Linux mining distro for the Raspberry PI - MinePeon

[stellan0r]

We've updated the USB LCD script with various improvements. Above is a screenshot of the new version running on my Pi under MinePeon.

I've also created an installation guide for using the script with MinePeon. Code and more information can be found here:

https://github.com/cardcomm/cgminerLCDStats

I hope y'all like it, and get some use out of it. Thanks again to Kano for the invaluable help and code contributions. 

You guys are awesome! Now I had to buy that LCD on eBay, hope is does not need more than 2 weeks to arrive from Hongkong

[1714150630]

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[1714150630]

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[kano]

We've updated the USB LCD script with various improvements. Above is a screenshot of the new version running on my Pi under MinePeon.

I've also created an installation guide for using the script with MinePeon. Code and more information can be found here:

https://github.com/cardcomm/cgminerLCDStats

I hope y'all like it, and get some use out of it. Thanks again to Kano for the invaluable help and code contributions. 

You guys are awesome! Now I had to buy that LCD on eBay, hope is does not need more than 2 weeks to arrive from Hongkong

My second one is in transit, should be here in the next few days.
I noticed (last week) when I ordered the 2nd one, that the ebay page had over 400 sold ... I wonder if most of those were to bitcoin miners

[kano]

...
Next version (very soon now, Thomas and I are just fighting over how to store settings ) three things will be watched by a monitor process.

1. The amount of devices running.

2. The hashrate.

The hash rate is a pretty unreliable source to decide if a (non GPU) device has a problem.
Short term it's pretty erratic on a lot of hardware (e.g. looking at the 5s figure)
Long term it will take a while to drop once the device stops (i.e. looking at the avg figure)
To get around these problems you need to make it ... slow to decide there is a problem.

The best one to look at is "Last Valid Work" - "When", however, that requires an expected hash rate to determine a timeout difference.
(I use 21 times the expected time per nonce for the device)

Also note that when a USB device has "No Device" 'true' it may have disconnected and then hot plugged back as a new device.

When MinePeon detects something wrong with any of the above it will send you an email telling you about the problem, furthermore if you tick a "Attempt automatic recovery" it will;-

1. Send the miner API a restart to try and fix it

...

There are 2 API 'restarts'
"restart" will execv cgminer again with the arguments it was passed (I never use this, it has had trouble in the past ... )
"quit" will simply exit cgminer.

I'm sure you know, but I though I better mention, they both require --api-allow W:127.0.0.1

[cardcomm]

We've updated the USB LCD script with various improvements. Above is a screenshot of the new version running on my Pi under MinePeon.

I've also created an installation guide for using the script with MinePeon. Code and more information can be found here:

https://github.com/cardcomm/cgminerLCDStats

I hope y'all like it, and get some use out of it. Thanks again to Kano for the invaluable help and code contributions. 

You guys are awesome! Now I had to buy that LCD on eBay, hope is does not need more than 2 weeks to arrive from Hongkong

My second one is in transit, should be here in the next few days.
I noticed (last week) when I ordered the 2nd one, that the ebay page had over 400 sold ... I wonder if most of those were to bitcoin miners

Haha, I've got another one on order too. I've got a time lapse photography project next up, and I'm hoping to get the Pi to display the images on the LCD screen during the capture sequence.

But yeah, I'll bet a good portion of them are going to miners. I wonder if they realize where the business is coming from. LOL

[ct1aic]

...
We've updated the USB LCD script with various improvements. Above is a screenshot of the new version running on my Pi under MinePeon.

I've also created an installation guide for using the script with MinePeon. Code and more information can be found here:

https://github.com/cardcomm/cgminerLCDStats

I hope y'all like it, and get some use out of it. Thanks again to Kano for the invaluable help and code contributions. 

Yes, I do like it. That's a photo @ the end of my post...

Now, I have a probably very stupid problem, as, using a Portuguese expression, "I know so much of Linux as I know how oil mills work...".

I started cgminerLCDStats.py using a PuTTY session from my Windows laptop. The same window I use to access RPI's cgminer via screen -r.

As the program runs, I don't have access to the cursor, to enter cgminer screen mode. If I try something, the python program stops. How can I start the cgminerLCDStats program "in background", without having to have a SSH session "trapped" with the python program? I don't have local keyboard/mouse on this RPI.

[root@minepeon cgminerLCDStats]# sudo python2 cgminerLCDStats.py
Welcome to cgminerLCDStats
Copyright 2013 Cardinal Communications
^CTraceback (most recent call last):
  File "cgminerLCDStats.py", line 342, in <module>
    time.sleep(int(screenRefreshDelay)) # Number of seconds to wait, aprox.
KeyboardInterrupt
[root@minepeon cgminerLCDStats]#

[Malakai]

Short answer is start a new screen session

Code:

screen -S display

Then run it and CTRL+A D

screen -S {name of new screen}

Another way is the same that Adafruit uses with nohup and rc.local

http://learn.adafruit.com/piminer-raspberry-pi-bitcoin-miner/configure-auto-start

[southerngentuk]

Short answer is start a new screen session

Code:

screen -S display

Then run it and CTRL+A D

screen -S {name of new screen}

This works  I had been watching it for 1/2 hr, tried to check the git for refresh rate but git was down. Just came back here and the answer is waiting for me........

[MineForeman.com]

tried to check the git for refresh rate but git was down.

That is where I am stuck at the moment!!  Has some peon changes I wanted to check in and pick this up and ...... nothing.  Oh well, early night for me .

Neil

[ct1aic]

Short answer is start a new screen session

Code:

screen -S display

Then run it and CTRL+A D

screen -S {name of new screen}

Another way is the same that Adafruit uses with nohup and rc.local

http://learn.adafruit.com/piminer-raspberry-pi-bitcoin-miner/configure-auto-start

Hi Malakai. Thanks for your kind help.

First option worked for me.

[Malakai]

Short answer is start a new screen session

Code:

screen -S display

Then run it and CTRL+A D

screen -S {name of new screen}

Another way is the same that Adafruit uses with nohup and rc.local

http://learn.adafruit.com/piminer-raspberry-pi-bitcoin-miner/configure-auto-start

Hi Malakai. Thanks for your kind help.

First option worked for me.

Glad to help.

Also they just announced:

@Raspberry_Pi New post: Buy a Pi, get an 8GB NOOBS SD card for $5. http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/4536 if anyone is tempted for another Pi

[miter_myles]

Anyone got a link to the ebay store/page for the LCD screen?  Want to make sure I get the right one..

[stellan0r]

Anyone got a link to the ebay store/page for the LCD screen?  Want to make sure I get the right one..

http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-2-8-TFT-LCD-module-LCD-sys-info-display-temperature-fan-AIDA64-LCD-Smartie-/121004607232?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c2c6fc700

this one is linked by cardcomm

[miter_myles]

Anyone got a link to the ebay store/page for the LCD screen?  Want to make sure I get the right one..

http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-2-8-TFT-LCD-module-LCD-sys-info-display-temperature-fan-AIDA64-LCD-Smartie-/121004607232?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c2c6fc700

this one is linked by cardcomm

Thanks!

[BitMinerN8]

We've updated the USB LCD script with various improvements. Above is a screenshot of the new version running on my Pi under MinePeon.

I've also created an installation guide for using the script with MinePeon. Code and more information can be found here:

https://github.com/cardcomm/cgminerLCDStats

I hope y'all like it, and get some use out of it. Thanks again to Kano for the invaluable help and code contributions. 

You guys are awesome! Now I had to buy that LCD on eBay, hope is does not need more than 2 weeks to arrive from Hongkong

My second one is in transit, should be here in the next few days.
I noticed (last week) when I ordered the 2nd one, that the ebay page had over 400 sold ... I wonder if most of those were to bitcoin miners

Crap, now I guess I have to get one to play with too.
Do you think it would be possible to grab the stats from multiple Pi's? It would be cool to have it display the cumulative total of the farm at the data center. (I have VPN to the farm network there.)

[warlordluke]

We've updated the USB LCD script with various improvements. Above is a screenshot of the new version running on my Pi under MinePeon.

I've also created an installation guide for using the script with MinePeon. Code and more information can be found here:

https://github.com/cardcomm/cgminerLCDStats

I hope y'all like it, and get some use out of it. Thanks again to Kano for the invaluable help and code contributions. 

You guys are awesome! Now I had to buy that LCD on eBay, hope is does not need more than 2 weeks to arrive from Hongkong

My second one is in transit, should be here in the next few days.
I noticed (last week) when I ordered the 2nd one, that the ebay page had over 400 sold ... I wonder if most of those were to bitcoin miners

Crap, now I guess I have to get one to play with too.
Do you think it would be possible to grab the stats from multiple Pi's? It would be cool to have it display the cumulative total of the farm at the data center. (I have VPN to the farm network there.)

I think you could though you would have to have a centralised pi/machine to crunch the data and  get those cumulative totals.

Thinking about it you could also display things like Farm wide averages, alerts on any that have gone down etc.

[warlordluke]

Anyone got a link to the ebay store/page for the LCD screen?  Want to make sure I get the right one..

http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-2-8-TFT-LCD-module-LCD-sys-info-display-temperature-fan-AIDA64-LCD-Smartie-/121004607232?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c2c6fc700

this one is linked by cardcomm

Now I'm going to have to get one once I get back from holiday...Great for displaying the info from Pi related bits to BTC related bits.

[BitMinerN8]

We've updated the USB LCD script with various improvements. Above is a screenshot of the new version running on my Pi under MinePeon.

I've also created an installation guide for using the script with MinePeon. Code and more information can be found here:

https://github.com/cardcomm/cgminerLCDStats

I hope y'all like it, and get some use out of it. Thanks again to Kano for the invaluable help and code contributions. 

You guys are awesome! Now I had to buy that LCD on eBay, hope is does not need more than 2 weeks to arrive from Hongkong

My second one is in transit, should be here in the next few days.
I noticed (last week) when I ordered the 2nd one, that the ebay page had over 400 sold ... I wonder if most of those were to bitcoin miners

Crap, now I guess I have to get one to play with too.
Do you think it would be possible to grab the stats from multiple Pi's? It would be cool to have it display the cumulative total of the farm at the data center. (I have VPN to the farm network there.)

I think you could though you would have to have a centralised pi/machine to crunch the data and  get those cumulative totals.

Thinking about it you could also display things like Farm wide averages, alerts on any that have gone down etc.

That sounds like an idea for another distro.   Like MineForeman and MinePeon builds, the MineForeman watches all the MinePeon's. Handles all the display, statistics, and alerting. This would keep the MinePeon build slim and clean. Sorry... Just thinking out loud.

[Zeronic]

Yeah, I plan to have a few Minepeon running and a MineForman node would be nice. Gather all the stats from the peons and have the Foreman node display all the stats as a group. Then from that you could have that LCD Display running off the Foreman node.

[kano]

...
That sounds like an idea for another distro.   Like MineForeman and MinePeon builds, the MineForeman watches all the MinePeon's. Handles all the display, statistics, and alerting. This would keep the MinePeon build slim and clean. Sorry... Just thinking out loud.

That's what miner.php already does - the only reason I didn't extend miner.php to use the LCD was php doesn't support direct usb by default
So yes, it can be done ...

[cardcomm]

...
That sounds like an idea for another distro.  Like MineForeman and MinePeon builds, the MineForeman watches all the MinePeon's. Handles all the display, statistics, and alerting. This would keep the MinePeon build slim and clean. Sorry... Just thinking out loud.

That's what miner.php already does - the only reason I didn't extend miner.php to use the LCD was php doesn't support direct usb by default
So yes, it can be done ...

Wow, I'm glad to see such positive responses to the USB LCD script My guess is that the ColdTears Electronics guy's selling those out of Hong Kong are gonna be pretty happy too. LOL

BTW, the link already posted by "stellan0r" is correct:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/121004607232?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

NOTE: They also sell a different display that is slightly more expensive. It's marketed as a "gamer gadget" or "LCDsysinfo for GOverlay". DO NOT BUY THAT ONE! After digging through their documentation, I'm pretty sure it won't work with the cgminerLCDStats code.

Thanks to "Malakai" for the info on getting this to auto-start. I knew that question would be asked. I'll add that to the installation readme. (Up till now I'd just been opening a new screen, but I knew I'd want it to auto-start at some point.)

It's cool to see all the enhancement ideas people are having. I really like the ideas about monitoring more than one system… I gotta think more about that.

After seeing everyone else's photos of the running display, I'm feeling a little "hash power inadequate". Maybe I'll start blurring out my pathetic hash numbers in future photos… ROLF!  j/k

Enjoy it y'all, and I'll try and keep useful enhancements coming.