[Announcement] Block Erupter USB

[SilentSonicBoom]

Are these dimensions of the sample USB emerald version or the final sapphire version? Thank you.

Can you measure the thickness of the board+sink?

Also, how wide is the board?

________________Measurement	Tonal	Imperial	SI
Thickness:	9 Mˢ	0.23in	6mm
Width:	29 Mˢ	1in	25mm
Length:	68 Mˢ	2.4in	60mm
Length protruding from USB port:	5 Mˢ	2.1in	53mm
Length of PCB:	4 Mˢ	1.8in	45mm

You running it off 2.0 or 3.0 port?

The device negotiates as USB 1.1, plugged into my USB 2.0 hub.

[Luke-Jr]

________________Measurement	Tonal	Imperial	SI
Thickness:	9 Mˢ	0.23in	6mm
Width:	29 Mˢ	1in	25mm
Length:	68 Mˢ	2.4in	60mm
Length protruding from USB port:	5 Mˢ	2.1in	53mm
Length of PCB:	4 Mˢ	1.8in	45mm

Are these dimensions of the sample USB emerald version or the final sapphire version? Thank you.

Emerald. My Sapphire isn't here yet.

[Luke-Jr]

1/4" that is slim!!!
They should fit into power bar hubs and leave some gap for air flow, right?

I'm not sure how much thickness the heatsink adds, however.

Can you measure the current draw?  It is ok to put one in the 2.0 hub, but 10 might be too much for most 2.0 hubs as they usually don't deliver more than 20W (4A@5V) from their power supplies.

It reports 100mA to the USB interface, but I'm sure it's really closer to the 560mA friedcat announced.
I don't have any easy way to measure actual current use.

[wizkid057]

I don't have any easy way to measure actual current use.

Grab a cheap USB extension cable (male and female ends), and a cheap multi-meter with mA measuring capability.  Slice the sheath of the extension cable somewhere in the middle, but don't break any wires.  Get the wires nice and separate, then cut the red wire.  Strip both new ends, and put one to each lead of your multi-meter in mA mode. (You can safely hold the exposed wires... its only 5V   )

Fire it all up, and look at the reading.

-wk

[CumpsD]

I don't have any easy way to measure actual current use.

Grab a cheap USB extension cable (male and female ends), and a cheap multi-meter with mA measuring capability.  Slice the sheath of the extension cable somewhere in the middle, but don't break any wires.  Get the wires nice and separate, then cut the red wire.  Strip both new ends, and put one to each lead of your multi-meter in mA mode. (You can safely hold the exposed wires... its only 5V   )

Fire it all up, and look at the reading.

-wk

Don't break any wires is good advice, I wasted an USB cable :p

[Rant2112]

For people like me who leave their mining host computer on all the time anyway it might be more useful to measure at the wall with a Kill A Watt - with the miner mining and the miner unplugged.

If you don't leave the host computer on all of the time then you would possibly want to measure the whole setup.

It depends on what you are trying to measure but I suspect one of the two methods in this post is probably what you are looking for. 

[arklan]

regarding the heatsink: it's flat, less then a 8th of an inch. i'vegot mine (sapphires) plugged in to an anker 10 port hub and there's plenty of space between them. http://www.amazon.com/Anker%C2%AE-Uspeed-10-Port-Adapter-Chipset/dp/B005NGQWL2

[daemondazz]

For people like me who leave their mining host computer on all the time anyway it might be more useful to measure at the wall with a Kill A Watt - with the miner mining and the miner unplugged.

I'd suggest the current draw of the USB device is below the Kill-A-Watt meters accuracy level - you'd need to plug in a whole bunch of then (10 or 20) and then average it out - and even then you're measuring at 120v or 230v, so you need to account for power supply efficency, etc, as well.

The multimeter method will give you the exact current draw.

[kano]

Question to Kano (or any other member that actually have Erupter(s)),

Can you measure the thickness of the board+sink?

Also, how wide is the board?  If you can, can you measure how much current it is pulling from the USB port?

You running it off 2.0 or 3.0 port?

Yeah I posted the dimensions back on the 19th in the original asicminer thread
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=99497.msg2137231#msg2137231

And here on the 23rd:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=195004.msg2241307#msg2241307

Edit: much later edit with a few updates:
Size: 24.5mm wide
Board alone is 45mm long
Board+USB plug is 59.5mm (of course the plug isn't removable)
Weight: 6g
Height; 6mm (the highest component)

Errors: between 1% and 1.5%
Hash rate: 336MH/s

But yes that's without a heat sink. emerald

[kano]

You make it sound like BFGMiner is some sort of original product?  Didn't you just fork his code and then now you are bashing the original devs?

BFGMiner is based on cgminer-the-GPU-miner which is based on cpuminer.
Present day cgminer is a fork of BFGMiner, created by trolls for trolling.

Yes as usual lying about it - and the usual proof he is lying using his own words:
https://github.com/luke-jr/bfgminer/commit/b9df56511c7bd1a2e1f075e9c184c1a4b0f1ba20
2012-04-26 Fork as BFGMiner
Where he renamed all the words from cgminer to brickminer and changed the donation address by removing ckolivas who wrote most of the code and replacing it with himself.

[kano]

...
Thanks Kano.  

You wouldn't happen to have ammeter and spare usb extension cable to measure current to device while mining?
Just curious if I can use 2.0 USB hub (5V & 4A) to run 10 of these.  Looks like 8 is max.  

Specs say 500mA (or 560mA) but the real world measurement might be different.

Sorry I don't have either.
I have a very old ammeter in a box somewhere that I wouldn't trust to be accurate.
As for USB cables, that would require a USB extension cable to slice up - which I don't have any spare of these either at the moment.

However, if I did, I'd expect the results would not be reliable for deciding about the sapphire hardware.
The emerald and sapphire are slightly different power usage as far as I understand.

I think there are people who have a few sapphire already, so hopefully one of them might see your question.

[arklan]

...
Thanks Kano.  

You wouldn't happen to have ammeter and spare usb extension cable to measure current to device while mining?
Just curious if I can use 2.0 USB hub (5V & 4A) to run 10 of these.  Looks like 8 is max.  

Specs say 500mA (or 560mA) but the real world measurement might be different.

Sorry I don't have either.
I have a very old ammeter in a box somewhere that I wouldn't trust to be accurate.
As for USB cables, that would require a USB extension cable to slice up - which I don't have any spare of these either at the moment.

However, if I did, I'd expect the results would not be reliable for deciding about the sapphire hardware.
The emerald and sapphire are slightly different power usage as far as I understand.

I think there are people who have a few sapphire already, so hopefully one of them might see your question.

i have some - but i too lack the ammeter.

i think a few of those i shipped out should arrive tomorrow though.

[tvbcof]

i have some - but i too lack the ammeter.

i think a few of those i shipped out should arrive tomorrow though.

I have some long ago recollection that current (DC) can be deduced by introducing a resistor and measuring the voltage drop across it.

Maybe I'll try...or would if I were one of the lucky ones receiving my device tomorrow <sniffle>  (kidding.)

[daemondazz]

Yes, using Ohm's law, but if you're going to do that you might as well just put an ammeter in line.

Edit: Because, virtually every single multimeter built in the last however many years (30?) includes both a voltmeter and ammeter.

[GuiltySpark343]

Does the Block Erupter require a USB driver? I'm running Win7 x64. Where does one download the required driver for it? Thanks!

[Luke-Jr]

Does the Block Erupter require a USB driver? I'm running Win7 x64. Where does one download the required driver for it? Thanks!

I think it should be autodetected.
If not, they are on this site: http://www.silabs.com/products/mcu/pages/usbtouartbridgevcpdrivers.aspx

[markyminer]

Emerald. My Sapphire isn't here yet.
[/quote]

What? We are way over the 15 days and way way over the 20 days promised for delivery. looks like you lot wont even make the change to 12.5m difficulty in 10 days!

How long do you have to be late before we can flame you as vapourware ala BFL ?

M

[CumpsD]

Emerald. My Sapphire isn't here yet.

What? We are way over the 15 days and way way over the 20 days promised for delivery. looks like you lot wont even make the change to 12.5m difficulty in 10 days!

How long do you have to be late before we can flame you as vapourware ala BFL ?

M
[/quote

Our group buy has 100 incoming already, already in Germany.

The rest is coming over now, mine included :p

[alibert]

Wait until the end of the year, where difficulty will be around 70,000,000

[yxt]

Our group buy has 100 incoming already, already in Germany.

The rest is coming over now, mine included :p

100 already sent out to happy miners
+150 in germany @customs ;-)