Hmmm , seems like a dead thread....
...since the S5's came out.
I'll post how I got my S2 to rotate through the pools just in case someone else is also finding a creative way to power these S2's and have them remain profitable.
The standard residential electricity rate here is $0.13/kwh. To save money on electric, I'm using my electric Co's ~Time of Use~ plan. From 8am to 8pm, my electricity is $0.17/kwh - I don't mine then and really nothing is running in the house in the time period so it really does not matter. But, from 8pm to 8am, my electricity is a measily $0.05/kwh. Mining is profitable with that rate. The weekend is a little different - at 8pm Friday, the rate goes to $0.05 and stays there till 8am Monday. At $0.05/kwh and this BTC slump we endured, I was profitable all the way down with the exception to the very very bottom end of that exchange value slump where for a brief moment, I went RED.
My miners are set up on 240VAC, using Allen Bradley industrial controls, relays, contactors, terminal blocks etc, all that I found at auctions, flea markets and yard sales, the miners turn on automatically at 8PM and turn off at 8AM. All of this is in a NEMA enclosure and using current NEC code for the construction. (If the house burns down, they cannot point to my miner control panel because its built to 2014 NEC code ). I have a revision I need to install though. I'm finding that when the system turns on, the inrush of current must create a small brownout because occasionally one miner will not fully turn on and mine, it will just sit there, blank LCD and a red light till I unplug and re-plug. My revision is to add individual timers and relays for each miner. So, 8pm comes along, the scheduling timer energizes the mains contactor and one miner powers on, 2 seconds later the timer energizes a relay and another miner comes on, 2 seconds after that, another timer and relay etc etc. That will eliminate the inrush current brownout.
I guess I'm telling this because there is a slew of cheap azz equipment that could still be used for profit mining if your electric company has something similar to We Energies Time of Use rates.
So I have 12hrs of mining to play with and several different coins I'd like to mine. Having the S2 miners automatically rotate through the pools makes this somewhat complicated electricity/profitability situation into mostly unattended mining.
This is how I got my Antminer S2's to play nice with the ROTATE command in cgminer.
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~~~~~SSH into your S2, I use Putty, but that is my preference, use whatever you like....
user - root
password - admin
cd /config
vi cgminer.conf
~~~~~press the letter I to edit the text and use the arrows to move around
~~~~~add a COMMA at the end of the last command line like so:
"bitmain-voltage" : "0750",
~~~~~I have my S2's running at 200mhz, I found that increasing the voltage a little stabilizes the HW errors a bit.
~~~~~Now add the following line:
"rotate" : "xxx"
~~~~~ replace the xxx with how many minutes you want to mine on each pool
~~~~~press Esc
~~~~~press :
~~~~~enter the letters wq
~~~~~press the ENTER key
DONE! - well, almost.
You will notice that in the miners GUI - the Miner Configuration tab, everything went blank. That's ok.
!!! DO NOT HIT THE ~SAVE AND APPLY~ BUTTON !!!
You must do a SYSTEM RESET.... found in the SYSTEM tab.
Once your system resets, you will see that the Miner Configuration tab is back to having its data in the blocks.
If you want to see the ROTATE command working as a test, set the command as "rotate" : "5" then do the Esc : wq followed by the system reset. Then watch the Miner Status tab, the mining will switch pools every 5 minutes, you'll see the information changing on the different pools.
Don't forget to go back into cgminer.conf and edit the rotate command to the operational time you want.
Just for info, I have 3 pools entered, I have rotate set for 240 minutes.... every 240 minutes, the system switches pools, and by the time 8am rolls along, I have cycled through all 3 of the pools.
:-)
