GekkoScience NewPac / Terminus R606 (BM1387) Official Support Thread

[mstrozier]

Even at V5, it throttles down. I'm betting on the issue being the pi. Autotune drops it big time if I try to use any of the resources on the pi while mining. I'd set it up in my office and connect it to my antique AMD mining rig, but the temperature is still swinging up and down in New Jersey and my heat may kick on at some point and blow hot air on my equipment overnight.

Yup you are running into the problems I had with the Pi.  A couple of pages back in this thread you'll see the test results I had with this.  The ARM cpu that the Pi uses is a great little gadget however just isn't powerful enough to run these r606's at the right speeds.  No matter what voltage I set it to, low to mid 400Mhz is where is always settled.

However if you have the newpac's those work great on the Pi.  So what I did was ended up breaking down this setup into 2 different rigs.   I put my newpac's and moonlanders on the Raspberry Pi.  I have the moonlanders clocked at 720Mhz and the newpac's clocked at 400Mhz and they are working great.   8Mh combined for the Moons (have 2 of them) and for the 4 newpacs they are all getting about 90Gh/s each on a non-AB supported Pool.

I then moved my R606's over to a AMD FX-6300 powered Ubuntu Linux box that I have sitting around at home.  It originally had a 8350 however the 6 core chip is a little more power friendly.  And they have been running perfectly since.  On Volt setting 5 I set them at 700Mhz and oddly it depends on the pool I am on to what final Mhz it settles on.  When mining Bitcoin or Litecoin Cash, they will stay around ~700.  One settles at 681 and the other either remains at 700 or drops to 698.

However when I switch to a Digibyte mining pool, they both settled at 644Mhz on this setting.   Still got some reviews to see on this as I am unsure why which pool you are on would matter.  I'm wondering if I had something kick off in the background that may have effected the speeds to downclock.   *shrugs*

It's all still a learning experience for me and enjoying it.   If you have any old PC hardware laying around, only suggestion is to build up a small Linux box and run the R606's there.

** Edit **

If you are still wanting to use SBC to run these, you can possibly try a Asus Tinker Board (same chipset however 1.8Ghz Quad core and 2Gb of DDR3 memory).   Or possibly the Nvidia Jetson Nano.  I've been curious about that SBC since it's designed mainly for AI development.  However the stats on the board are quite nice.  4Gb of DDR4 memory.  16GB of onboard flash memory.  Quad core A57 CPU (believe up to 2Ghz).  Neat lil SBC for $100.

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[DieselWeaseI]

This is damn near a mirror of what I am seeing. My Pi is hardwired just because of proximity.

Good to know that someone is having a similar experience. Time to pull an old desktop out and start fiddling with it.

Thank you for the insight @DieselWeaseI

I attached it to my old Win10 machine that has 32GB memory and an AMD FX-8350. Set for 775MHz on voltage setting 7 and I'm seeing ~1.020Th/s and 97+% WU after it tunes it down to 763Mhz. I had to enable low boost after I was getting ASIC plateau errors upon starting to mine. I just accidentally closed cgminer, so I'll have to let this run for a bit before I grab a new screenshot.

UPDATE:

Here's a screenshot of what I'm getting after a couple hours of runtime.

https://imgur.com/a/UyiejjB

[mstrozier]

Ok now wanted to post up what I've collected on power usage on these devices.  Along with my setup.

https://ibb.co/RcFfs6v
https://ibb.co/6vhjjjC

The above images are pictures of my currently lil setup.  Ignore the wire mess with the Arduino.  Was tinkering with it the other day and decided to make a unit that measures the area temp and humidity. I plan on making some more permanent and prettier later.  And this unit is in our bedroom that doubles as my home office since I work remote.  Since I put this on a wired rack I used a piece of cardboard for the meantime (going to later replace with a piece of wood or plastic shelf material to be a little more presentable.  As well as some much needed cable management.  I put pegs on the PSU so that the breakout board would not be touching any of the metal shelving.

Now the power usage.  I took the power readings of ONLY the PSU powering the gekko hub, two usb fans and the R606's.  The Raspberry Pi and Ubuntu Linux box are on a separate power strip so I took only the power readings of these miners and it's own dedicated PSU.   The Raspberry Pi averages (from memory) between 5 and 10 watts.  And my FX-6300 since it's mainly idling with little processing on these R606's  (cpu less than 15%) should be ~100 watts give or take.  The R606 is at volt setting 5.

Here is a screen shot of the miner setup it at idle: https://ibb.co/QPnvkR1.  This is just the PSU powered on with the Gekkoscience Hub, newpacs, moonlanders and R606's all attached, powered on however doing nothing at present.  Just sitting there, about 46 Watts for everything.

Next, screen shot of just the Hub being used (newpacs / moonlanders mining).  I waited for them to reach their target speed and leveled out: https://ibb.co/wS0yrL6.  This brought the total usage up to 83 watts.

Now with the R606's added and hashing.  Again I waited until the units had leveled out before I settled on it's reading.  As it slowly continued to climb.   Once the units leveled off, my total system usage is 257 Watts: https://ibb.co/Byfyrnz.

[os2sam]

I was able to get this working on my Raspberry Pi ...snip...  Below are the steps I took in order to get it setup and running.

mstrozier,
Thanks for your instructions, they got me going with my new RPi today.  They were a big help.
Sam

[philipma1957]

When the list fills in a bit more I will use randomnumber.org to pick winner.
If you are on list and win I need two things proof of purchase and an address to send the prize.
I realized this prevents a false claim to a certain extent.
If you win you do not go into next  free raffle. There will be 7 maybe 8 raffles 1 stick to be given for each one.

1) DieselWeaseI
2) Irowland21093
3) Kingofhammers
4) mstrozier
5) gcanelson

[mstrozier]

mstrozier,
Thanks for your instructions, they got me going with my new RPi today.  They were a big help.
Sam

Anytime, glad to help

[achtung082]

I have been testing with a BBB and have been getting good results, surprisingly as a BBB often has USB issues with devices. I also tried using a Odroid C2 which doesn't even see any devices so is totally useless. My next test is an old Odroid X2, which has been used as a controller for all of sidehack's and many other different miners. The only miner so far it hasn't worked with is the futurbit's.

BBB: Debian, Rosewill 10 port USB 2.0 hub
4x 606 390mv 180watt 1.9 / 1.92th
4x 606 430mv 320watt 3.16th    

Odroid X2: Ubuntu, Rosewill 10 port USB 2.0 hub
All usb device drop and cgminer crashes when auto-tune try's to change clock speed.

[DieselWeaseI]

I have been testing with a BBB and have been getting good results, surprisingly as a BBB often has USB issues with devices. I also tried using a Odroid C2 which doesn't even see any devices so is totally useless. My next test is al old Odroid X2, which has been used as a controller for all of sidehack's and many other different miners. The only miner so far it hasn't worked with is the futurbit's.

BBB: Debian, Rosewill 10 port USB 2.0 hub
4x 606 390mv 180watt 1.9 / 1.92th
4x 606 430mv 320watt 3.16th    

that would be interesting to follow...I've been eyeballing the Odroid XU4 since it's got some hefty horsepower to hopefully allow me to turn the miner all the way up if I so desire. I'm just not too fond of having to buy a separate screen and create a housing and/or mount for it if I go that route.

[rockmoney]

Not sure why so many people are having trouble running a NewPac stick and/or a R606 Terminus on the latest Raspberry Pi B3+ models. Unless the issue is specifically with earlier Raspberry Pi models?

Personally, I have never had the desire to own a Pi, so I never got one. Lately, so many of our customers and other members were experiencing Pi-related issues, so I finally decided to buy one last week, and just now found some time to get it up and running.

Following the latest instructions from vh as seen on the OP was a breeze (except for one copy/paste issue on the "CFLAGS="-O2" ./autogen.sh" part, which was easily fixed by typing that one line in manually.

If you have any experience with Linux or Ubuntu, getting the first R606 up and mining took me only ~15 minutes (and my Linux/Ubuntu experience is fairly minimal). I just plugged my third R606 into the Pi, after getting just under ~2Th/s from the first two were left mining for about an hour.

I am using a 94% Platinum HP 1200 Watt PSU, plugged into a USA standard 120V receptacle/outlet, paired with [an of equal quality to sidehack's breakout board], but the version X7B from Parallel Miner. Power/voltage level is set to 7 (the highest), and I am using

Code:

--gekko-serial "GS-100X000X00"

to run each R606 in a separate instance. I will let this third R606 get up to speed, and post some screenshots soon!

[DieselWeaseI]

What OS are you running on the Pi? I set mine up with Raspbian using NOOBS installer. Are you using the R606 to power it or using a separate power supply? Overclocking the Pi at all?

[os2sam]

I got my Pi running yesterday.  So far I'm getting about the same performance as I was with my Win7 PC w/ Quad Core I-7.

Also the Pi wouldn't boot when using the miner as the power source so I'm using the Pi Power supply.  I'll do some more testing today and post my numbers.

[sidehack]

Weird that it wouldn't boot. The Pi I've got for testing is pretty old, but I've only ever run it powered off the pod while testing. It can't be that the miner's 5V is no good, because that also powers all the lights, the onboard controls and USB communication. Depending on the Pi model, it might be asking for too much power; some of the newer models, I'm told, can draw as much as 3A.

[lrowland21093]

I tried to run the Pi off the R606's USB and it would not boot.  Now it is running off one of the ports on the Gekko USB hub and it working well.  Mine has a 7" Waveshare LCD powering from the Pi so I assumed the power troubles were because of that.

Just as an experiment I am going to try running the miner on a Pi Z - though I don't really expect it to work.  It will be cool if it does since you can get them for $5 from Micro Center right now in the US.  Somewhere I have a Asus Tinkerboard too that I may try.  Either way I'll post results in case any one is interested.

[sidehack]

Could be then. The 5V on the R606 is the same circuit as powers the D/1 (weaker) port pair on the metal Gekko hubs so it's good for 2-2.5A while the main ports on the hub will push 6A per pair. Not sure what the power draw is on a 7" screen but it's certainly a lot more than zero.

[os2sam]

I have a standard keyboard and mouse connected to my Pi.  So I'm guessing the combined demand was too much of a draw.  I could test it later if need be?

Edit: I tinkered a little just to satisfy my curiosity.  The Pi says during bootup that it detected an undervoltage and displayed a lightening bolt every once in while in the top right hand corner.  But it did boot up this time with and without the keyboard and mouse.  It detected the undervoltage both times though.  I have a Pi 3 B+.  I didn't let it ramp up to full power though, I just shutdown and went back the RPi P/S.

[sidehack]

The short answer is "no, the algorithm is built into the hardware. This has been the case with all ASICs since the beginning of ASIC mining."

The long answer is "yes, but..." where the "but..." involves a workaround using special pools that have you mine one currency but pay you in a different currency with payout rates depending on exchange values and the like. There's probably more about that in the Altcoin board, and also Rockmoney (who sells these guys on Amazon as MinerSupply, which may have been where you got them from to begin with) has a decent writeup somewhere for how to set that kind of thing up.

[DieselWeaseI]

so if im running newpac on a raspberry pi, what would i be writing on to the microsd?

the operating system gets loaded on to the SD card

link below:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/installing-images/

[mstrozier]

I also have a detailed instructions on page 28 of this thread that outlines step by step on how to setup the Raspberry Pi for the newpac's outlining the original instructions from the 1st page.   All in all will take you maybe 15 to 20 minutes to get everything setup and ready to mine since you are also installing the OS.  Just follow the steps in the link  DieselWeaseI provided on how to get the OS installed on a micro SD card for the Pi and then continue with the mining setup portion.

I have 4 newpac's and 2 moonlanders currently running on the Pi trouble free.

[evade_57]

Running 12 Newpac's here on 2 GS hubs using and RP 3+, no issues at 250mhz. Both plugged into the Pi3+ directly with a usb mouse and wireless (usb) keyboard.

Each hub as 2 Arctic 92mm USB fans plugged in for cooling. Temperatures are approx. 80F at the heatsink using the temp gun recommended by Philipma1957. Room temp is 72F.

Power supply is Corsair 550T Gold. Power consumption is around 75W max.

I have to stress that the NewPac's and GS hubs are a perfect combo. I've ordered a third setup from MFB because these work so well together.

Kudos to Sidehack, great products.

[lrowland21093]

As an experiment I setup a Raspberry Pi Zero W with the GS hub and three R606's.
After a full day the hash rate on all three match the Pi 3b+ speed which is 900Gh.  These are also the numbers I saw on a Windows 10 PC.
Next is the TinkerBoard but it will probably just be the same. 

I think the only two constraints (as others have mentioned) are the USB traffic and the possibly the network connection.
The fact that it worked at all with the Pi Zero was surprising let alone at the same speed.