[SUPPORT THREAD] BFx2 Bitfury USB stick miner

[stex2009]

Example cgminer command line:

./cgminer -o stratum+tcp://<Pool URL> -u <Pool user> -p <Pool pass> --bxm-bits=XX

Where XX is in the range of 50-55. I recommend some experimentation to find the best setting for your particular miners.

So, higher this XX number, higher the hashrate? Do we do the pencil when we go higher than a specific number?
@54 I am getting avg of 4.28/stick.

[Zeta0S]

I made a video from the BitFuy hashing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stbhrGpfq1w 

[goodney]

Example cgminer command line:

./cgminer -o stratum+tcp://<Pool URL> -u <Pool user> -p <Pool pass> --bxm-bits=XX

Where XX is in the range of 50-55. I recommend some experimentation to find the best setting for your particular miners.

So, higher this XX number, higher the hashrate? Do we do the pencil when we go higher than a specific number?
@54 I am getting avg of 4.28/stick.

Regardless of the pencil mod, the optimal bits setting is going to be between 53-55 (maybe 56). The way the BitFury works is that the speed is a combination of bits and core voltage. The pencil mod will raise the core voltage and thus increase the hashing speed.

Also, if you increase the core voltage enough you might actually get better results with a lower bits value. The trade-offs will show up in the error rates.

If you do the pencil mod, please, please use a fan on the miners as the will *require* more cooling.

[kevinm]

Anyone interested in Bulk orders of these miners,
contact me,

dipo 5Volt 20Amp 19 Port USB hubs to clear also

cheers,
kev

[xingqiaoyin]

Goodney two of my miners
one has dead chip, hashing at half speed
the other one was working fine with bits 53, but now the chip slowly dies.
Bfgminer keeps throwing "x of x results were bad, reinitialising"
Is there anything I can do to get them working at full speed again ?

[goodney]

Goodney two of my miners
one has dead chip, hashing at half speed
the other one was working fine with bits 53, but now the chip slowly dies.
Bfgminer keeps throwing "x of x results were bad, reinitialising"
Is there anything I can do to get them working at full speed again ?

With BitFury chips there is a known percentage that are bad... who did you buy the miners from?

[klintay]

Goodney two of my miners
one has dead chip, hashing at half speed
the other one was working fine with bits 53, but now the chip slowly dies.
Bfgminer keeps throwing "x of x results were bad, reinitialising"
Is there anything I can do to get them working at full speed again ?

I find it helps if you provide some extra cooling via fans and that keeps them hashing at full speed.

[9feet]

Hi, need help

I'm trying to run 3 TwinFuries with 6 RedFuries with bfgminer 3.99.0 provided by luke-jr here.
I'm using Orico A3H10 USB hub, the remaining 1 slot I use a USB fan to cool the miners.

My problem is I can only get 3 TF and 5 RF working, one of them doesnt work.

I try running 3.10.0 bfgminer and I can get all 6 RFs working.

I try to run separate instances but if i use for example - d 0 , it only enables 1 chip and disables the rest of the miners.

Is there a command line I can use to make them all work ?
Thinking of running  two separate instances the 3.10.0 bfgminer for the RF and the 3.99.0 for the TF, please help ?

[goodney]

I'm trying to run 3 TwinFuries with 6 RedFuries with bfgminer 3.99.0 provided by luke-jr here.
I'm using Orico A3H10 USB hub, the remaining 1 slot I use a USB fan to cool the miners.

6 RedFuries ~ 15W
3 TwinFuries ~ 15W

Total is about 30W. The hub comes with a 48W supply. Throw in conversion efficiency and the power for the hub itself and you *could* be bumping up against the power limit of the hub.

So the simple test is to try with one RedFury and one TwinFury. If that works, then keep adding miners until it doesn't work.

For bfgminer I would go get the latest version and try the following:

bfgminer -o stratum+tcp://<POOL URL> -u <USERNAME> -p <PWD> -S bfx:all --set bfx:osc6_bits=54

This should enable all TwinFury miners and the RedFury's should just work too.

If you try separate bfgminer instances, then you should do:

-S bfx:all -S bpm:none for the TwinFury instance

and

-S bpm:all -S bfx:none for the RedFury instance.

[9feet]

Hi goodney thanks for reply
I tried your suggestions and  i can make two instances running tf and rf exclusively.

However i run the 6 rf first and then the 3 tf.
At first all rf runs fine after i run the tf
Bfgminer for rf immediately drops 1 of the miners in this case bpm 4.
And for bfgminer running 3 tf throws user privelege error
Help again please ?
https://i.imgur.com/r4llqg0.jpg

If i unplug one of the RF so running 5 Rf (12,5W) and 3 Tf (15W) then bfgminer also like when running 6 rf drops the speed of 1 of the miner.
 https://i.imgur.com/2GA30yO.jpg

Thanks before

[goodney]

Hi goodney thanks for reply
I tried your suggestions and  i can make two instances running tf and rf exclusively.

However i run the 6 rf first and then the 3 tf.
At first all rf runs fine after i run the tf
Bfgminer for rf immediately drops 1 of the miners in this case bpm 4.
And for bfgminer running 3 tf throws user privelege error
Help again please ?

If i unplug one of the RF so running 5 Rf (12,5W) and 3 Tf (15W) then bfgminer also like when running 6 rf drops the speed of 1 of the miner.

Thanks before

We need to determine if it is a Windows, hub or software issue. It seems like either Windows or the hub, and adding the 9th device is the problem.

Do you have another hub, or other USB ports on your computer? Since the RedFury miners are USB 2 power compatible, I suggest plugging the RedFury's into another hub or into ports directly on your computer. If this works, then it is a hub issue.

If it still doesn't work, then it is likely a Windows issue. Can you confirm that the two combination of 8 miners works (6 RF, 2 TF; 5 RF, 3 TF), but adding the 9th miner causes problems?

[Phosphorous]

Will I be able to use the BFx2 and an Antminer U2 on the same machine using CGMiner?

The reason why I ask is that my CGMiner options are device specific:  --icarus-timing=short --anu-freq=300

So I don't see how I can control a BFx2 at the same time. Or can I run multiple instances of CGMiner?

[goodney]

Will I be able to use the BFx2 and an Antminer U2 on the same machine using CGMiner?

The reason why I ask is that my CGMiner options are device specific:  --icarus-timing=short --anu-freq=300

So I don't see how I can control a BFx2 at the same time. Or can I run multiple instances of CGMiner?

You can run more than one type of ASIC device on one CGMiner instance. The options are ASIC specific and only affect that type of ASIC. So just add --bxm-bits=XX (where XX is 52, 53 or 54) to your command line and you're good to go.

[Buchi-88]

There has been a request to discuss over clocking these boards. I'm the designer of the board, and these are my thoughts on over clocking, but of course your results will vary and you could end up destroying your boards! I don't recommend doing any over clocking, but since Bitcoin is about experimentation, here goes nothing!

These boards were designed to run at 4GH/s with ambient cooling on the heat sink. This allows them to run at <500mA and thus be USB2 compatible. When over clocking a Bitfury based design, heat is your enemy, you will need active cooling from a fan if you over clock these boards.

With the way Bitfury chips are designed, heat really is the enemy. As the chips heat up, they slow down and also start producing hardware errors. Software over clocking will increase the heat dissipated by the chip and thus can actually produce worse results. Same with increasing the core voltage.

Software over clocking:
The current cgminer release supports software over clocking with the --bxm-bits=XX command line parameter. Non-over clocked optimal is 53 or 54. However, you can go to 55 or 56 if you introduce active cooling.

Increasing the core voltage:
In order to get the Bitfury chips to run stably at higher clock values increasing the core voltage is necessary. Again, the boards were designed to get to 4GH/s so the core voltage was chosen accordingly. Increasing the core voltage will really increase the heat output. Cooling the boards with a fan is absolutely necessary.

The core voltage is set by three resistors, but the only one you want to change is R6. It is right in the middle of this picture:


As built R6 = 499 ohm, to increase the core voltage use a larger value, but don't go above about 1.5k. You'll need a 0805 surface mount resistor. To measure the core voltage the chips are seeing, measure across the decoupling capacitors that surround the Bitfury chips. Explaining how to desolder/solder a resistor is way beyond the scope of the forum ;-)

Active cooling
I thought it might be fun to add a 40mm fan to the heatsink:



To do so, find a 40mm fan and screw it to the heat sink. Then solder the wires to the USB connector as indicated above.

Anyways, have fun hacking up my creation!

Hello,

Miner runs really well without the "bxm bits = XX" entry? If so, how fast, or the entry is absolutely necessary?

regards

[klintay]

Hello,

Miner runs really well without the "bxm bits = XX" entry? If so, how fast, or the entry is absolutely necessary?

regards

When i took it away then ran a lot slower, like only 3 gh/s

[klintay]

Hello,

Miner runs really well without the "bxm bits = XX" entry? If so, how fast, or the entry is absolutely necessary?

regards

When i took it away then ran a lot slower, like only 3 gh/s, so would suggest keeping it in. "bxm bits=54"  worked best for me too.

[Phosphorous]

I don't think I'm seeing the performance from my 3 Twin Bitfuries that I'm supposed to be getting. I'm running with 2 Antminer U2's as well. The Antminers are overclocked. The BXMs are unmodified, I'm running the BXMs with (cgminer) --bxm-bits=52.

I'm also getting a lot of work restarts and stale shares that I never got before with just the 2 U2's. The problems get worse if I run any higher, and seem to increase over time.

It this typical or is there something I should do differently?

This is my screen after about a minute:

cgminer version 4.3.0 - Started: [2014-05-11 18:39:09]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(5s):14.47G (1m):14.15G (5m):12.05G (15m):2.758G (avg):13.96Gh/s
A:582  R:20  HW:49  WU:175.6/m
Connected to stratum-lb-usa48.btcguild.com diff 4 with stratum as user
Block: 1df8b649...  Diff:8G  Started: [18:39:09]  Best share: 3.54K
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[USB management [P]ool management [Settings [D]isplay options [Q]uit
0: BXM 0       :                         | 3.291G / 2.976Gh/s WU:43.6/m
1: BXM 1       :                         | 3.106G / 2.820Gh/s WU:42.1/m
2: BXM 2       :                         | 3.879G / 3.979Gh/s WU:56.4/m
3: ANU 0       :                         | 2.377G / 2.239Gh/s WU:14.1/m
4: ANU 1       :                         | 2.125G / 2.159Gh/s WU:21.3/m
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[2014-05-11 18:44:51] Accepted 1a1c73e3 Diff 10/4 BXM 2
[2014-05-11 18:44:54] Accepted 28fefc30 Diff 6/4 BXM 0
[2014-05-11 18:44:54] Pool 0 difficulty changed to 8
[2014-05-11 18:44:54] Stratum from pool 0 requested work restart
[2014-05-11 18:44:54] Pool 0 stale share detected, submitting as user requested

[2014-05-11 18:44:54] Rejected 29acb369 Diff 6/4 BXM 1  (olddifficulty)
[2014-05-11 18:44:54] Pool 0 stale share detected, submitting as user requested

[2014-05-11 18:44:54] Rejected 230739c3 Diff 7/4 BXM 0  (olddifficulty)
[2014-05-11 18:44:55] Pool 0 stale share detected, submitting as user requested

[2014-05-11 18:44:55] Pool 0 stale share detected, submitting as user requested

[2014-05-11 18:44:55] Rejected 228c1ff5 Diff 7/4 BXM 1  (olddifficulty)
[2014-05-11 18:44:55] Rejected 0e4fe3e0 Diff 18/4 BXM 2  (olddifficulty)
[2014-05-11 18:44:55] Pool 0 stale share detected, submitting as user requested

[2014-05-11 18:44:55] Rejected 33b1f1bd Diff 5/4 BXM 2  (olddifficulty)
[2014-05-11 18:44:56] Pool 0 stale share detected, submitting as user requested

[2014-05-11 18:44:56] Rejected 13dee601 Diff 13/4 BXM 1  (olddifficulty)
[2014-05-11 18:44:56] Pool 0 stale share detected, submitting as user requested

[2014-05-11 18:44:57] Rejected 30ca6375 Diff 5/4 BXM 1  (olddifficulty)
[2014-05-11 18:44:57] Accepted 0c8236da Diff 20/8 BXM 0
[2014-05-11 18:44:58] Accepted 094ce5e4 Diff 28/8 BXM 2

[Phosphorous]

I performed the mods shown here... I added a fan and replaced R6 with a 1.2k resistor. I have 3 of them in a cheap powered USB hub. Here are my observations:

1. First of all, the fan makes a huge improvement in heat. Before it was not possible to really touch, now you can handle it easily. Of course they now physically take up 2 USB ports.
2. Running CGMiner, I played with the bits settings and bits=54 yielded the best result.
3. Running a single unit in the hub, I see a fairly solid 4.8-5Gh with spikes higher, but it degrades to 4-4.3 over time.
4. Running more units lowers the speeds into the 3-4.2's. I assume it's due to not enough power from the hub.

I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong, but I'm disappointed I don't see the solid 5G performance with these mods. Maybe I should do the pencil mod also?

[stex2009]

I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong, but I'm disappointed I don't see the solid 5G performance with these mods. Maybe I should do the pencil mod also?

not sure, but without proper power it may not be that useful ?

[9feet]

I think goodney designed it to reach 4 ghash, 5 is with pencil mod and you have to actively cool it.