GekkoScience has a new pod miner, just in time for Christmas

[sidehack]

Introducing the newest quiet consumer miner from GekkoScience, the newest addition to the Terminus pod-miner line, the R909.

It may not look like much right away, but it's a significant improvement over the R606 in almost every way.

This miner is built with the same physical dimensions as the R606 so anything built around them would still fit this unit. Airflow ducting is the same, same 80mm fan. However, you'll notice ports and jacks are located at the exhaust end instead of accessible from the side.

This makes the unit more readily stackable, as you no longer have to keep three sides clear - two for airflow and one for cabling.

It also allowed us to expand the circuit board by 15%, making room for a better main regulator and improved thermal management. Heatsink area over the chips is increased by 40% over the R606, and we've added more board mounting legs for improved stability especially during shipping.

The miner runs on the S17's BM1397 ASIC, as used in our Compac-F USB stick miner. Kano has been hard at work improving the driver, and has added several features that will be very attractive to tuning enthusiasts, though the stock settings will already be fairly excellent.

The miner is guaranteed to run at 1.5TH from under 100 DC watts at stock voltage and do it nearly silently. Better performance isn't guaranteed, but is probably attainable. Take for example the test unit I had running 1.8TH at 70 watts, or the above-photographed machine which pulled down almost 2.1TH from 88 watts (on stock voltage, no voltage tuning) for over a week:

The Terminus R909 needs an external controller running cgminer, with USB connection to the miner (a 6-foot USB cable will be included with purchase). The driver has been tested extensively on linux PC and Raspberry Pi. Like previous Terminus models, the miner runs on 12V power from either a standard 2.1/5.5mm barrel jack (rated for 8A) or a PCIe 6-pin jack.

The "stock" speed will be set to 400MHz, expected to see 1.6TH, but higher frequencies are possible. Kano will explain the details, but he's been working on adding tuning features which include setting individual chip frequencies. Core voltage is adjustable in the range of 1.4V-1.6V per chip, same as on the Compac F, and though the R606 had a fancy push-button interface, we've rolled back to a basic knob you turn with a screwdriver on this one. That may be improved on future versions but I won't make promises just in case.

This miner also features Blinky Lights, but they're not as intrusive as previous models of pod or stick. The rate of blinking is proportional to hashrate. The base light color is a delightful pink-magenta.

The BM1397 chips have a significant temperature coefficient, which means that they pull noticeably more power as they get warmer. Nobody at GekkoScience will be offended if a tuner or enthusiast upgrades the fan, as more airflow could mean reducing power consumption by 5-10% just from maintaining lower temperatures. These units take a standard 80mmx25mm 3/4-wire 12V case fan.

And like all GekkoScience products, the Terminus R909 is Made In The USA.

Approximate dimensions: 3.5 x 4.2 x 6 inches.

SALES

So far, two resellers have confirmed to stock this machine, and should have stock in time to start delivering orders by Christmas. Production is already well underway on the first batch. This post will be updated as more sellers are added.

bitcoinmerch.com shipping from California
419mining.com shipping from Ohio
bitshopper.de in Europe/Germany (forum user MacEntyre)

The Terminus R909 will include a 6ft USB cable. It'll be up to resellers to provide any extras, power supplies or anything.

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[kano]

BETA release of cgminer for the new R909

The 'beta' comment is that there's quite a few changes, so we'll see how it goes,

I've moved this, since it allows me to edit it more easily, and also gives me full HTML markup to make it easier to read.
Here: https://kano.is/gekko.php

I'll comment here when there are any major updates.

2022-12-11 R606 performance issues have been resolved.
2022-12-13 Windows binary for v4.12.1 is available now at https://kano.is/cgminer.php
2022-12-17 Git updated to add per chip tuning information. Windows binary updated. https://kano.is/gekko.php updated.
2022-12-21 Update to improve performance and tuning. Windows binary updated. https://kano.is/gekko.php updated.
2023-01-14 Update only necessary for the old R808 miner.

[pkspks]

Hoping for a reseller in APAC. International shipping cost to Australia is always a killer.

[cygan]

a very good news to finally present the r606 successor. i had been waiting for this release for a long time and will definitely order at least 1 exemplar.
@sidehack can you perhaps tell us the range in which the new r909 will be priced?

[kano]

The resellers decide their pricing.

[Powell]

Looks like I am going to have to grab a few!  Good work Sidehack and crew!

[willi9974]

Thanks for the new device, looks nice and will also Order one

[n0nce]

BM1397-based pod miner, amazing! The efficiency of these chips is so much better than what's in Futurebit's Apollo; depending on pricing, I can see the R909 making the Apollo 'Standard Unit' obsolete.
I'm definitely going to pick one up. (for mining and tinkering.. )

[Sledge0001]

Love home mining gear like this.
Well done!

Now just need Santa to deliver!

[Skot]

Looks amazing, nice work! Is this based on six BM1397 chips?

[cygan]

BM1397-based pod miner, amazing! The efficiency of these chips is so much better than what's in Futurebit's Apollo; depending on pricing, I can see the R909 making the Apollo 'Standard Unit' obsolete.
I'm definitely going to pick one up. (for mining and tinkering.. )

i see exactly the same as you
and the power consumption of the new r909 is in my opinion unbeatable at this performance then

[o_solo_miner]

BM1397-based pod miner, amazing! The efficiency of these chips is so much better than what's in Futurebit's Apollo; depending on pricing, I can see the R909 making the Apollo 'Standard Unit' obsolete.
I'm definitely going to pick one up. (for mining and tinkering.. )

That depends on what you are planning to do, mining on your own bitcoind or not.
IF this CGMiner version is not reduced in its original function, it will be a good replacement, if not, not worth to buy.

[kano]

BM1397-based pod miner, amazing! The efficiency of these chips is so much better than what's in Futurebit's Apollo; depending on pricing, I can see the R909 making the Apollo 'Standard Unit' obsolete.
I'm definitely going to pick one up. (for mining and tinkering.. )

That depends on what you are planning to do, mining on your own bitcoind or not.
IF this CGMiner version is not reduced in its original function, it will be a good replacement, if not, not worth to buy.

Please avoid spreading FUD for your own personal agenda, and at least word it truthfully.

To correct his FUD, what o_solo_miner is saying is that if I don't fix the bug in ck's code, that o_solo_miner insists I must fix for him, where it wont currently solo mine directly to a local bitcoind, then for some reason that is somehow relevant.
Sounds like a lousy attempt at coercion to me.

I do know how to fix it since I've already done it myself to ckpool ... but fixing it in cgminer hasn't been a priority since I'm also unsure about suggesting people do something that could easily lead to losing a block and then having them blame me for it.
While this may or may not seem likely to some, even o_solo_miner's attempt at coercion above makes me wary of such things.

I will also point out that someone put up a pull request to my git to fix this but that pull request can generate work that the miner will never get the reward if they find a block, in certain circumstances.

As I have made clear many times, I don't trust people's code that isn't tested properly.
Especially when it's involved with bitcoin blocks.

--

Edit: I will also point out that I have attempted to get core to simplify block testing for developers.
I've raised an issue quite a while ago and discussed it as can be seen:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/22119
I also explain there how I do full block testing at lower difficulty and the non-testing related issues with doing that.

[heslo]

This looks really nice! Might have to pick one up if there's a reseller for my region. As always, love your work sidehack!

[o_solo_miner]

BM1397-based pod miner, amazing! The efficiency of these chips is so much better than what's in Futurebit's Apollo; depending on pricing, I can see the R909 making the Apollo 'Standard Unit' obsolete.
I'm definitely going to pick one up. (for mining and tinkering.. )

That depends on what you are planning to do, mining on your own bitcoind or not.
IF this CGMiner version is not reduced in its original function, it will be a good replacement, if not, not worth to buy.

Please avoid spreading FUD for your own personal agenda, and at least word it truthfully.

First, there is no FUD, and there is no personal agenda.

To correct his FUD, what o_solo_miner is saying is that if I don't fix the bug in ck's code, that o_solo_miner insists I must fix for him, where it wont currently solo mine directly to a local bitcoind, then for some reason that is somehow relevant.
Sounds like a lousy attempt at coercion to me.

You better word it truthfully:
There is no bug in ck's code, there was a change from core after ck stop the support of cgminer and that stoped cgminers ability to mine
on the bitcoind.

I pointed that out here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5253096.msg54839526#msg54839526

While this may or may not seem likely to some, even o_solo_miner's attempt at coercion above makes me wary of such things.

There is no coercion by me!
You pointed it out the last time, and I get it, you won't do it, for obvious reason.

For me (and not only for me) it is a vital point of having the freedom of choice to solo mine on a bitcoind or a pool.
If all trustfull pools/solopools went away, I still got the opertunity to solo mine directly to core.

End of story

[sidehack]

Sounds like a Core problem. Also sounds like a problem that's already been discussed elsewhere and doesn't really need to be here too.

[o_solo_miner]

Sounds like a Core problem. Also sounds like a problem that's already been discussed elsewhere and doesn't really need to be here too.

Unfortunaly not, it is a cgminer problem, and because there is no alternative to it for running this miner it belongs here.
Sorry, you did a great job on developing this miner and I am sure it will sell like "hot cakes" even without real solo mining.

[Skot]

Sounds like a Core problem. Also sounds like a problem that's already been discussed elsewhere and doesn't really need to be here too.

Unfortunaly not, it is a cgminer problem, and because there is no alternative to it for running this miner it belongs here.
Sorry, you did a great job on developing this miner and I am sure it will sell like "hot cakes" even without real solo mining.

What about just running a stratum proxy along with bitcoin core and connecting to that with cgminer and your sweet new R909?

[kano]

Sounds like a Core problem. Also sounds like a problem that's already been discussed elsewhere and doesn't really need to be here too.

Unfortunaly not, it is a cgminer problem, and because there is no alternative to it for running this miner it belongs here.
Sorry, you did a great job on developing this miner and I am sure it will sell like "hot cakes" even without real solo mining.

What about just running a stratum proxy along with bitcoin core and connecting to that with cgminer and your sweet new R909?

Yes there are various ways to do it, just a certain person wants to make a deal out of me not directly fixing the problem that's in cgminer

The flags were deprecated in bitcoin core 0.12 in 2015 (it's now empty)
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/d449772cf69c01932fc5d72c46054815d6300b3c
And remove during 0.19 in 2019 (since it is empty)
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/e9a27cf338dc618b8ecab8984abc54d588de8a05

He seems to want to make it an issue for sidehack for some reason - no idea why.

Again, as before, I'm doing a driver that's opensource and free for everyone to use - with a couple of miners sent to me so I can write it.

Yes as I also stated clearly, cgminer still cannot mine directly to bitcoind, it fails to work, which is called a bug.
(since those changes above in core)

[n0nce]

What about just running a stratum proxy along with bitcoin core and connecting to that with cgminer and your sweet new R909?

Yes there are various ways to do it, just a certain person wants to make a deal out of me not directly fixing the problem that's in cgminer

Wouldn't even call it a problem (even though it can classify as a bug); separation of concerns is actually usually a pretty good idea.
Have one process for Bitcoin Core: bitcoind
One process for running the miner: cgminer
One process for connecting the two: Local Stratum server