A case study in entry-level mining

[LogicalUnit]

After contemplating my options, I am now considering buying more Block Erupters with the BTC I have earned from mining. daemondazz's perpetual group buy is currently selling BE's for 0.4 BTC each. For that price I can pick up 7 and start mining at 4.0GH/s. However, I need another DUB-H7, and they are becoming increasingly difficult to find in Australia.

Is anyone able to buy a DUB-H7 on my behalf and ship it to Australia?

[Thylacine]

After contemplating my options, I am now considering buying more Block Erupters with the BTC I have earned from mining. daemondazz's perpetual group buy is currently selling BE's for 0.4 BTC each. For that price I can pick up 7 and start mining at 4.0GH/s. However, I need another DUB-H7, and they are becoming increasingly difficult to find in Australia.

Is anyone able to buy a DUB-H7 on my behalf and ship it to Australia?

I use myUS.com as a forwarding address so I can buy things on newegg etc and get them shipped to me here in Australia. Shipping is pricey, but depending on what you're getting it can still end up cheaper than getting locally, especially some software, computer hardware, camera lenses etc.

[xTachibana]

i would get you one but i dont get my check until 1 week from now, and it would be my first time shipping things internationally :B

edit: i can get it on newegg for 28.18 with 3 day business shipping, not sure how much it would cost to ship to aussie from florida

if you dont get it resolved by the time i have some money, i dont mind buying you one for btc worth the same as its price 28.18+ w/e shipping costs (would be cool if you gave me instructions on shipping stuff too )

[Trongersoll]

i would get you one but i dont get my check until 1 week from now, and it would be my first time shipping things internationally :B

edit: i can get it on newegg for 28.18 with 3 day business shipping, not sure how much it would cost to ship to aussie from florida

if you dont get it resolved by the time i have some money, i dont mind buying you one for btc worth the same as its price 28.18+ w/e shipping costs (would be cool if you gave me instructions on shipping stuff too )

Go to USPS. they will help you do International shipping. basically, it is just one short from to fill out. easy really. just watch cost, go cheapest way or it might cost more than what you are sending.

[xTachibana]

well, its like 23~ to ship it, or so says USPS.com, so yeah, 1 more week until i can buy it :B

[xTachibana]

oh i didnt notice the edits on the first post, try out bitminter, its pretty good for me so far getting .00041 btc per day (1 erupter)


edit: yay difficulty increase now 1 erupter gives .00025-.0031

[LogicalUnit]

BIG UPDATE!! 2013-09-04

DOUBLE OR NOTHING

My second batch of five USB block erupters has arrived! I'm amazed that they were here at about 11am today when I ordered them at 4pm yesterday! I highly recommend dadj aka Leo as a reliable supplier of USB miners. Thanks, mate! I paid 0.95 BTC for the five miners including express shipping.

I needed an adapter for the Israeli DUB-H7, but fortunately I had one.

I also upgraded to MinePeon 0.2.3a

Setup was absolutely painless. I imaged MinePeon to my SD card, connected ethernet to the RPi and booted. Then I just used sudo wicd-curses to set up the wifi connection, plugged everything in, and applied power. It sorted itself in a minute or two, and was then ready for my pool details. Easy!

I'm now mining at about 3.4GH/s, with an LCD status screen.

Pictures to follow. . . .

[LogicalUnit]

[xTachibana]

looks awesome :O

[Pt0x]

I've reading your post from the very beginning. Very inspiring for all those who want to get into crypto mining.

Good Luck!

[LogicalUnit]

I have been experiencing significant issues with MinePeon 0.2.3a restarting, failing to report averages, displaying graphs, and other instabilities. After some investigation, I believe that the network time protocol daemon has issues over a wifi link. Here's the procedure to fix:

ssh into the RPi and enter your timezone:

Code:

timedatectl timezone list

Code:

sudo timedatectl set-timezone Australia/Sydney

Then

Code:

sudo pacman -S ntp

When it prompts you to remove openntpd, select Yes.

Next use a text editor in administrator mode to edit your ntp.conf

Code:

sudo vim /etc/ntp.conf

vim is a subject unto itself, but the idea is to add your local ntp servers. Here are mine for Australia

Code:

server 0.au.pool.ntp.org iburst
server 1.au.pool.ntp.org iburst
server 2.au.pool.ntp.org iburst 
server 3.au.pool.ntp.org iburst

Finally start the ntp daemon

Code:

sudo systemctl enable ntpd
sudo systemctl start ntpd

[LogicalUnit]

After many more issues with MinePeon 0.2.3a, I have downgraded to 0.2.2. I used the previous method to fix the system clock, then updated cgminer and http with git pull as described here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=290511.new#new

I also used the instructions here to set up my LCDstats screen: https://github.com/cardcomm/cgminerLCDStats/blob/master/MinePeon%20Install.md

The current configuration seems stable.

[timk225]

LogicalUnit....

Dude.  I'm going to give you one piece of advice to help your future profitability and you can either take it or not.

I know the exciting factor of mining is neat, but profit is always more important than excitement.

The advice:

Sell all your erupters and asics and anything related to mining BTC, find some naive noob on eBay who is looking to blindly throw money at you without doing proper research.

That is the ONLY way you will ever make a profit or even come close to getting your money back out of those low end ASICs.

The difficulty will only go up.  The profitability per Ghash will only go down.  BTC is never going to surge over $300 per BTC like some dreamers have claimed.

Your only other option is to do as I have, and assemble a nice GPU farm as cheaply as possible and get going on Scrypt coins, like Litecoin.

I leave the choice to you.  But the path you are on now is a dead end loser.  Guaranteed, unless you enjoy throwing money away.

[Zeek_W]

Great write up. That LCDsysinfo screen was just what I was wanting for a different project!

[daemondazz]

I know the exciting factor of mining is neat, but profit is always more important than excitement.

You seriously believe that you can talk for everyone on the planet? Just, wow..

[timk225]

Ok, let me rephrase it:

For ME, making a huge profit supersedes almost everything else. 

Almost.  99.9% of the time.

[Trongersoll]

Ok, let me rephrase it:

For ME, making a huge profit supersedes almost everything else. 

Almost.  99.9% of the time.

Obviously that does not apply to this thread. Think Hobby.

[timk225]

I think it's cool and neat and gee-whiz to have a bunch of GPUs pimping LiteCoin for me in my spare bedroom, but if I thought there was no profit to be made, I'd have a lot of stuff on eBay right now!

Hobby Schmobby, the almighty DOLLAR beats all!  Except for Chuck Norris.

[ScaryHash]

LogicalUnit....

Dude.  I'm going to give you one piece of advice to help your future profitability and you can either take it or not.

I know the exciting factor of mining is neat, but profit is always more important than excitement.

Wow, if everybody thought as you did, slavery would still be around.

You are a seriously messed up human being. I'm sorry I'm a member of a species that produced you as a genetic byproduct.

[LogicalUnit]

Current setup has been running for a while, and there are just two issues:

1) The http stats page is reporting one tenth of accepted shares because cgminer 3.4.2 sets the diff to 10 automatically in my setup. It needs to stop doing this division to give accurate HW rates.
2) The cgminerstats script terminates after a few hours. I can restart it, but there must be a memory leak or something in the code.