Running an FPGA on Raspberry Pi, possible?

[BitMinerN8]

Going to try and set this up with 10 BFL singles tonight or tomorrow.  I'll post back with results.

Well, let me know if it works for you. For me two work great, three feels like a spinning top, seems to get unresponsive after a while. When I start cgminer it sometimes hangs when starting. I am able to CTRL-C and it will quit. Restarting it and it's good for a while. It's seems that if it's over an hour or two any changes will make it "hang", like enable/disable a pool. I had three running over 48 hours, but as soon as I did something to it, bam... down like a domino. So since I had more Pi's I just put two on each. Also, the 10 port USB hub that worked great on the PC was not happy at all on the Pi. Strange... still tinkering with it though.

It's still awesome to see three little black boxes (2 BFL, 1 Pi) generating ~1.6GHash with such little power and heat. I hope it will run a Jalapeño or an SC Single. 

Also, if you are looking for a great case for the Pi this one is very nice: (Have 4, work great, quality)
http://builttospecstore.storenvy.com/products/404262-raspberry-pi-enclosure-kit

[Jezzz]

Result:  L33T!

The pi hammers out 10 BFLs like a champ.  No issues whatsoever.  I'll keep monitoring it tonight and tomorrow, but so far it's a glowing success.

[wogaut]

Going to try and set this up with 10 BFL singles tonight or tomorrow.  I'll post back with results.

Well, let me know if it works for you. For me two work great, three feels like a spinning top, seems to get unresponsive after a while. When I start cgminer it sometimes hangs when starting. I am able to CTRL-C and it will quit. Restarting it and it's good for a while. It's seems that if it's over an hour or two any changes will make it "hang", like enable/disable a pool. I had three running over 48 hours, but as soon as I did something to it, bam... down like a domino. So since I had more Pi's I just put two on each. Also, the 10 port USB hub that worked great on the PC was not happy at all on the Pi. Strange... still tinkering with it though.

It's still awesome to see three little black boxes (2 BFL, 1 Pi) generating ~1.6GHash with such little power and heat. I hope it will run a Jalapeño or an SC Single. 

Also, if you are looking for a great case for the Pi this one is very nice: (Have 4, work great, quality)
http://builttospecstore.storenvy.com/products/404262-raspberry-pi-enclosure-kit

I prefer either that case:
https://www.modmypi.com/shop/raspberry-pi-cases/raspberry-pi-case-white
or that case (which I use):
http://www.shapeways.com/model/486999/

The Pi should be able to handle a large number of BFL Singles, if you use 'top' to look at CPU usage, there should be no more than a few percent usage for 1 or 2 Singles.

Some people have reported that certain USB hubs seem to give hardware issues.

One thing I noticed that pushes CPU load to 99% is trying to redirect stdio (e.g. using the '&' operator) to /dev/null on cgminer.

But the mere fact that you have several Singles mining should not be the issue.

@Jezzz: Thanks for the test results, that's great to hear!

[BitMinerN8]

Result:  L33T!

The pi hammers out 10 BFLs like a champ.  No issues whatsoever.  I'll keep monitoring it tonight and tomorrow, but so far it's a glowing success.

That's good to hear, my issues might be related to the USB hub then. If you don't mind sharing, what make/model are you using?

[Jezzz]

Result:  L33T!

The pi hammers out 10 BFLs like a champ.  No issues whatsoever.  I'll keep monitoring it tonight and tomorrow, but so far it's a glowing success.

That's good to hear, my issues might be related to the USB hub then. If you don't mind sharing, what make/model are you using?

This one:

http://www.amazon.com/Satechi-Power-Adapter-Control-Switches/dp/B0051PGX2I/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1345039001&sr=8-6&keywords=usb+hub

[BitMinerN8]

Result:  L33T!

The pi hammers out 10 BFLs like a champ.  No issues whatsoever.  I'll keep monitoring it tonight and tomorrow, but so far it's a glowing success.

That's good to hear, my issues might be related to the USB hub then. If you don't mind sharing, what make/model are you using?

This one:

http://www.amazon.com/Satechi-Power-Adapter-Control-Switches/dp/B0051PGX2I/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1345039001&sr=8-6&keywords=usb+hub

Ordered, thanks. 

[bitboyben]

Any information as to which ones to avoid?

[bitcoindaddy]

Any information as to which ones to avoid?

Here you go:

http://elinux.org/RPi_VerifiedPeripherals#Powered_USB_Hubs

[bitboyben]

You sir earned a cookie!

[Ginsley]

Hi,

i have no more clue - the biggest problem i think is, that i am not used to Linux^^
I used the instructions described here to install cgminer on my RPi with Wheezy.
So far it worked (besides smaller problems like "libusb is not installed" while running ./configure --enable-ztex -> libusb-dev was installed, but after installing libusb-1.0-0 this worked)

I havnt got any ttyUSB* in my /dev folder - so i followed the further modprobe instructions and got a ttyUSB0 in the folder.

Just thought i am lucky and can mine now - but cgminer just says "No devices detected"

Does anyone know this problem and can help me? It would be to nice if i could get my board running on the RPi.

I am using a RPi with 512MB ram, the newest Wheezy (from 28th octobre) and my ZTex 1.15x is noticed by dmesg.
I downloaded the version of cgminer linked in the post here (landed on cgminer-master branch).
I tried to install BFGMiner in hope this will work but i cant do ./autogen.sh cause it says it could not find git.

[bitcoindaddy]

You sir earned a cookie!

No problem, glad to help.

[bitcoindaddy]

Hi,

i have no more clue - the biggest problem i think is, that i am not used to Linux^^
I used the instructions described here to install cgminer on my RPi with Wheezy.
So far it worked (besides smaller problems like "libusb is not installed" while running ./configure --enable-ztex -> libusb-dev was installed, but after installing libusb-1.0-0 this worked)

I havnt got any ttyUSB* in my /dev folder - so i followed the further modprobe instructions and got a ttyUSB0 in the folder.

Just thought i am lucky and can mine now - but cgminer just says "No devices detected"

Does anyone know this problem and can help me? It would be to nice if i could get my board running on the RPi.

I am using a RPi with 512MB ram, the newest Wheezy (from 28th octobre) and my ZTex 1.15x is noticed by dmesg.
I downloaded the version of cgminer linked in the post here (landed on cgminer-master branch).
I tried to install BFGMiner in hope this will work but i cant do ./autogen.sh cause it says it could not find git.

Does dmesg tell you what device the ztex shows up as ?  because you can specify that device on the cgminer command line.  Make sure libusb-dev is installed for ztex auto detection as well as libudev-dev:

sudo apt-get install libusb-dev
sudo apt-get install libudev-dev

[Ginsley]

Hi,

dmesg | grep -i ztex gives the following output
[  867.285970] usb 1-1.3.3: Manufacturer: ZTEX

dmesg | grep -i vendor gives that output
[  949.549067] usb 1-1.3.4.4: New USB device found, idVendor=046a, idProduct=0023

After doing
sudo modprobe ftdi_sio vendor=0x221a product=0x0100
i get a ttyUSB0 in the /dev folder and i do
sudo chmod a+rw /dev/ttyUSB*

The packages libusb-dev and libudev-dev are installed as the newest version (apt-get says that).

So far it looks right and from the tutorials it should work. But cgminer just says
"All devices disabled, cannot mine!"

How do i specify the device on the commandline? Seems to be my last hope before trying it with Debian Squeeze

EDIT:
I just found out how to specify a device - it should be
cgminer -S /dev/ttyUSB0 or
cgminer --scan-serial /dev/ttyUSB0

But cgminer just says this is an unrecognized option :/ Can it be i have a wrong cgminer-version or something?
cgminer -V says its cgminer 2.9.1

[bitcoindaddy]

Hi,

dmesg | grep -i ztex gives the following output
[  867.285970] usb 1-1.3.3: Manufacturer: ZTEX

dmesg | grep -i vendor gives that output
[  949.549067] usb 1-1.3.4.4: New USB device found, idVendor=046a, idProduct=0023

After doing
sudo modprobe ftdi_sio vendor=0x221a product=0x0100
i get a ttyUSB0 in the /dev folder and i do
sudo chmod a+rw /dev/ttyUSB*

The packages libusb-dev and libudev-dev are installed as the newest version (apt-get says that).

So far it looks right and from the tutorials it should work. But cgminer just says
"All devices disabled, cannot mine!"

How do i specify the device on the commandline? Seems to be my last hope before trying it with Debian Squeeze

EDIT:
I just found out how to specify a device - it should be
cgminer -S /dev/ttyUSB0 or
cgminer --scan-serial /dev/ttyUSB0

But cgminer just says this is an unrecognized option :/ Can it be i have a wrong cgminer-version or something?
cgminer -V says its cgminer 2.9.1

Did you compile the code yourself or download a binary? Was is compiled with the option to recognize the ztex?

[beekeeper]

I had lot of issues with mine, the filesystem kept getting corrupted when I overloaded USB ports. After some investigation I found that USB hub design its crap, you need to bridge polyfuses and add a big, low ESR, electrolytic capacitor, in order to avoid power spikes caused by USB devices. Like this:

http://theiopage.blogspot.nl/

Also try to add a small ceramic cap (100nF) on SD card power supply pins.

[bitcoindaddy]

If I manage to get one of the ASIC devices sent to me, I'll probably run it on a PC for the first couple weeks - just to make sure I milk as much coin from it as possible. I don't have any history with the raspberry pi and won't trust it until I see it run for days at a time without problems.

[Ginsley]

Hi,

dmesg | grep -i ztex gives the following output
[  867.285970] usb 1-1.3.3: Manufacturer: ZTEX

dmesg | grep -i vendor gives that output
[  949.549067] usb 1-1.3.4.4: New USB device found, idVendor=046a, idProduct=0023

After doing
sudo modprobe ftdi_sio vendor=0x221a product=0x0100
i get a ttyUSB0 in the /dev folder and i do
sudo chmod a+rw /dev/ttyUSB*

The packages libusb-dev and libudev-dev are installed as the newest version (apt-get says that).

So far it looks right and from the tutorials it should work. But cgminer just says
"All devices disabled, cannot mine!"

How do i specify the device on the commandline? Seems to be my last hope before trying it with Debian Squeeze

EDIT:
I just found out how to specify a device - it should be
cgminer -S /dev/ttyUSB0 or
cgminer --scan-serial /dev/ttyUSB0

But cgminer just says this is an unrecognized option :/ Can it be i have a wrong cgminer-version or something?
cgminer -V says its cgminer 2.9.1

Did you compile the code yourself or download a binary? Was is compiled with the option to recognize the ztex?

I did it this way:

Code:

unzip cgminer-master
cd cgminer-master
aclocal
./autogen.sh
export LIBCURL_CFLAGS='-I/usr/include/curl'
export LIBCURL_LIBS='-L/usr/lib -lcurl'
./configure --enable-ztex
make
sudo make install

I followed the instructions from one of the posts in this thread. Its on page two - there is a link to cgminer too, i followed it and got the cgminer-master.zip. Just dont know, if its right or wrong.

[haarts]

I believe it is possible; I'm certainly going to try it. Currently I'm following this post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=121253.0
Be sure to add

Code:

deb http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports squeeze-backports main

to

Code:

/etc/apt/sources.list

[ChipGeek]

I also wrote a guide (with LOTS of help) for running cgminer on a R-Pi here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28402.msg1229746#msg1229746

[Ginsley]

Hi ChipGeek,

i followed your instructions - my ZTex isnt found again.
Even the option -S isnt recognized by cgminer

[2012-11-12 16:56:29] cgminer: -S: unrecognized option

This time i have taken the cgminer directly from git - as you mentioned in your instructions...