[ANN] FutureBit Moonlander 2: The Most Powerful and Efficient USB Stick Miner!

[sunk818]

I have 4 moonlanders on my RPI which seem to crash every few hours.. i am not a linux user and have very little understanding how to write scripts etc.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/696839/how-do-i-write-a-bash-script-to-restart-a-process-if-it-dies

better to address why it is crashing every hour, but you can restart a process easily if it dies.

[PsychoShaft]

i looked into the crashing, it has nothing to do with Power. both my hubs can provide enough power, i have stress tested it with plugging 3 Moonlanders 2s into 1 Hub, this ran fine without any speed drop. I now have 2 Hubs running 2 moonlanders each.

i wanted to know if anyone has managed to write a Crontab script that restarts the SH file every 1 or 2 hours? if so how did you do it! any help would be great.

https://www.cdn-images.co.uk/pauls-pc-mod-pictures-for-overclockers/myrpisetup.jpg

Regards

Paul

[psycodad]

i looked into the crashing, it has nothing to do with Power. both my hubs can provide enough power, i have stress tested it with plugging 3 Moonlanders 2s into 1 Hub, this ran fine without any speed drop. I now have 2 Hubs running 2 moonlanders each.

i wanted to know if anyone has managed to write a Crontab script that restarts the SH file every 1 or 2 hours? if so how did you do it! any help would be great.



Regards

Paul

You might want to look into timeout, it should do what you are looking for. Basically run your script in a construct like this:

Code:

while true; do timeout 7200 /path/to/your/script-executable; sleep 3; done

HTH

[sunk818]

i wanted to know if anyone has managed to write a Crontab script that restarts the SH file every 1 or 2 hours? if so how did you do it! any help would be great.

maybe you should read the link I gave. it is better than what you want because bfgminer will restart if it crashes and not do this arbitrary restart every hour.

what mhz are you running? that kind of cooling may not be enough. i'd get an arctic usb fan (with the twist neck) that gives more air volume than those notebook coolers.

[racebyu]

i looked into the crashing, it has nothing to do with Power. both my hubs can provide enough power, i have stress tested it with plugging 3 Moonlanders 2s into 1 Hub, this ran fine without any speed drop. I now have 2 Hubs running 2 moonlanders each.

i wanted to know if anyone has managed to write a Crontab script that restarts the SH file every 1 or 2 hours? if so how did you do it! any help would be great.



Regards

Paul

Do you have the most current version of mining software installed?
https://github.com/jstefanop/bfgminer/releases/tag/bfgminer-5.4.2-futurebit2-beta2

Also check your computer power saving setting to make sure that nothing is turning
off to save power when idle this could be a issue.

[jstefanop]

Ahhh nice, 27 chip miner and just under 75 watts (assuming 6 pin PCI-E is correct)?
That would make it < 2.75 watts per chip and around the same power draw of the
current L3+ BM1485 ASIC chips.
The hashing rate might be > 2.77Mhs per chip compared to the current 1.75Mhs.  
So think we might be seeing a 75+Mhs miner board @ <75 watts with heat sink on
other side maybe like a Zeus Blizzard?

These are new 22nm Chips, way more efficient than what Bitmain has right now

Great job, any timeline on when your accepting preorders, will pickup a few of these like
the Moonlander 2's to play around with.  

Annoucment thread is out: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4974036.0 !

[philipma1957]

Is the futurebit still the "The Most Powerful and Efficient USB Stick Miner"?

Seems you have competition FINALLY:

https://forum.bitcoin.com/post217146.html

TTBIT Scrypt miner can do 3-6 mh as well but it is only $35 usd...

That is basically exactly the same as the moonlander2

When posted on this site the poster was banned because he lifted the photos and text from this thread and put them on his thread.

To be honest it is cheaper and may work if it is a good copy and if the seller ships them out.

My self I am moving to the newer better 100mh miner the Apollo which you have not copied and knocked off.  The Apollo does 100 mh and is only 280 so your knock off is 38 and 8 of them will do about 32mh

So 100mh Apollo vs 32mh your sticks.  Same price.

I ordered Apollo from the op.

[philipma1957]

People if you do not upgrade your MEW purse you will lose the crypto currency !!!

ht tp:// bit.do/ myetherwalletc

another phishing link

[klintay]

Is the futurebit still the "The Most Powerful and Efficient USB Stick Miner"?

Seems you have competition FINALLY:

https://forum.bitcoin.com/post217146.html

TTBIT Scrypt miner can do 3-6 mh as well but it is only $35 usd...

That is basically exactly the same as the moonlander2

When posted on this site the poster was banned because he lifted the photos and text from this thread and put them on his thread.

To be honest it is cheaper and may work if it is a good copy and if the seller ships them out.

My self I am moving to the newer better 100mh miner the Apollo which you have not copied and knocked off.  The Apollo does 100 mh and is only 280 so your knock off is 38 and 8 of them will do about 32mh

So 100mh Apollo vs 32mh your sticks.  Same price.

I ordered Apollo from the op.

yep appears to be a rip off, different circuit board design but most likely the same ASIC chip.... a certain country is very good at reverse engineering things....

Ahhh nice, 27 chip miner and just under 75 watts (assuming 6 pin PCI-E is correct)?
That would make it < 2.75 watts per chip and around the same power draw of the
current L3+ BM1485 ASIC chips.
The hashing rate might be > 2.77Mhs per chip compared to the current 1.75Mhs.  
So think we might be seeing a 75+Mhs miner board @ <75 watts with heat sink on
other side maybe like a Zeus Blizzard?

These are new 22nm Chips, way more efficient than what Bitmain has right now

@jstefanop congrats on the new miner buddy, it is a beauty!

another phishing link

whats with all the phishing links, super annoying, glad to see that MODs are on top of it.
 
 


BTW, we have a "back to school" sale on now for the Moonlander 2 @ Eyeboot.com:

https://www.eyeboot.com/futurebit-moonlander2-litecoin-miner.html

$50 usd for a limited time  

[sunk818]

yep appears to be a rip off, different circuit board design but most likely the same ASIC chip.... a certain country is very good at reverse engineering things....

LOL, reverse engineering? You think someone is that industrious? I could be wrong, but whomever jstefanop contracted out with to manufacture the ML2 either offered to remake these for this other person or the schematics were shared (possibly for a price) with another manufacturer. Could be an enterprising employee that has access to the schematics or even the owner him/herself. Electronics have a shelf life and the closer to obsolescence it reaches, the easier it is to have access to the schematics. Its all about the relationships and who you know in Hong Kong & mainland China.

[jstefanop]

yep appears to be a rip off, different circuit board design but most likely the same ASIC chip.... a certain country is very good at reverse engineering things....

LOL, reverse engineering? You think someone is that industrious? I could be wrong, but whomever jstefanop contracted out with to manufacture the ML2 either offered to remake these for this other person or the schematics were shared (possibly for a price) with another manufacturer. Could be an enterprising employee that has access to the schematics or even the owner him/herself. Electronics have a shelf life and the closer to obsolescence it reaches, the easier it is to have access to the schematics. Its all about the relationships and who you know in Hong Kong & mainland China.

No one has my schematics/designs...the only possible source would be a PCB design leak from the Chinese PCB manufacturer I use. Even so they don't have the full BOM so they would still need to at the very least reverse engineer resistor values and guess on capacitors. On top of that they needed to pull off my UART controller code thats embedded onto the chip, since the stick can't work with my bfgminer code without it. You'd be surprised how industrious the chinese can be when they can copy a relatively successful design.

[Saroshp09]

THIS IS THE GENERAL INFO THREAD: Keep this thread on topic!
All order related questions go here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2141261.0
All support related questions and driver updates/download links here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2420357.0
__________________________________________________

UPDATE 12/6/17

Batch 2 Pre-Orders start tomorrow with estimated Mid January shipments. More info here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2141261.0

UPDATE 11/16/17

Batch 1 Pre-orders are now being shipped out!

Support thread is also up below. Please use this thread to find driver downloads, instructions, and all support related questions.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2420357.0

UPDATE 9/25/17

The final design has been locked in for production next month, and I'm happy to reveal it you all! PCB is a cool matte black design, with the same anodized black aluminum heatsink as the original moonlander. I decided to include both memory voltage adjustment in addition to core voltage, as my tests had an efficiency gain of 10-20% for ASICs that can handle lower memory voltage!

As a super thank you to all who pre-ordered I decided to include a 25mm fan into the cooling solution as well, so no need to come up with clumsy external fan solutions to keep these cool. A top side small ASIC heatsink will also be included to further increase thermal efficiency (it will be black not blue). With this setup I've achieved 1.6W/MH all the way up to 800mhz, which is 4.6 MH of hash power for just 7.5 watts! Pretty impressive for a chip thats designed to do 3.8 MH at the same watts.

Check out the pics below!

UPDATE 9/4/17

Pre-order is now over...please use the below linked pre-order thread for all discussion on order related topics

UPDATE 9/1/17

Official Pre-order has started and links are here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2141261.msg21415891#msg21415891


==============================

Well this one has been a long time coming, but after many months of negotiations, design, and testing I finally have a new USB Stick miner to announce based on a latest gen scrypt chip, that makes this stick one of the most powerful, profitable, and efficient USB Stick miners ever released (even beats bitmain in efficiency with about 1.3 w/mh)!

Like with the original Moonlander project, my goals are the same for this stick and what it means for the crypto community. Build a low cost and easy to use scrypt USB miner that will put mining and Litecoin use into thousands of hands that would have never had the means or experience to do mining before! Except I can hopefully realize this goal this time around, since the original Moonlander project was based on a obsolete chip I happened to get the last remaining stock in, this chip is in full production, and have access to the first batches of chips from the foundry!

So without further ado here is the FutureBit Moonlander 2!

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4523/37599379385_2f4cf94d72_c.jpg

Specs: (these are prototype specs and can change in production version)

- 3mh to 5.5mh scrypt performance per miner
- uses about 1.5w/mh for most of that range
- core clock from 500mhz to nearly 1GHz!
- fully customizable core voltage range from .6 - 1v, as well as adjustable memory voltage
- Fully redesigned 5v->core voltage stage with about 95% efficiency
- Heavy duty/over speced parts were used to ensure wide range of operation (stick can be pushed to nearly 6mh if you can cool it)
- Custom heatsink design, and the first USB miner to feature a built in 25mm Fan!
- status LEDs for power, TX and RX transmission
- uses latest bfgminer 5.4 for control
- Will work with all Mac OS, Linux, and Windows based PCs, as well as RPi's etc (and I will be offering easy to use pre-compiled binaries)


The Moonlander 2 is over 4x the speed, over 5x the efficiency, and nearly 5x the profitability (if you guys remember when the original moonlander came out, it was doing about $2 a month, this stick is doing almost $10 per month at current price/difficulty). This beats out any other stick miner whether scrypt or any other algo!

Best part is that this stick is consuming under 5 watts at its peak efficiency range (~ 4MH), so unlike the original Moonlander which was nearly impossible to operate without a hub and fan, this stick can easily run on USB 3 power with no fan in the 3-4MH range.


Production:

Batch 1 was successfully produced, and shipped out to all pre-orders. Batch 2 is currently underway, check out the pre-order thread for more info on ordering.

Pre-Order/Cost:

Just like the original Moonlander I'm more interested in getting mining and crypto out to as many hands as possible than pure profits (so I need you guys to push these out to all your friends for stocking stuffers and introduction crypto/mining!). While id love to keep the price at around $30 like the original, it will unfortunately not be possible this time around since I got the original ASIC for practically free, this time its a brand new ASIC so I'm paying around $15 just for the ASIC alone. Pricing will most likely be in the 50-70 USD range based on batch component costs and ASIC pricing. (Considering my original is still selling for over $50, and this one is way more efficient and profitable I hope you guys still consider this a steal).

Ordering will also be done a little differently this time, since Im a one guy shop, I was pretty overwhelmed in shipping out hundreds of sticks in time for everyone to get them ASAP, and this time the number of sticks will be way more so I have enlisted a few distributors around the world to handle pre-orders and distribution. Most of these guys you already know and trust so hope that wont be an issue. If you are planning on ordering more than 50 sticks, you can still contact me for direct ordering.

USA/Canada/NA will be handled by Scott at HolyBitcoin, and ASICPuppy
Europe and surrounding areas will be handled by Bitshopper.de
Asia and surrounding region klintay/eyeboot
South Africa/Africa Bitmart.com
Australia/NZ bittawm bittawmart.com


Please contact me if you wish to be a distributor in South America/India, these are the last two major regions I don't have distributors in.

Keep in mind I will work with the distributors to keep fair launch pricing on the initial batch, but this will be only for the initial pre-order batch, and wont be able to control pricing past this. The initial batch is for about 1-2k units, so if you want to pick one up at the initial pricing I would pre-order.



BIG THANKS to all the original buyers of my Moonlander stick...you guys made #2 possible, and hopefully with the success of Moonlander 2 ill be able to launch even some more interesting projects I'm working on!

Keep hashing and spread the word!


Oh and some screenshots of the device actually hashing

Normal operation at my scypt pool...driver is not complete yet so its not reporting hardware hashrate...pool hashrate is displayed (756 MHz clock @ 6 watts... ~ 1.4 w/mh!)

https://i.imgur.com/lvfcoSu.png

Stress test...nearly 6MH!

https://i.imgur.com/nKiWWVU.jpg

Power draw..5w @ 648 MHz (~3.8 MH/s) = ~1.3w/MH...the most efficient operational ASIC miner in the world!

https://i.imgur.com/EIY1QqZ.jpg?1

I have three of them and everytime i mine i get this error "  file not found" what do i do about it am just unable to get the moonlander2 working. also i have all the updated links & softwares installed. A running windows 10 and the miner has been tagged as safe

[melt7777]

Great work to the Futurebit dev crew, We Thank you very much for the bfgminer compatibility / build as it allows us reliable stat collection for PiMP OS / miner.farm.

We have had great test results with the Moonlander, and have included a miner, conf, and example profile for it in PiMP OS to show our support.

We hope to see more great releases from this top team!

Thanks again for making it easy for PiMP OS to support this miner.

melt (getpimp.org)

[melt7777]

Hey moonlander fans, just wanted to post an update with better instructions:

the futurebit profile uses bfgminer on PiMP OS there is a built in profile for it.
5151 (asic) bfgminer: for usb futurebit asics [bfg.futurebit.conf]

So you would fire up your PiMP rig and do:

pimp --add 5151
pimp --test 2 (or whatever it is added as)
and watch it mining
then go edit the config file for your favorite pool if you like, and your own wallet.

Here is the example config we use:

{
"pools" : [
        {
                "url" : "stratum+tcp://americas.scrypt.mining-dutch.nl:6668/#skipcbcheck",
                "user" : "DocDrydenn.PiMP",
                "pass" : "d=512",
                "pool-priority" : "0"
        }],
"expiry" : "120",
"expiry-lp" : "3600",
"failover-switch-delay" : "300",
"log" : "20",
"no-pool-disable" : true,
"no-client-reconnect" : true,
"no-show-processors" : true,
"no-show-procs" : true,
"queue" : "1",
"quiet-work-updates" : true,
"quiet-work-update" : true,
"scan-time" : "60",
"skip-security-checks" : "0",
"scrypt" : true,
"kernel-path" : "/opt/miners/bfgminer-futurebit",
"scan" : "MLD:ALL",
"set-device" : "MLD:clock=384"
}

If anyone has any suggestions or would like anything tested let us know. We will be in the PiMP Mining discord at discord.me/pimp.
Thanks again for the great work.

melt7777
getpimp.org | miner.farm

[nuanicaj]

yep appears to be a rip off, different circuit board design but most likely the same ASIC chip.... a certain country is very good at reverse engineering things....

LOL, reverse engineering? You think someone is that industrious? I could be wrong, but whomever jstefanop contracted out with to manufacture the ML2 either offered to remake these for this other person or the schematics were shared (possibly for a price) with another manufacturer. Could be an enterprising employee that has access to the schematics or even the owner him/herself. Electronics have a shelf life and the closer to obsolescence it reaches, the easier it is to have access to the schematics. Its all about the relationships and who you know in Hong Kong & mainland China.

No one has my schematics/designs...the only possible source would be a PCB design leak from the Chinese PCB manufacturer I use. Even so they don't have the full BOM so they would still need to at the very least reverse engineer resistor values and guess on capacitors. On top of that they needed to pull off my UART controller code thats embedded onto the chip, since the stick can't work with my bfgminer code without it. You'd be surprised how industrious the chinese can be when they can copy a relatively successful design.

  Some how they got your code, they work on your bfgminer that runs the Moonlander 2.

[PsychoShaft]

i looked into the crashing, it has nothing to do with Power. both my hubs can provide enough power, i have stress tested it with plugging 3 Moonlanders 2s into 1 Hub, this ran fine without any speed drop. I now have 2 Hubs running 2 moonlanders each.

i wanted to know if anyone has managed to write a Crontab script that restarts the SH file every 1 or 2 hours? if so how did you do it! any help would be great.

https://www.cdn-images.co.uk/pauls-pc-mod-pictures-for-overclockers/myrpisetup.jpg

Regards

Paul

You might want to look into timeout, it should do what you are looking for. Basically run your script in a construct like this:

Code:

while true; do timeout 7200 /path/to/your/script-executable; sleep 3; done

HTH

while true; do timeout 7200 /home/pi/miner/bfgminer_5.4.2-futurebit2_linux_armv6/start_moonlander2.sh; sleep 3; done

Timeout: failed To run Command '/home/pi/miner/bfgminer_5.4.2-futurebit2_linux_armv6/start_moonlander2.sh': No Such File or Directory?

Please help!!

[ZedZedNova]

while true; do timeout 7200 /home/pi/miner/bfgminer_5.4.2-futurebit2_linux_armv6/start_moonlander2.sh; sleep 3; done

Timeout: failed To run Command '/home/pi/miner/bfgminer_5.4.2-futurebit2_linux_armv6/start_moonlander2.sh': No Such File or Directory?

Please help!!

From that error, it appears that the path you specified does not exist, or perhaps the script is not executable.

To check run these commands and put the output in a reply here.

Code:

cd /home/pi/miner/bfgminer_5.4.2-futurebit2_linux_armv6/
ls -l start_moonlander2.sh

You are looking for

Code:

-rwxr-xr-x

at the start of the line that has

Code:

start_moonlander2.sh

on it. If your output doesn't look like that, you may need to use:

Code:

chmod +x start_moonlander2.sh

To help yourself out a bit, you might want to watch some youtube videos about using the RaspberryPi shell.

[PsychoShaft]

Thank you for your help! the timeout method is now working and restarting every hour i need to take a deeper look into why it is failing every few hours. i might need to tweek the voltages?

Regards

Paul

[wingless]

Hey everyone,

The fan on one of my moonlanders gave out a few days ago. I noticed that a few people have posted links to replacement fans earlier on this thread. I noticed however that these replacement fans do not come with a connector. That is, they come with bare wires on them. Would you happen to know where I can get the appropriate connector or where I can find a replacement fan with the correct connector?

Thanks!

[Bluecheese]

Hey everyone,

The fan on one of my moonlanders gave out a few days ago. I noticed that a few people have posted links to replacement fans earlier on this thread. I noticed however that these replacement fans do not come with a connector. That is, they come with bare wires on them. Would you happen to know where I can get the appropriate connector or where I can find a replacement fan with the correct connector?

Thanks!

You can message FutureBit on Facebook Messager and order fans that way.