GekkoScience NewPac / Terminus R606 (BM1387) Official Support Thread

[gt_addict]

So what you're saying, in a thread about USB-powered products designed by a guy who's also currently working on lithium battery projects including both chargers and voltage boosters, is that it'd be awful handy if someone made a tiny USB-in USB-out UPS with up to, say, 3A handling to fully power a Pi 4?

Hm. Might be worth looking into.

Welll....... i know you’re busy with various projects so didn’t want to ask directly but yes. A Type C to Type C passthrough type UPS for a Pi4 would be damn handy.

I don't know what kind of case you have on your pi, but what about the PiJuice?

https://uk.pi-supply.com/products/pijuice-standard

I can't use this because of the case that I use.

I saw these but I would have to have it hanging around on a GPIO extender or cable. Not the best look really.

[os2sam]

So what you're saying, in a thread about USB-powered products designed by a guy who's also currently working on lithium battery projects including both chargers and voltage boosters, is that it'd be awful handy if someone made a tiny USB-in USB-out UPS with up to, say, 3A handling to fully power a Pi 4?

Hm. Might be worth looking into.

Running low on project ideas?

Would be a nice compliment to your product line.

[sidehack]

Running low? By no means. I recently purchased 4 new notebooks to help keep different project/product-family ideas better organized. My brain's been kinda on a tear since about June, to the point I haven't even been sleeping well lately for all the ideas, methods and solutions popping out. I actually don't have enough time or R&D budget for the ideas I've already got.

The hard part of this, really, would be managing the inline battery. With lead-acids they really like a trickle charge so you can pretty much put a current-limited constant-voltage charger across it, and then take the combined output of that charger and the battery into your output regulator. But since lithiums are damaged by trickle charge and you need to cut off charging current when it gets below a certain percentage of total capacity, you can't do that.

Ooh, but you could use a FET to block input current to the battery. Measure input current on the battery leg and calibrate the charger voltage accordingly, then when it gets below cutoff you kill the FET and the charger's output will pipe directly into the output booster. But when the input drops out, the FET's reverse diode (or a parallel reverse schottky) will conduct battery power into it automatically. The controller can then kick on the FET bypass to reduce conduction losses, until power comes back on and it gets managed by the charge regulator controls again. Okay that's actually pretty easy.

And we could put an input current selector switch on it so the high-current portion of the charge cycle (only applicable after a deep discharge) gets regulated to only pulling a specified current from your source, so as not to overwhelm, with limits at for example 1A, 2A and 3A. You'd pull maximum allowable current from the source, and what doesn't go through to your Pi is automatically shunted into charging the battery.

Especially since I'm already working on a lithium battery charger, and four other battery-powered ideas, one of which integrates a charger and a boost regulator. I could prototype 90% of this with the test boards I already have inbound.

[bmoscato]

Running low? By no means. I recently purchased 4 new notebooks to help keep different project/product-family ideas better organized. My brain's been kinda on a tear since about June, to the point I haven't even been sleeping well lately for all the ideas, methods and solutions popping out. I actually don't have enough time or R&D budget for the ideas I've already got.

The hard part of this, really, would be managing the inline battery. With lead-acids they really like a trickle charge so you can pretty much put a current-limited constant-voltage charger across it, and then take the combined output of that charger and the battery into your output regulator. But since lithiums are damaged by trickle charge and you need to cut off charging current when it gets below a certain percentage of total capacity, you can't do that.

Ooh, but you could use a FET to block input current to the battery. Measure input current on the battery leg and calibrate the charger voltage accordingly, then when it gets below cutoff you kill the FET and the charger's output will pipe directly into the output booster. But when the input drops out, the FET's reverse diode (or a parallel reverse schottky) will conduct battery power into it automatically. The controller can then kick on the FET bypass to reduce conduction losses, until power comes back on and it gets managed by the charge regulator controls again. Okay that's actually pretty easy.

And we could put an input current selector switch on it so the high-current portion of the charge cycle (only applicable after a deep discharge) gets regulated to only pulling a specified current from your source, so as not to overwhelm, with limits at for example 1A, 2A and 3A. You'd pull maximum allowable current from the source, and what doesn't go through to your Pi is automatically shunted into charging the battery.

Especially since I'm already working on a lithium battery charger, and four other battery-powered ideas, one of which integrates a charger and a boost regulator. I could prototype 90% of this with the test boards I already have inbound.

Should this be moved to a new development thread to see how many others would benefit from this and possibly preorder/fund it?

[sidehack]

Could, maybe. Or I'll just go ahead and make it, whatever. You are right that it's off-topic discussion since it's more Pi support than miner support.

[MoparMiningLLC]

so my psu should be here Thursday - I have 2 of the R606's and I will be running them both on the pi - is there any issues and/or tricks to running them both? do I have to run two instances of the cgminer? or does the one instance pick up both?

[os2sam]

so my psu should be here Thursday - I have 2 of the R606's and I will be running them both on the pi - is there any issues and/or tricks to running them both? do I have to run two instances of the cgminer? or does the one instance pick up both?

One instance will detect and mine with multiple miners.

[MoparMiningLLC]

ok great news!

Thanks.

[WilcoWi]

hi all,
is it possible to use the GS hub for connecting several R606 devices to a single pi (6 max)?

Reason for asking is i am wondering if a single pi can manage 6 devices trough a hub, or is it to much data?

btw got only two R606 atm

[sidehack]

I connect six through a GS hub for pre-shipment testing, but they're not on a Pi. The hub will handle the throughput. Not sure about the Pi.

[coupeborgward]

Is there a way via a command to get the actual temperature of the NewPac Miner.

Running it via a Raspberry PI with a USB Hub.

Any help is very much appreciated

[sidehack]

There is not. The NewPac has no telemetry.

[OlgaMachslochov]

Hello Guys, Ive got the same problem as "bmoscato" in his post number #1739, the final lines when running the make command are the same. I read that he managed to solve that issue by unplugging his usb fan. I dont use a fan but the newpac miners are still not recognized by the cgminer.

-I have two NewPac Miners in a Sipolar 10 Port USB 2.0 Hub 5V 20 Amp
-Raspberry Pi 4 B 4GB running Raspberry OS Buster ARM64 bit
-Followed the pinned procedure for debian/RPi installation

Tried on USB 2.0 as well as 3.0 --> No difference
Tried compiling with plugged in miners and with unplugged --> No difference
Checked USB Hub with miners on windows laptop --> no problems at all

Any help appreciated =)

[bmoscato]

What operating system are you running? If running Windows, did you use Zadig to install the USB driver? Are you using CGMiner that was modified by VH to recognize the Gekko hardware? If Raspberry PI running Raspbian, did you run the following:

Code:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade -y

$ sudo apt-get install -y build-essential git libusb-1.0-0-dev libusb-1.0-0 libcurl4-openssl-dev libncurses5-dev libudev-dev screen libtool automake pkg-config libjansson-dev

$ mkdir -p git/vthoang; cd git/vthoang
$ git clone -b r606 https://github.com/vthoang/cgminer.git
$ cd cgminer

$ CFLAGS="-O2" ./autogen.sh --enable-gekko
$ make -j 2

I forgot to add this portion earlier:

Code:

cd ~/git/vthoang/cgminer/
sudo usermod -G plugdev -a `whoami`
sudo cp 01-cgminer.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/
sudo reboot

[OlgaMachslochov]

Hey, thanks for your reply. A friend gave me the advice after reading the hint with the root rights for the usb devices to put `sudo` in front of the ./cgminer command. Then my newpacs were recognized and the miner is now running successfully
The other possibility to enable usb devices for standard users are the commands provided in the pinned installation guide at page 1. Unfortunately yesterday I believed that the standard "pi user" has those rights, which was a wrong assumption...
Anyway thanks @bmoscato and have a nice weekend

[klintay]

nice work, welcome to the mining club . Running on raspberry pi is the way

[harmonicdrive]

I just bought my 3rd 606 .... CANT WAIT!

I have mine running at 825MHz ... they are so fking good

https://imgur.com/a/QdHWnNy

[MoparMiningLLC]

nice I am hoping to add a 3rd soon. would do 4 but 2 slots currently used by r606's and the 3rd will be used by a goldshell miner sometime next week. if they had built in controllers, I would buy more of them - a lot less headaches than my larger asics.

[harmonicdrive]

no really, though ... I'm getting between 1.1 and 1.5 TH/s  ... once I can afford 10 I'm unplugging my S9

[MoparMiningLLC]

@harmonic I meant to ask, why does your computer run them separately? mine combines them in one window.