HashFast BabyJet users thread

[dbbit]

DEAD DEAD DEAD - this is what I see when I wake up this morning for the second day in a row, getting only about 12-18 hour uptime before my devices all go DEAD and cgminer does not restart itself, I have to manually restart.

I am having an issue with cgminer 3.12 on windows

Using 9 babyjets plugged into a 10 port usb hub, all are detected eventually, but it usually goes up into HFB 40 to HFB 50 so it takes about 4-5 disable/re-enable cycles per device on startup.

If I reboot cgminer, after the all DEAD status, then it works for just a few minutes before I start to see the miners drop again.

IDLE for more than 60 seconds - declaring SICK!
Attempting to restart

So hotplugging everything will give me another 12-18 hours (turn off and on USB hub), but this is crazy that I have to hard reboot so often.

I have the exact same issue with cgminer on windows. I had to switch back to the RPI to get reasonable uptime.

Windows cgminer gives a bit faster hashrate, but not worth it if it's down for hours a day.

[perezoso]

I feel like the Rodney Dangerfield of this thread.  Don't get no respect.

Fellas, I've been saying for days that on a PC you need to use 3.11 because 3.12 is subject to crashing (apparently related to the firmware "watchdog" and cgminer not getting along).

But if you guys wanna keep ignoring me and keep the network hashrate a little lower with your offline machines, you can be my guests... 

[btctalks123]

Okay I may seem stupid but im new to this and I cant get connected using the raspberry pi at all. So does anybody know the drivers for the BJ I switched it to winUSB but I still cant get Cgminer to read it. If someone could please help me setup cgminer as I cannot get the pi working after many attempts and I am new to mining any help would be great.

[tacotime]

Okay I may seem stupid but im new to this and I cant get connected using the raspberry pi at all. So does anybody know the drivers for the BJ I switched it to winUSB but I still cant get Cgminer to read it. If someone could please help me setup cgminer as I cannot get the pi working after many attempts and I am new to mining any help would be great.

Load drivers with zadig

http://zadig.akeo.ie/

[tacotime]

Okay I have my BJs set up. 3.11.0.  So far, so good.

I have to go to work (they're already pissed at me for staying home to receive this fedex shipment), but these are my thoughts so far:
- Risers and screws were jingling in both units when I received them, the problem is the extra set of risers on the bottom seem to fall off.  HASHFAST, if you're reading this, tell CIARA to tape these to the inside of the case in a bag instead of extra screwing them in.
- Hashrate for first unit is 398 GH/s and the second 405 GH/s, the one is pulling 460 W while the other is pulling 476 W (Blue Planet energy meter, usually more accurate than a Kill-A-Watt).  Temps are 76 C and 79 C.  Not exactly the efficiency we were promised, and not a lot of room for OCing, oh well.  Pool confirms these hash rates.
- Would be nice to get a voltage control in cgminer, I want to try undervolting.
- Comes with a nice Seasonic 1000 W Platinum PSU, unfortunately there is no 24+4 pin and 8-pin 12V cables for a motherboard in case you want to recycle it.  Also, shows that even at 90% efficiency these are actually less efficient than my Bitfury rig running at 85% efficiency and overclocked.

But, well, at least they're up and running!  Seem to work nicely as space heaters.

[mgio]

I have two BabyJets now. One works great. It's been running at 430 GH/s pretty consistently for over a week now (using the average stats from eligius).

The other one I just got today and is broken, right out of the box.

According to the cgminer its running at 380 GH/s but in reality (according to eligius) its running at about half that. The reason is the ridiculous error rate that I'm getting.

Here is the cgminer stats for the working bj:

 cgminer version 3.9.0 - Started: [2014-02-01 15:02:13]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 (5s):452.8G (avg):461.7Gh/s | A:19290234  R:92767  HW:64312  WU:11909.7/m
 ST: 2  SS: 0  NB: 417  LW: 20691920  GF: 0  RF: 0
 Connected to stratum.mining.eligius.st diff 256 with stratum as user xxxx_BabyJet1
 Block: 1e5dc7ba...  Diff:2.19G  Started: [20:27:33]  Best share: 6.18M
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 [P]ool management Settings [D]isplay options [Q]uit
 HFA 2:  71C/.79V 79C/.79V 71C/.79V 70C/.78V 498.9G/458.7Gh/s | A: 4331326 R:20480 HW:14351 WU:11964.2/m
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As you can see, its been running for 2 days now at 460 GH/s (430GH/s in reality according to the pool). The HW errors are just 64,312 and aren't increasing.

Now, the broken babyjet (running stock, no overclocking or modifications):

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(5s):407.5G (avg):378.3Gh/s | A:54179 R:512 HW:611323 WU:6780.2/m
ST: 2 SS: 0 NB: 4 LW: 89015 GF: 0 RF: 0
Connected to stratum.mining.eligius.st diff 128 with stratum as user xxxx_BabyJet2
Block: 1391fb73... Diff:2.19G Started: [15:29:41] Best share: 47.1K
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[P]ool management Settings [D]isplay options [Q]uit
HFA 1: 75C/.79V 77C/.79V 68C/.79V 59C/.82V 393.2G/383.3Gh/s | A:33279 R:512 HW:369376 WU:6803.7/m
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Its only been running for half an hour or so and already the HW errors are 611,323. Ten times the amount of the first BJ!

The temperatures are the same for both bjs. In fact, the broken one seems a bit cooler.

It seems to me that I've received a broken bj.

Has anyone had any luck returning or exchanging them??

[sillywhim]

It seems to me that I've received a broken bj.

Has anyone had any luck returning or exchanging them??

From Hashfast that just responded to my week old RMA request:

Thank you for your message.

We are currently receiving a very high volume of customer support cases, and as a result, we might be slower to respond than usual. However, we will get back to you as soon as we can.

You can check the status of your message at the following URL:

https://hashfast.fogbugz.com/default.asp?blah-blah-blah

You may want to save your case's tracking ticket: blah-blah-blah

Please reply to this message if there's anything else we can do for you.


--
HashFast Support
support@hashfast.com


Okay, HashFast is swapped. Canned replies, trouble tickets that go nowhere and all the while asking if there is anything more they can do for me.

I'll cut them a week or two break... (And KNCMiner was just like this in the beginning. But only a month late and their second batch Jupiters were under $5K and are now doing 670GH/s. People that ordered the second batch got their Jupiters under three weeks from the time of payments. As far as USD flow, Jupiters are pure profit miners now.)

[minternj]

Underclock it until you get a hold of someone.

--hfa-hash-clock 530 (find a rate below 550 that doesnt produce hw errors)

[mgio]

Underclock it until you get a hold of someone.

--hfa-hash-clock 530 (find a rate below 550 that doesnt produce hw errors)

I've tried underclock but I have yet to find a frequency that doesn't produce a ridiculous amount of hardware errors. I think I just have defective hardware.

[Easy2Mine]

I am glad I just only ordered 1 BJ.
What a FUCKING piece of crap is this.
I don't have hope this will ROI anymore, even when they start to ship the MPP.
You don't know when this shit reboots.

[HF-Engineer]

Gotcha:

Just a heads up to something I ran across while initially running my Baby Jet:

Make sure that the date/time of your raspberry pi minepeon is CORRECT. Mines was set to the year 1969 for some strange reason. If this is happening:

1. The Baby Jet runs just fine at first boot up. Mines great at eligius for The Foreman. Then after a few minutes, DISASTER.
2. Your Baby Jet SHUTS DOWN and will just sit there seemingly doing nothing --no fans on, nada.
3. From the minepeon web interface, it will say "no devices".
4. Clicking on "Restart Miner" will have no effect. Pressing "Reboot" in an attempt to restart cgminer will also have no effect. Upon further inspection via SSH, I found that cgminer was not running. Apparently there is something somewhere in the code that prevents it if the date/time is seriously wrong
5. Check "Server Time" (this can be found as the last line of any page of the minepeon web interface) and make sure it is more or less accurate

FYI: The Baby Jet initially is in a "wait state" at boot-up time. But there is a watchdog program running in the Baby Jet that, amongst other things, monitors the inputs at the Baby Jet USB port --if there is nothing communicating on it i.e. cgminer is not controlling the USB port, then the Baby Jet will not "TURN ON".

So, date wrong ---> cgminer refuses to run ---> no signals on the Baby Jet USB port ---> Baby Jet looks like it is down and broken.  BUT IT IS NOT!

I spent a lot of time tracking this down (even bought another what is now a spare Seasonic SS1000XP power supply, requesting a RMA, etc.) as things are not immediately apparant. So hopefully this head's up will assist you if you're are experiencing the 1-5 symptoms above and maybe save you from spending $200 for no good reason.

TO set your raspberry pi's time/date properly:

1. SSH to the Baby Jet and switch to user root "sudo su" and enter in your password (by default it is peon)
2. Find out timezone values "timedatectl list-timezones" Choose your timezone from the list. For me it's Pacific/Honolulu
3. Set the timezone "timedatectl set-timezone Pacific/Honolulu"
4. Initially set date/time:
        timedatectl set-time "2014-02-02 15:43:00" Military Time Format (also note the required quote marks)
5. Type "exit" so's to not break anything.
6. Be patient. In no more than 5 minutes, your Baby Jet will start mining again.


That's it. ntpd (bootup time daemon) will take over automatically. Note: ntpd will refuse to do its job if the date/time difference is way out of wack.

None of this is necessary if you are running our image instead of the "stock" MinePeon.  I fixed the TZ bug 5 versions ago.  You will also not get any updates whatsoever with the stock MinePeon, and you will see both the RPI hang as well as CGminer.  I've fixed both of these hang issues.

Again, to be clear, if your MinePeon version number does not show "0.2.4.3hf8", you are not running an ideal stable version, and if you want the best stability, you should try our image:

1. If you are already running MinePeon, first make a backup from the Settings tab (near the bottom).

2. Download this SD card image: Windows: http://setup.hashfast.com/hashfast-minepeon-1.0.zip  Linux: http://setup.hashfast.com/hashfast-minepeon-1.0.img.bz2

3. If running windows, we recommend the Win32DiskImager: http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/, If running Linux, you can simply type:

Code:

bzcat hashfast-minepeon-1.0.img.bz2 | sudo dd bs=1M of=/dev/xxx && sync

(Where /dev/xxx is the device name of your SD card.  If unsure, type "dmesg" after inserting your card.)

4. Boot your  RaspBerry Pi with the new SD image installed.  Note that it may take up to 4 minutes or so to collect all the current updates from us before it will begin mining.  Listen for the fans to start in your BabyJet.  You can browse here to see when your system comes online and connect to it: http://setup.hashfast.com/.  If for some reason it doesn't come up after five minutes, power-cycle it.  (We've seen some brands of SD card cause it to hang on reboot)

5. Log into the web interface and restore your backed up MinePeon settings (if any).  Note that the RPI will generate a new wallet when you first boot from the new SD image, and will begin mining using that wallet.  It's important to switch your mining settings using the "Pools" tab or restore your backup so that your mining proceeds end up in the right wallet!

If you don't want your RPI checking in for updates, you can disable this in the Settings tab, but I advise you to at least do it manually once in while.  We hope to have some new firmware and software soon!  We also advise you to set a password on MinePeon, especially if exposed to the outside internet.  (not behind a router/firewall)

-Phil

[perezoso]

I am glad I just only ordered 1 BJ.
What a FUCKING piece of crap is this.
I don't have hope this will ROI anymore, even when they start to ship the MPP.
You don't know when this shit reboots.

Guess it's not so Easy2Mine after all.

You got two options (edit: see also dbbit below, who disagrees):

A) You can wrassle with the raspberry pi and follow HF engineer's advice, and I have no reason to think it isn't good, or;

B) You can getchyerself an old PC, the stock version of cgminer 3.11, switch the driver with Zadig (easy), and with a tad of patience hotplugging it a couple of times, unless you have a bad machine, you will be up and running, STABLY.  You can also probably overclock it, depending on your huevos and chips.

To me, it's a no-brainer.  No offense, Engineer, but I just don't like the whole rpi thing...

Also, I've had zero downtime since setting the machine up - except when I flirted with 3.12, and a few voluntary minutes of downtime when I was trying out things in the .conf file.  

The PC might not be cool, but dood, your BJ is presently capable of 'printing' maybe USD $65 a day.  Do you want to leave that money on the table for a number of days while you hassle with the $39 Raspberry Pi controller?

[HF-Engineer]

@Phil - Would it be possible to go back to 3.11? That is the only version that was stable for me.

I know some folks complained about lower hashrates in minepeon (after halving the reported rate) but that is because ckolivas made some changes to discard invalid shares.

3.9 is causing full-tilt spikes again and also caused my RPi to crash completely. It also requires me to physically hot plug the miner to be detected... :/

https://i.imgur.com/d1P8FXR.png

I left both 3.11 and 3.12 on there for you guys.  There is a symlink pointing to 3.9, just change it to 3.11 and you're rolling on 3.11.

SSH into your RPI, the login is "minepeon" and the password is "peon" unless you've changed it, then execute these commands:

Code:

[minepeon@minepeon ~]$ rm /opt/minepeon/bin/cgminer
[minepeon@minepeon ~]$ ln -s /opt/minepeon/bin/cgminer-3.11.0hf1 /opt/minepeon/bin/cgminer

If you decide that 3.9 was better: (I think you will)

Code:

[minepeon@minepeon ~]$ rm /opt/minepeon/bin/cgminer
[minepeon@minepeon ~]$ ln -s /opt/minepeon/bin/cgminer-3.9.0h2 /opt/minepeon/bin/cgminer

I'm running 3 RPI's here with different configs of some our reject hardware, some very unstable, and 3.9 does seem to be great.  Uptime is 2 day 3 min 2 sec on one.

-Phil

[dbbit]

I feel like the Rodney Dangerfield of this thread.  Don't get no respect.

Fellas, I've been saying for days that on a PC you need to use 3.11 because 3.12 is subject to crashing (apparently related to the firmware "watchdog" and cgminer not getting along).

But if you guys wanna keep ignoring me and keep the network hashrate a little lower with your offline machines, you can be my guests...  

My PC cgminer crashes all the time on 3.11. I've never tried 3.12 on the PC. The longest I've ever had 3.11 working successfully is 7 hours - then it just quits (no error to diagnose).

The only stable platform so far is 3.09.0h2 on the RPI.

Is there a way to overclock the cgminer on the RPI? My cores are all now running at between 56C and 66C. Seems like a waste.

[HF-Engineer]

Underclock it until you get a hold of someone.

--hfa-hash-clock 530 (find a rate below 550 that doesnt produce hw errors)

I've tried underclock but I have yet to find a frequency that doesn't produce a ridiculous amount of hardware errors. I think I just have defective hardware.

We just brought several new support people on-board, and set up a new queue system.  I'm CC'd on all the support emails and will look at each and every one.

Know that one bad core out of the 384 that are in your BJ can spew a LOT of errors.  New firmware that's being tested now will hopefully fix some of these issues.  We will push it out as soon as verification & regression testing is complete.

Don't let a spew of errors scare you off.  Check the pool's reported work rate and go by that.  Almost all of my test board here spew lots of errors, but it's usually just one or two "blabbermouth" cores doing this, and the overall hashrate is still good.

If you are attempting overclocking, (not recommending you do) but ignore these errors and watch for the "Work Watchdog Timer Reset Imminent" messages.  If you see these, then you've gone too high.  Back off in 5mhz increments until most these go away (one on occasion is ok) and then check your hashrate at the pool.

-Phil

[perezoso]

I feel like the Rodney Dangerfield of this thread.  Don't get no respect.

Fellas, I've been saying for days that on a PC you need to use 3.11 because 3.12 is subject to crashing (apparently related to the firmware "watchdog" and cgminer not getting along).

But if you guys wanna keep ignoring me and keep the network hashrate a little lower with your offline machines, you can be my guests...  

My PC cgminer crashes all the time on 3.11. I've never tried 3.12 on the PC. The longest I've ever had 3.11 working successfully is 7 hours - then it just quits (no error to diagnose).

The only stable platform so far is 3.09.0h2 on the RPI.

Is there a way to overclock the cgminer on the RPI? My cores are all now running at between 56C and 66C. Seems like a waste.

I dunno what to say.  I've got two pretty different BJs, arrived at different times, built in different places, different "rev" stickers on the boards, different hash rates, and 3.11 works for me.

Cables or USB controllers?  Are you doing other stuff on the PC?  (Mine only controls BJs, plus a little Litecoin mining on the GPU.)

My experiments suggest you want the cores warmer, whether or not you overclock.  Mine seems to mine a little faster around 70c.

[dbbit]

My PC cgminer crashes all the time on 3.11. I've never tried 3.12 on the PC. The longest I've ever had 3.11 working successfully is 7 hours - then it just quits (no error to diagnose).

The only stable platform so far is 3.09.0h2 on the RPI.

Is there a way to overclock the cgminer on the RPI? My cores are all now running at between 56C and 66C. Seems like a waste.

I dunno what to say.  I've got two pretty different BJs, arrived at different times, different "rev" stickers on the boards, and 3.11 works for me.

Cables or controllers?  Are you doing other stuff on the PC?  (Mine only controls BJs, plus a little Litecoin mining on the GPU.)

My experiments suggest you want the cores warmer, whether or not you overclock.  Mine seems to mine a little faster around 70c.

Direct USB cable from PC to the BabyJet. Also only a little litecoin mining on the GPU. I also tried without anything else on the PC.

How do I get the cores warmer without overclocking? Space heater?

[starsoccer9]

My PC cgminer crashes all the time on 3.11. I've never tried 3.12 on the PC. The longest I've ever had 3.11 working successfully is 7 hours - then it just quits (no error to diagnose).

The only stable platform so far is 3.09.0h2 on the RPI.

Is there a way to overclock the cgminer on the RPI? My cores are all now running at between 56C and 66C. Seems like a waste.

I dunno what to say.  I've got two pretty different BJs, arrived at different times, different "rev" stickers on the boards, and 3.11 works for me.

Cables or controllers?  Are you doing other stuff on the PC?  (Mine only controls BJs, plus a little Litecoin mining on the GPU.)

My experiments suggest you want the cores warmer, whether or not you overclock.  Mine seems to mine a little faster around 70c.

Direct USB cable from PC to the BabyJet. Also only a little litecoin mining on the GPU. I also tried without anything else on the PC.

How do I get the cores warmer without overclocking? Space heater?

I will say windows is working great for me as well. I got an old pc running my hashfast and BFL hardware.

yes, thats right I was lucky enough to pick the 2 best companies

@HF Engineer, Can the unit itself get software updates that make it faster. I am simply asking as right now like i said im running windows but if new builds that improve the speed come out id much rather switch to the RPI to update the unit.
Also will you eventually provide a way for windows users to update their unit?

[sillywhim]

None of this is necessary if you are running our image instead of the "stock" MinePeon.  I fixed the TZ bug 5 versions ago.  You will also not get any updates whatsoever with the stock MinePeon, and you will see both the RPI hang as well as CGminer.  I've fixed both of these hang issues.

Again, to be clear, if your MinePeon version number does not show "0.2.4.3hf8", you are not running an ideal stable version, and if you want the best stability, you should try our image:

Au Contraire.

I downloaded your minepeon raspi image as soon as I learnt of it:

MinePeon Version
0.2.4.3hf8
Miner Version
cgminer3.9.0h

This has without a doubt, the "1969" date/time upon bootup problem and the daemon in part "ntpd -g" is not correcting the date/time as it should. I said to heck with it and wrote a small perl script that manually setup the time properly upon boot (I am too lazy to go treking thru arch linux hunting for whatevers, howevers.)

ntpd -g should correct things, but it doesn't. and because it doesn't, cgminer won't run. and because cgminer won't run then of course baby jet won't make any "noise". Initially this all puzzled me like I said in my post and I spent money and RMA requests in my initial attempt to "fix" it.

I downloaded the image about two days ago and maybe something changed in the meantime? If you could download your image yourself, load it on a mem card and then boot up off it, you will experience the year "1969" error, and not the more common/expected year "1970" reset. And how come ntpd -g doesn't correct a thing? Dunno why, you tell me?

Maybe I missed it, but what is the MD5 for your image? Remote outside chance that it got corrupted on its way to me here in Hawaii...

[HF-Engineer]

For all the people here that are running on something other than the RPI's, Here's the source code for cgminer 3.9.0h2 (same version we're currently using on the RPI).  This version has somewhat correct hashrate reporting, and has a few other things, such as the per-die voltage and temperature readout.  It seems to be the most stable during our testing.  One of our top Engineers is currently working with Con Kolivas right now to get some of these things improved.  Thanks Con!

cgminer 3.9.0h2 source (can be complied on most Linux distros): http://setup.hashfast.com/cgminer-3.9.0h2.tar.gz

I'd love reports back to see if this improves your mining performance/stability.  Again; please ignore the strings of HW errors, this should not be a problem.

-Phil