BFL "EasyMiner" Released. Reviews?

[BFL-Engineer]

[...]
Professional users may use their miner of their choice.
[...]

Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Not to claim I'm a professional user, but I'm a Linux only one. Any chance to also get the FW-upload command sequence documented?

Would be great not to have a spare Windows machine available just to update the Single's firmware. Or would that work from within a VM?

Firmware upload is a proprietary mechanism, which I'm afraid we cannot disclose. For your information,
it will work flawlessly through a VM. Minimum requirement is Windows XP SP2.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

[zefir]

Firmware upload is a proprietary mechanism, which I'm afraid we cannot disclose. For your information,
it will work flawlessly through a VM. Minimum requirement is Windows XP SP2.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

It is your choice. 

It does not take long to write a COM proxy to debug/dump what you send/receive to/from a COM port. 

^this exactly.

Unless an encrypted protocol us used to upload the FW, I don't see that the command sequence can be kept secret for ... a week max.

But having it doable from a VM lowers my personal incentive to spend time on reverse engineering that - going to upload FW maybe twice a year does not pay of investing too much time.

[Unacceptable]

Any way to allow us to mine where we want,pools other than Eclipse??

Did BFL answer this or am I just blind?

We must say that the Easyminer was designed to target novice and new users. Professional
users may use their miner of their choice. This is our first release and in the future, other
pools will be added to Easyminer.

Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Thank you BFL Engineer!!

I've been using GUIminer since I started mining in june & I like the dropdown list to pick the pool I want & put my email & password info in & go mining ,something as easy as that would be very welcomed

Having to setup config files & the like is time consuming & if your like me,software slow,kinda confusing

Keep it simple,please

[jothan]

Running EasyMiner in VirtualBox, I get a scary looking "The application failed to initialize properly" pop-up box.

Anyone else have this problem ?

Running diagnostics would be great right now as one of my units is DOA and I don't have any physical windows machine physically close.

[jothan]

Firmware upload is a proprietary mechanism, which I'm afraid we cannot disclose. For your information,
it will work flawlessly through a VM. Minimum requirement is Windows XP SP2.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

It is your choice. 

It does not take long to write a COM proxy to debug/dump what you send/receive to/from a COM port. 

^this exactly.

Unless an encrypted protocol us used to upload the FW, I don't see that the command sequence can be kept secret for ... a week max.

But having it doable from a VM lowers my personal incentive to spend time on reverse engineering that - going to upload FW maybe twice a year does not pay of investing too much time.

Any obscurity on your part does not add any security, BFL Engineer, you are only wasting time you could use on shipping machines and deluding yourself. I am dead serious.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_cow_problem

[xDGDZEx]

So I tested out the 864 MH experimental firmware on 2 Rev3 singles and this is what I got.



Also, the status of the second one is wrong, it was done uploading firmware before I began the test.

[rjk]

My single got the new bitstream, but doesn't seem to be going any faster. I dunno if cgminer has an indicator for the number of times it has throttled, but it is currently at 826/803 5s/avg speed. The test went through without a hitch, but it sure isn't going at 860+ mhash/s.

[Garr255]

My single got the new bitstream, but doesn't seem to be going any faster. I dunno if cgminer has an indicator for the number of times it has throttled, but it is currently at 826/803 5s/avg speed. The test went through without a hitch, but it sure isn't going at 860+ mhash/s.

Do you still have that deafening fan mod? XD

Thanks for the information everyone. I might be using this software in the coming months

[rjk]

My single got the new bitstream, but doesn't seem to be going any faster. I dunno if cgminer has an indicator for the number of times it has throttled, but it is currently at 826/803 5s/avg speed. The test went through without a hitch, but it sure isn't going at 860+ mhash/s.

Do you still have that deafening fan mod? XD

haha no, I have it in my office and that got annoying. Also the video was mostly a troll just to poke fun at the people that were saying it was too loud.

[Epoch]

Anyone have any luck with the 'Blink Unit(s)' function? I'm running EasyMiner_V_1.0_Beta and the 'Blink Unit(s)' feature on the right-click menu doesn't do anything for me. i.e. I click on it, but no LED on my unit blinks. It would be a handy feature if it worked.

[Epoch]

Anyone have any luck with the 'Blink Unit(s)' function? I'm running EasyMiner_V_1.0_Beta and the 'Blink Unit(s)' feature on the right-click menu doesn't do anything for me. i.e. I click on it, but no LED on my unit blinks. It would be a handy feature if it worked.

Nevermind ... it seems that my Rev2's (I tried 2 different units) don't work with the 'blink' command; even after upgrading firmware. My Rev3's work fine.

[xDGDZEx]

My single got the new bitstream, but doesn't seem to be going any faster. I dunno if cgminer has an indicator for the number of times it has throttled, but it is currently at 826/803 5s/avg speed. The test went through without a hitch, but it sure isn't going at 860+ mhash/s.

Weird story, but one of my rev2's did this, while the other didn't. However all rev3's took the new firmware.

[BFL-Engineer]

My single got the new bitstream, but doesn't seem to be going any faster. I dunno if cgminer has an indicator for the number of times it has throttled, but it is currently at 826/803 5s/avg speed. The test went through without a hitch, but it sure isn't going at 860+ mhash/s.

Certain older versions of the single need a power-cycle after firmware upload.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

[BFL-Engineer]

Anyone have any luck with the 'Blink Unit(s)' function? I'm running EasyMiner_V_1.0_Beta and the 'Blink Unit(s)' feature on the right-click menu doesn't do anything for me. i.e. I click on it, but no LED on my unit blinks. It would be a handy feature if it worked.

Some of the Rev 2 do not offer the blink feature, since it was released in a later
MCU Firmware.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

[fuuka]

I have a rev3 with the extra fan on the bottom (some don't have this?).

Using the diagnostic feature, the default firmware averages something like 844Mh/s while the 862Mh/s firmware averages 880Mh/s indicated, it is closer to the 832 and 862 advertised values in the non-ideal situation of actual mining.  Ambient temp is 74F (~23C) measured with an IR temp gun.  No throttling detected and a max temp of something like 53C for the single.  I will check power consumption in a bit when I move it to my mining rig.

cgminer 2.4.1 shows an average around 30Mh/s improvement, but I haven't let it run long enough to get a good average reading.

https://i.imgur.com/F5X7L.png

[rjk]

My single got the new bitstream, but doesn't seem to be going any faster. I dunno if cgminer has an indicator for the number of times it has throttled, but it is currently at 826/803 5s/avg speed. The test went through without a hitch, but it sure isn't going at 860+ mhash/s.

Certain older versions of the single need a power-cycle after firmware upload.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

Thanks, after a power cycle it is going faster.

[Epoch]

@BFL_Engineer: regarding the different firmware binaries available for download:

For the 864 (experimental), 792 and 768 (hot environment) firmware, are there any functional differences between these and the 832/816/808/800 versions other than hashrate? Throttling point, for example?

I'm just wondering why you have labels ('experimental' or 'hot environment') on some but not the others.

[BFL-Engineer]

@BFL_Engineer: regarding the different firmware binaries available for download:

For the 864 (experimental), 792 and 768 (hot environment) firmware, are there any functional differences between these and the 832/816/808/800 versions other than hashrate? Throttling point, for example?

I'm just wondering why you have labels ('experimental' or 'hot environment') on some but not the others.

Only speed is different. Throttle-point is decided by the microprocessor on board, based on chips condition.
Lower speed however, will keep the chips cooler, thus in most cases no throttle is ever needed.

All the firmwares marked with 'Experimental' are not guaranteed to work on all units. My guess is that it will
work on 99% of them all, but it may force unit to throttle. Keeping the units in a cooler environment may
enable them to run at higher speeds. 864 is not the Highest we can reach, but it does meet our quality
requirements.


Regards,
BF Labs Inc.

[allinvain]

Out of curiosity what is the absolute highest hashrate you've gotten out of these units?

Now if someone was to build a waterblock for the babies we could push them to the edge

[jddebug]

I have the generation of singles that can not blink the front light it seems. Firmware update doesn't fix this?

Anyway, I figured out that I could identify a particular single but doing a short test it. I could then look through the grill of the case and see the red mining light turn on and blink occasionally. I now have all of mine labeled.

I like the easy miner, looking forward to seeing it with more features.