi
one for power to the dongle

save the third
 one for back up

I don't do anything special on my RPI power.  I had a decent amount of phone charger's and usb cords.  So I just used them and then there was zero cost.  I'm all for re-using parts.

I have a good amount sorted at this point just waiting for projects.

[alh]

Thanks to folks most recent responses. As it turns out, the fundamental issue was the 4-pin cable. I had run a continuity check on the lines, but the problem is that it had two of the lines crossed. That is what was causing the "dongle" to reset on a regular basis. Now that I have a working configuration, with a fragile 4-pin cable, I can easily work issues from here. It's now hashing, and I can interact with the actual mining hardware.

Yan at BlockC helped me diagnose this. He indicated that during their early days, the cable producer would do this from time to time and hence they included additional 4-pin cables with their bulk orders to deal with any mis-wired cables.

For anybody else having a "regular dongle reset" issue, the 4-pin cable is a STRAIGHT THROUGH arrangement, no cross-overs between the ends. Once you know what too look for on the dongle in terms of LED patterns, it's pretty easy to recognize.

[dogie]

I can't for the life of me get my second module to stay up - it drops after a few minutes regardless of clock speed or pool. Is there a command to turn the auto overclocking off, maybe that'll get it.

[pikachuy]

SO, which one would you guys think is better? I don't have a Kill A Watt meter to test this.

An Avalon 6:
At 12v and underclocking the frequency to 375 to achieve about 3TH/s
or
Undervolting to 11.6v and keeping the frequency at stock 500 to achieve about 3TH/s

Both hash about the same, but which combination would have more an impact on saving power? Underclocking frequency or undervolting?

My main objective is to lower it enough where the fan don't ramp up full speed because noise is a big concern. And testing those 2 methods has lowered the fans to tolerable levels, it's just I don't know which one is more beneficial. Any advice?

[philipma1957]

SO, which one would you guys think is better? I don't have a Kill A Watt meter to test this.

An Avalon 6:
At 12v and underclocking the frequency to 375 to achieve about 3TH/s
or
Undervolting to 11.6v and keeping the frequency at stock 500 to achieve about 3TH/s

Both hash about the same, but which combination would have more an impact on saving power? Underclocking frequency or undervolting?

My main objective is to lower it enough where the fan don't ramp up full speed because noise is a big concern. And testing those 2 methods has lowered the fans to tolerable levels, it's just I don't know which one is more beneficial. Any advice?

undervolt to 11.6 and set fans at 40%


 do not set at 20%  that ramps.

[Mikestang]

I got my Avalon 6 from the group buy up and running, pict here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7216.msg14212317#msg14212317.  The factory fan is crazy how it cycles, so I set it to 40% and that made it more tolerable (it's running in the laundry room in my house).

So this keeps happening: the light on the front of the A6 flashed red, the fan slowed way down, and the wattage at the wall went from 1000+ down to 90, and the 5s reported hash dropped to almost 0, then like it was restarted it goes right back to normal operations - fan comes back up and so does wattage and hash.  The uptime doesn't reset, so it's not really a restart, but like a cgminer restart almost or something.  Input voltage is solid 12.0v+.  Any idea what that's all about?

Otherwise hashes along at ~3.0-3.7TH between resets (should it be constantly at like 3.7?  why does it go as low as 3.0?), but I have stopped mining with it until I find out why it is doing this.

[Mikestang]

I am using two 850watt OCZ psus, one one each blade.  I am correct in assuming that two pci-e plugs on the right are one blade, and two on the left are the other, right?  That's how I have the psu's plugged in.  I don't think what I'm seeing is a power issue, though.  Doesn't seem to be overheating either.  I will play around with it again tonight, but I would really like to figure out why it doesn't stay hashing, could something have been damaged in transit?

[pikachuy]

@Mikestang can you post a screenshot of your cgminer?

[Mikestang]

@Mikestang can you post a screenshot of your cgminer?

I can later tonight when I get home, to me everything looks "normal" in the cgminer gui.  The drop in hash rate is not visible there because it doesn't have a 5s hash field, but I watch it in real time in Crytoglance and as the fan dies down so does the hash rate.

The first temperature reading is not ambient intake temp, it is the temperature of the control board itself. The machine will shut down and flash red at 45c. It will restart the controller and continue hashing once the temps have gone back down.

This is what sounds like is happening to me, maybe it's a temp. thing since I had the fan trying to exhaust out my dryer duct maybe the hot air wasn't getting out fast enough.  I'll try a different config. tonight and report back.

[bctmke]

I'm interested in your results Mike.

On an unrelated note.  I have a pair of A6s (a batch1 and a batch 2) on a single controller and I noticed that all of a sudden I was only seeing about 2TH from it.  Took a look at cgminer and only one A6 was recognized and it was hashing super low.   

A simple fix for it is to restart cgminer.  At that point everything recovered and its cranking away no problem.  I'll have to keep an eye out and see if it persists.

[pikachuy]

I'm interested in your results Mike.

On an unrelated note.  I have a pair of A6s (a batch1 and a batch 2) on a single controller and I noticed that all of a sudden I was only seeing about 2TH from it.  Took a look at cgminer and only one A6 was recognized and it was hashing super low.   

A simple fix for it is to restart cgminer.  At that point everything recovered and its cranking away no problem.  I'll have to keep an eye out and see if it persists.

Add this to your cron job on the raspberry pi:

Code:

0 0 * * * /etc/init.d/cgminer restart

It will restart your cgminer automatically every midnight. Now you can enjoy a beer and dont have to worry about keeping an eye out =)

[philipma1957]

@Mikestang can you post a screenshot of your cgminer?

I can later tonight when I get home, to me everything looks "normal" in the cgminer gui.  The drop in hash rate is not visible there because it doesn't have a 5s hash field, but I watch it in real time in Crytoglance and as the fan dies down so does the hash rate.

The first temperature reading is not ambient intake temp, it is the temperature of the control board itself. The machine will shut down and flash red at 45c. It will restart the controller and continue hashing once the temps have gone back down.

This is what sounds like is happening to me, maybe it's a temp. thing since I had the fan trying to exhaust out my dryer duct maybe the hot air wasn't getting out fast enough.  I'll try a different config. tonight and report back.

4 inch dryer duct will not work. must be a 7 inch duct that completely covers the fan and allows full air flow.

these machines have the big heat sink and the one fan.  you can not restrict its air flow in any manner.


the sanyo ace substitute moves just as much air as the stock fan but does so at lower rpms.




 

[notlist3d]

I'm interested in your results Mike.

On an unrelated note.  I have a pair of A6s (a batch1 and a batch 2) on a single controller and I noticed that all of a sudden I was only seeing about 2TH from it.  Took a look at cgminer and only one A6 was recognized and it was hashing super low.   

A simple fix for it is to restart cgminer.  At that point everything recovered and its cranking away no problem.  I'll have to keep an eye out and see if it persists.

Add this to your cron job on the raspberry pi:

Code:

0 0 * * * /etc/init.d/cgminer restart

It will restart your cgminer automatically every midnight. Now you can enjoy a beer and dont have to worry about keeping an eye out =)

I always have had good luck with my A6's and running long durations.  Chron job might be a nice back up to have but you should be getting much longer run times then 1 day.   But having a backup is not a bad idea for times when your away.

I still really like the A6's they are good miners.  I actually enjoy monitoring gear it's part of my fun as a miner.  Sure some hate but to me it's part of the fun.

[Mikestang]

@Mikestang can you post a screenshot of your cgminer?

I can later tonight when I get home, to me everything looks "normal" in the cgminer gui.  The drop in hash rate is not visible there because it doesn't have a 5s hash field, but I watch it in real time in Crytoglance and as the fan dies down so does the hash rate.

The first temperature reading is not ambient intake temp, it is the temperature of the control board itself. The machine will shut down and flash red at 45c. It will restart the controller and continue hashing once the temps have gone back down.

This is what sounds like is happening to me, maybe it's a temp. thing since I had the fan trying to exhaust out my dryer duct maybe the hot air wasn't getting out fast enough.  I'll try a different config. tonight and report back.

4 inch dryer duct will not work. must be a 7 inch duct that completely covers the fan and allows full air flow.

these machines have the big heat sink and the one fan.  you can not restrict its air flow in any manner.

the sanyo ace substitute moves just as much air as the stock fan but does so at lower rpms.

I'm not going to be able to run the A6 tonight, I got home late.  Plus, the way our weather works around here is we don't really have spring, it just switches from summer to winter back and forth a few times a few weeks at a time, and then it's summer.  Last week was cool, 60s F during the day, but this week we are approaching 90*F.  As I type this it is 78 F in my house still, a little too warm to exhaust the A6 inside.  So I will try again soon, but yea, it was probably getting too hot.

[bctmke]

I'm interested in your results Mike.

On an unrelated note.  I have a pair of A6s (a batch1 and a batch 2) on a single controller and I noticed that all of a sudden I was only seeing about 2TH from it.  Took a look at cgminer and only one A6 was recognized and it was hashing super low.  

A simple fix for it is to restart cgminer.  At that point everything recovered and its cranking away no problem.  I'll have to keep an eye out and see if it persists.

Add this to your cron job on the raspberry pi:

Code:

0 0 * * * /etc/init.d/cgminer restart

It will restart your cgminer automatically every midnight. Now you can enjoy a beer and dont have to worry about keeping an eye out =)

That's too simple   Thanks for the heads up.  I always forget what you can do in a "good" version of cgminer!  I set mine for once a month though (tomorrow to be exact to make sure I didn't mess something up)

[bctmke]

I'm interested in your results Mike.

On an unrelated note.  I have a pair of A6s (a batch1 and a batch 2) on a single controller and I noticed that all of a sudden I was only seeing about 2TH from it.  Took a look at cgminer and only one A6 was recognized and it was hashing super low.   

A simple fix for it is to restart cgminer.  At that point everything recovered and its cranking away no problem.  I'll have to keep an eye out and see if it persists.

Add this to your cron job on the raspberry pi:

Code:

0 0 * * * /etc/init.d/cgminer restart

It will restart your cgminer automatically every midnight. Now you can enjoy a beer and dont have to worry about keeping an eye out =)

I always have had good luck with my A6's and running long durations.  Chron job might be a nice back up to have but you should be getting much longer run times then 1 day.   But having a backup is not a bad idea for times when your away.

I still really like the A6's they are good miners.  I actually enjoy monitoring gear it's part of my fun as a miner.  Sure some hate but to me it's part of the fun.

I was at nearly 60 days before things got weird.  I suspect this is a one off occurrence.  Or something very rare.  It's easy enough for me to also take a look at the controller software and make sure its up to date too.  That could be part of it.

[philipma1957]

the daisy chains drop a miner off now and then.

also when my garage approaches 95f  they all get a bit squirrelly.

I have five in the garage right now  1 is not a daisy chain and 4 on a daisy chain.

[Mikestang]

I spun the A6 around and gave it plenty of room to breath, plus some cool evening air from outside.


It ran really well for about 15 minutes, fan did go up and down a bit from 6-8000 rpm, and just after I took the screen cap below, the fan died down and I watch the hash drop down to nothing.  Wattage at the wall went from 1050+ to ~60.  The light on the front of the unit was flashing yellow.



I refreshed the gui and it still read the same.  I restarted cgminer and it still didn't change (yellow light still flashing), so I rebooted it via the gui.  It's been running now for

7m 15s  Temps 35 65 74
3.4TH

17m 8s  Temps 35 66 75
3.5TH

34m 34s  Temp 35 67 76
3.57TH

1h 19m  Temps 35 67 75
3.5TH

Will update, but seems to be stabilized now.

At 65 dB it is quieter than my S5.