After being in beta for several months, we feel we're ready to officially introduce CGRemote to the Bitcoin community. We remain in beta while we continue improving the software and adding features, but we are really happy with the current version and are confident users will feel the same. We've also seen CGRemote-related comments appearing in the CGWatcher thread, so felt it was the right time to post here. While we will monitor this thread, we've setup a support forum at http://www.coinmyne.com/support to make getting help and giving feedback quick and easy... no digging through dozens of pages of a single thread.CGRemote is a desktop application allowing you to monitor and control all of your mining rigs from one place. It works with any miner running CGMiner, BFGMiner, SGMiner, VertMiner, or any other CGMiner fork, and does
not require CGWatcher to be running on the miner. For miners that are running CGWatcher, there are several additional features available to those miners in CGRemote, but we are working on a solution to provide similar functionality to all miners - regardless of operating system.
CGRemote is not a simple monitoring application. It eliminates the need to remote into individual miners and aims to provide all of the functionality you would have if you were sitting at the miner itself. It will ultimately have all of the features found in
CGWatcher, our popular miner GUI and monitoring software. This means you'll be able to set monitoring options like restarting the miner when a problem occurs, as well as having advanced scheduling capabilities to dictate what each miner should do and when it should do it. The profitability mining feature in CGWatcher will also be brought over to CGRemote. Combine this with the features it already has, and CGRemote is the most complete remote miner management software available.
CGRemote is still in beta, meaning it is not yet finished. The beta has grown to thousands of users and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. We've grown an awesome community of users and are working on things that will be coming in the next few months that we feel our users will absolutely love.
Windows only?CGRemote is currently a Windows desktop application, but we are already working on the development of a web platform that will serve as the backbone to the CGRemote web and mobile apps we're working on. We're using the feedback from our beta users to create the perfect desktop application, then porting it to web and mobile apps. We're also working on software that will extend the miner's API - similar to what CGWatcher does - but with a smaller footprint and cross-platform support. So for any feature listed below exclusive to CGWatcher, these features will be available for all miners in the near future.
Current Features - here is what you can already do with CGRemote:- Detailed Information - almost every piece of data reported by your miner is displayed somewhere in the interface, while remaining clean and organized enough for you to find it.
- Remote Control - restart and stop your miners remotely. For CGWatcher miners, start and switch profiles remotely.
- Device View - see every device on every miner in one place, with more detailed stats than any other monitor. Clicking a device opens the device detail window, showing even more information.
- Pool View - view all pools on all miners, as well as how much hashrate and hashrate percentage each one currently has. Easily see where your hashrate is being directed, and change it in a few clicks.
- Profile View - view all profiles on all miners, as well as which miners they're on, which miners are currently using them, and their total hashrate and hashrate percentage.
- Device Detail Window - view an individual device's details, and control the device using the control panel - change intensity, clock speeds, voltage, and enable/disable and restart devices.
- Pool Management - add pools to all or selected miners while assigning them each individual workers in just a few clicks using the Pool Setup Wizard. Switching all or selected miners to a pool is just as easy. The Pool Setup Wizard works for miners with and without CGWatcher, and gives you an option to save the pool changes to the config settings once their complete.
- Profile Management - edit CGWatcher profiles remotely, just as if you were sitting at your miner. Coming soon: profiles for miners not using CGWatcher.
- Remote File Explorer - navigate the file systems of your miners remotely, including support to cut, copy, and paste files, drag-and-drop support, create new files, delete files, view file properties, run remote programs, and remote Open/Save dialogs when editing files.*
- Remote Text Editor - edit config and other text files on your miners using CGRemote's built-in text editor. Similar to Notepad, the Remote Text Editor has one significant extra feature - you can open and save files on any of your miners.*
- Remote Task Manager - view a miner's running processes and their details, similar to Task Manager. Kill processes or launch new ones.*
- Restart Remote Computer - restart the computer remotely, with CGWatcher automatically making sure it is launched at startup to ensure you don't lose remote access after the restart.*
- Remote Screen Capture - at any time you can capture and view a screenshot of your miner to see what it's up to.*
- Config File Editor - with all of the new miners, forks, and versions, it's difficult to remember all of the possible config settings. With Config File Editor, you don't have to!
- Direct API Access - for more advanced users, you can send API commands directly to a single miner, or selected miners all at once... providing complete control over miners even for commands that haven't been built into CGRemote's interface yet.
- Coin Profitability Data - see which coins are most profitable using data from CoinChoose or CoinWarz. For miners running CGWatcher, you can also push coin profitability data to them automatically, reducing the need for each miner to use an API call. Your entire mining farm can be updated from one API call.
- Hostname Support - CGRemote supports hostnames as well as IP addresses, allowing for dynamic DNS services to be used for those with dynamic IP addresses.
- Security - when connecting to miners with CGWatcher, access is password-protected and data is encrypted and compressed. For connecting to miners directly, the existing IP address whitelist authentication ("api-allow" setting) is used.
- Speed and Reliability - CGRemote is much quicker and more responsive than a web application. With direct connections to your miners, there is no central point of failure. The beta does require it be able to connect to the Internet at startup, but this is related to it being in beta and CGRemote will work without depending on any website once it is released.
- Support - Our goal is to have the best software and the best support. We've setup a dedicated support forum where we provide help for our users, our users can help other users, and we receive feedback on how to improve our software. We will be growing our support staff in the coming months to ensure our support gets even better.
- Scalability - CGRemote uses multi-threading so each miner can do what it needs to without affecting, depending on, or waiting on other miners. CGRemote has been thoroughly tested with over 100 mining rigs and many users in the beta are using CGRemote on 100+ rig farms.
* Feature is currently only available for miners running CGWatcher, but we're working on providing this feature for all miners.
What We're Working On...- Providing all features available for CGWatcher miners to all miners, regardless of operating system.
- Web and mobile applications, allowing you all of the functionality in CGRemote wherever you go. Not just a list of your mining rigs... complete control over your entire farm.
- Monitoring and scheduling options, including profitability mining.
- Built-in SSH support!
- Historical data capture and reporting, charts, etc.
- Translations - Chinese and Russian translations planned, others to follow.
- Comprehensive documentation.
- Whatever our users ask us to... we want to create the best miner management tools and encourage our users to tell us which features will help them most.
- Secret features... we're not even telling anyone the coolest stuff yet!
Frequently Asked Questions:Q:
Do I need to be using CGWatcher on my miners in order to use CGRemote?A: No! CGRemote works with any CGMiner-based miner (BFGMiner, SGMiner, VertMiner, etc.) on any operating system, including self-contained mining devices. For miners that
are running CGWatcher, there are some additional features available... but we're working on bringing those features to all miners.
Q:
Can I connect to miners no matter where in the world they are located?A: Yes, with CGRemote you can manage miners on your local network or anywhere in the world over the Internet.
Q:
Is CGRemote free?A: No, it costs $25 USD to join the beta, which gets you an immediate download, free updates, and the finished product when it is released for up to 5 miners.
Q:
Why is CGRemote not free?A: To create the best software possible, you need to have the resources to support full-time development and purchase devices to ensure the software supports them. We learned with CGWatcher that counting on donations alone would not get us to our goal.
Q:
Is there any limit to the number of miners I can add while in beta?A: No, you can add as many miners as you need to to ensure CGRemote works with all of them correctly.
Q:
How much will additional miners (over 5) cost when CGRemote is released?A: We're still working out the details of a pricing structure that is fair to everyone. We feel miners with five rigs shouldn't have to pay the same as someone with 100 rigs, so are tentatively basing it on number of miners. In this context, miners are miner instances... so when running two instances of CGMiner on the same computer, each instance is considered a miner by CGRemote.
Q:
If I buy CGRemote, do I get free updates?A: Yes. You also get CGRemote free when it is released for up to 5 miners.
Q:
Will CGWatcher remain free?A: Yes, CGWatcher will continue to be free and will continue to be actively developed.
Q:
Is CGRemote open-sourced?A: No, there are currently no plans to open-source CGRemote. All options were considered with CGRemote - including FOSS - and based on research and our experience with CGWatcher we felt that this model would give us the best chance to meet our goals with CGRemote. The beta is already doing better than we anticipated surpassing 10,000 users in the first 6 months, so we have big plans.
Q:
Why should I trust CGRemote since I cannot see its source code?A: We realize that this community is often a target for malicious programs and websites, and that all software creators should be considered guilty until proven innocent when it comes to applications involved with cryptocurrency. Our software has been around over a year now and has been running on over 100,000 mining computers, and we feel we've proven ourselves to be honest and trustworthy. Most developers familiar with .NET applications will be able to decompile CGRemote enough to see what it is doing. We're also a U.S. company with a real address and use our real names. We understand some people will never trust software they cannot compile themselves, and realize that unfortunately CGRemote may not be the right monitoring application for those people. There are far more honest software developers than dishonest ones, but the money involved here undoubtedly attracts those with bad intentions. That said, this community still has a large amount of honest developers working on legitimate projects.
Q:
My antivirus software flags CGRemote as MSIL.Confuser.B (or similar). What does this mean?A: CGRemote's code is mildly obfuscated to make it more difficult to copy. By nature, .NET applications are very easy to reverse engineer... in fact there are tools available that will turn a .NET application like CGRemote back into a Visual Studio project, allowing anyone to copy the code as their own. This would also make it much easier for someone to create a copy of CGRemote with malicious code inserted in it and attempt to distribute it over the Internet. The software we use to help protect our code is called Confuser, which is why antivirus software will flag it as MSIL.Confuser.B (MSIL stands for Microsoft Intermediate Language, which is an easily-reversible code CGRemote is compiled into). We take a very conservative approach to obfuscation, so we don't scramble things too much that someone is not able to see what CGRemote actually does in code. Obfuscated code does not mean ths software is malicious, but most malware does obfuscate its code... though for a different reason - to try to avoid detection. There are many safe, legitimate products and companies that use obfuscation to make it at least a little more difficult to steal their code.
Q:
Is CoinMyne hiring?A: Yes! We're currently looking for additional software and web developers to help us reach our goals sooner. We'll be posting what we're looking for on our website shortly.
Q:
How soon until the web application?A: We are hoping to have the web application completed in May.
Q:
How soon until the mobile apps?A: We anticipate the mobile apps to be released shortly after the web application.
Q:
Which mobile platforms will CGRemote be available for?A: We are working on the Android app, and will immediately follow with iOS and Windows Phone apps.
Q:
What can I do to access my miners from anywhere while the mobile apps are being developed?A: A temporary solution is to use remote desktop software like TeamViewer in combination with CGRemote. With CGRemote and TeamViewer on the same computer, you can use TeamViewer's web or mobile apps to remote into CGRemote instead of having to remote into each individual miner.
Q:
Can I run CGRemote in a virtual machine/Wine/Parallels/etc?A: We do have users running CGRemote in a virtual machine, and have some reports of it working in Parallels with few issues. We're not sure about Wine support but will be testing this soon, along with Parallels, to see if we can make any changes to improve support with them.
Q:
What is port-forwarding and will I need to do it?A: Despite how scary some people make it out to be, port-forwarding is very simply telling your router to allow connections coming in on a specific port, and which computer on the local network to pass those connections to. Your router typically blocks most connections coming in to protect you against attacks and malware. Port-forwarding is telling it to allow connections on a specific port (e.g. 4028) and which computer to send those connections to (e.g. 192.168.1.10). If you're only connecting to miners on the same local network as CGRemote, you don't need to worry about port-forwarding at all. And if your miners are running CGWatcher, you can use the "Map Port (UPnP)" button in the Remote tab to have CGWatcher take care of forwarding its port automatically! A great resource for learning more about port-forwarding is
http://www.portforward.com, where you can find guides for specific router models. On a related note, our web and mobile applications will have an option where port-forwarding is not necessary even when connecting to miners over the Internet.
Q:
Why still call it CGRemote when it works with so many other miners?A: We may be changing CGRemote's name to MinerRemote in the future, but whatever we decide we'll give plenty of notice to avoid any confusion.
Q:
Where can I get CGRemote?A: You can buy and immediately download CGRemote on our website at
http://www.coinmyne.com/cgremoteQ:
What types of payments do you accept?A: We currently accept Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, and PayPal payments.
Q:
I purchased CGRemote, but I cannot download because my order still says pending or on-hold?A: If you aren't able to download CGRemote within an hour of your purchase, please contact us at sales -at- coinmyne.com from the email you used during checkout. You can also try to reach us using the live chat feature on our website. We'll make sure you get the software as quickly as possible.
Q:
I am in the beta and CGRemote is saying I need to upgrade to a newer version, but I have not received the new update via email. How can I download the new version?A: We've temporarily disabled the auto-update feature inside of CGRemote and are sending updates out via email. If you didn't receive the latest update, first check your spam folder as this is often the culprit. If you still don't see it, contact us at sales-at-coinmyne.com from the email address you used when you joined the beta. We're also working on a way for you to download the latest version automatically by providing only the email address you used when you joined the beta, and this will be available very soon.
Real Feedback from Real CGRemote Users...- "My hash rate went up 5% because I stopped using VNC and switched to CGRemote. Thank you!" - Mitchell
- "I've been using your software for about an hour, and WOW! Amazing work!" - Ryan
- "This is the kick-assiest app I have seen in a long time!... this has been a Godsend. Brilliant!" - Russell
- "Dude, this is... awesome and easy!!! I kinda ran my own thing for remote monitoring but it is so irrelevant compared to this." - Vlad
- "It... is... awesome. I must say, it is wonderful... 10/10 application." - David
- "You made mining much easier
" - Alexander - "It works like a charm... I couldn't be happier with my purchase." - Todd
- "Excellent application. It replaced a few programs I was using." - Kyle
- "I love how easy it is... it has made my life easier and I highly recommend it." - Colin
- "Legend. Works a treat." - Adam
- "I got it all setup and running smooth! Awesome work! Now I can void going to my miners to switch pools and change settings!" - Dale
- "I've installed the software and it works beautifully. Great work!" - Omar
- "It's really tempting me to go ahead and operate a full-blown farm just to see all the cool data and dink around.
Thanks a lot!" - Ben - "Wow, such brilliant software!... I can't believe I didn't find it any sooner!" - Nathan
- "You made an incredible piece of software... grateful for access!" - John
- "Wanted to say that it's possibly the most excited I've been about a software package in years!" - David
Looking for a free, Windows-based operating system for your miners in order to use CGWatcher and CGRemote? Check out
CoinHub, a WinPE operating system built on Windows 8.1 with CGWatcher, drivers, miners, and more already loaded! This is not a CoinMyne project, but we like the direction this project is taking and will be following it closely.
