ANTMINER U3 Discussion and Support Thread

[notlist3d]

There is something odd with u3, if i unplug psu, it continues beeping, untill i reconnect usb.

I also experience this quite often, not everyday though. I really wonder where that beeping or squeaking noise comes from. It seems like something is trying to pull the current much more than what the USB port can give. Before I disassemble or do something bad on one of my Antminer U3' trying to figure this out, which will very likely just become another electronic junk, did anybody investigate this mystery?

I never had the beeping, although I power them off/on twice a day for 15mn.
I have the model with the wire cage, not the dome.

I wonder the same thing is the beeping a V1 or something?  I have a few V2's with wire cage and never had a single beep out of them.

I recently have switched over to using a R1 as a controller so far so good.  I really like it and is working good.

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[Mikestang]

I've had multiple V1 U3s (solid dome) and still have 1 that I play with.  I have never heard them beep, I didn't even know they had that capability.

[notlist3d]

I've had multiple V1 U3s (solid dome) and still have 1 that I play with.  I have never heard them beep, I didn't even know they had that capability.

I wonder what it takes to get a beep as I have used mine on multiple machine lots of different testing.  And I to have not got a single sound out of them.

I mean I would love if the zombie caused a beep.  But I have seen nothing cause one on mine either.

[hurricandave]

I have four U3's and two of them will beep fairly regularly. I usually just unplug the USB cable, wait about 30 seconds and reinsert the cable. They begin hashing away once the USB reconnects and CGMiner resets for the hotplug event. 

[notlist3d]

I have four U3's and two of them will beep fairly regularly. I usually just unplug the USB cable, wait about 30 seconds and reinsert the cable. They begin hashing away once the USB reconnects and CGMiner resets for the hotplug event.  

It makes me wonder if there are different batches or something.  I've used window's, linux, and R1.  Never once a single beep.  

Does the beep indicate something? If they beep on zombie I would think that is awesome.

[hurricandave]

 When they are beeping, they are definitely Zombie'd. They go zombie without beeping as well though, so I imagine, that the beeping is related to a different set of circumstances. Without any feedback from Bitmain, it is impossible to know what the beeping is supposed to indicate.

[.anto.]

When they are beeping, they are definitely Zombie'd. They go zombie without beeping as well though, so I imagine, that the beeping is related to a different set of circumstances. Without any feedback from Bitmain, it is impossible to know what the beeping is supposed to indicate.

Yes. When it squeaks (I think that is more precise than beep), it is definitely zombied (using the term of CGMiner). I always use BFGMiner as my Antminer U3' are more stable running with it. I believe it also happens with CGMiner as I am quite sure this is a hardware flaw. But I just tried CGMiner 4.9.2 for about two days, so I cannot confirm whether this phenomena happens also with CGMiner or not.

I have 2 Antminer U3' batch 2 with the wire cage, and both of them have experienced the squeaking noise. Each of them does that noise possibly once in a week or two, randomly and not at the same time. When that happens, the miner LED indicator (the one close to the fan connector) is flashing on and off at regular interval following the squeaking noise which is also on and off at the same interval. It looks like something related to the USB interface is stuck and oscillating at low frequency.

If you guys are interested to see and hear what I experience, I will record and post the video here next time when I get that.

[notlist3d]

When they are beeping, they are definitely Zombie'd. They go zombie without beeping as well though, so I imagine, that the beeping is related to a different set of circumstances. Without any feedback from Bitmain, it is impossible to know what the beeping is supposed to indicate.

Yes. When it squeaks (I think that is more precise than beep), it is definitely zombied (using the term of CGMiner). I always use BFGMiner as my Antminer U3' are more stable running with it. I believe it also happens with CGMiner as I am quite sure this is a hardware flaw. But I just tried CGMiner 4.9.2 for about two days, so I cannot confirm whether this phenomena happens also with CGMiner or not.

I have 2 Antminer U3' batch 2 with the wire cage, and both of them have experienced the squeaking noise. Each of them does that noise possibly once in a week or two, randomly and not at the same time. When that happens, the miner LED indicator (the one close to the fan connector) is flashing on and off at regular interval following the squeaking noise which is also on and off at the same interval. It looks like something related to the USB interface is stuck and oscillating at low frequency.

If you guys are interested to see and hear what I experience, I will record and post the video here next time when I get that.

If you have time that would be great.  Mine never have made a sound, I'm a little disappointing to be honest a beep when in Zombie would be nice.  

I do have the LED indicator that is red when it's mining.  But no beeps at all.

[.anto.]

I do have the LED indicator that is red when it's mining.  But no beeps at all.

Well... I think that is the idea of the miner LED indicator which is only illuminating continuously when it is doing the tasks the miner software tells it to do. I am sure the miner LED indicator is off when it is not doing anything, e.g. you just power cycle it and reconnect USB cable without running the miner software. I am not sure how it is with CGMiner, but I would assume that the miner LED indicator is off as well when CGMiner considers it to be dead or zombie (I am not really comfortable using this term, reminds me of World War Z and I don't really know what I would do if such virus existed in reality).

[notlist3d]

I do have the LED indicator that is red when it's mining.  But no beeps at all.

Well... I think that is the idea of the miner LED indicator which is only illuminating continuously when it is doing the tasks the miner software tells it to do. I am sure the miner LED indicator is off when it is not doing anything, e.g. you just power cycle it and reconnect USB cable without running the miner software. I am not sure how it is with CGMiner, but I would assume that the miner LED indicator is off as well when CGMiner considers it to be dead or zombie (I am not really comfortable using this term, reminds me of World War Z and I don't really know what I would do if such virus existed in reality).

The LED indicator does go off when it is goes into zombie mode, as it is not mining.   So yes that is true.

But my units don't make a audible sound like some mention on beeping during this same state.  So I'm curious about the beep, also which is newer the one's with or without beep.

[CrazyGuy]

For those of you running on Linux, it appears there may be an easy solution for restarting your U3 without unplugging the USB cable. With the antrouter, Bitmain's cgminer-u3 init.d script stops the udev daemon(linux device manager) when it stops cgminer, and then starts it back up in the cgminer start function, if it is not already running. This allows me to restart cgminer when a unit goes zombie, through the init.d script or UI, and not have to unplug the device. You should be able to port this command to another linux based system and monitor cgminer then restart cgminer/udevd when needed.

On cgminer stop

Code:

start-stop-daemon -K -n udevd -s TERM

On cgminer start

Code:

 ps |grep -v grep|grep udevd  > /dev/null
if [ $? -eq 0 ];then
        echo detect hotpluging USB miners
else
        /sbin/udevd --daemon
        echo start detecting
fi

[.anto.]

But my units don't make a audible sound like some mention on beeping during this same state.  So I'm curious about the beep, also which is newer the one's with or without beep.

OK. You will see and hear later on when I get that on my Antminer U3'.

Yesterday, I have been trying to create conditions for that issue to appear by using some combinations of frequency and voltage up to their maximum settings. I usually use frequency=225 MHz and voltage=0.83 Volt. Some combinations made my miners dead in a few minutes. I even let the miners dead for an hour or so, hoping that something on the USB interface would be stuck and oscillating. But I couldn't get that squeaking noise. It looks like the probability to hit that condition is very low. So I guess we just need to wait until that happens.

But I am wondering what to do next if I got that condition, a part from that I can share the video of that. I guess we need to do something more and we need to forget about getting support from Bitmain as they are really useless in giving support. I didn't see any comment or suggestion from Bitmain in trying to solve this issue.

I have been trying to get all stats figures from my miner collected via RPC and then inserted into SQL database, preferably SQLite. So that we will be able to analyse the conditions that leads to the dead of the miner. Does anybody have or know where to get a simple bash script which can do that?

[notlist3d]

For those of you running on Linux, it appears there may be an easy solution for restarting your U3 without unplugging the USB cable. With the antrouter, Bitmain's cgminer-u3 init.d script stops the udev daemon(linux device manager) when it stops cgminer, and then starts it back up in the cgminer start function, if it is not already running. This allows me to restart cgminer when a unit goes zombie, through the init.d script or UI, and not have to unplug the device. You should be able to port this command to another linux based system and monitor cgminer then restart cgminer/udevd when needed.

On cgminer stop

Code:

start-stop-daemon -K -n udevd -s TERM

On cgminer start

Code:

 ps |grep -v grep|grep udevd  > /dev/null
if [ $? -eq 0 ];then
        echo detect hotpluging USB miners
else
        /sbin/udevd --daemon
        echo start detecting
fi

Thanks for sharing seems very interesting.  Does the reset of usb without resetting power seem to fix it on zombies with this?

If you could auto fix zombies that really would be huge.   Don't think anyone else has had a fix yet.  Happy to see some of your great coding .

[JaredKaragen]

the beeping sounds like an on and off high voltage discharge... 

Cycle the power and usb and it comes back.

I have had mine up and running with few beeping errors and zombies.

Its a cage type (2nd edition).  I am using the brick it came with.
cgminer 4.6.1 settings: --bmsc-voltage 0830  --bmsc-freq 0982
AVG: 62.19G WU: 868.8/m

Typical up-times are 2-4 days.  sometimes a week or more.   I think when the power fluxes at home I get a zombie or a beeping sound from the unit itself.   It really reminds me of a short distance HV discharge.

The internet is back on at the ranch again a week or two ago, so i started mining again.
See for yourself.
http://solo.ckpool.org/users/1Q8HjG8wMa3hgmDFbFHC9cADPLpm1xKHQM

Minera did an excellent job of keeping my miner online before.  But oddly, now I cant get it to work again, it wont detect either mining device.  So my Pi is now a VPN host once again.  I think I give up on minera.

[Mikestang]

If you guys are interested to see and hear what I experience, I will record and post the video here next time when I get that.

I would also be interested where the sound is coming from on the device specifically.  As far as I know there are no speakers on the circuit board or anything.  Is it some sort of feed back sounds from the electronics, or is it a honest beep from a speaker?

[zOU]

Minera did an excellent job of keeping my miner online before.  But oddly, now I cant get it to work again, it wont detect either mining device.  So my Pi is now a VPN host once again.  I think I give up on minera.

I have not experienced that.
My U3 are detected by minera.
I just had to tick the "execute as super user" for it to detect my BFL30Ghs

Although I get a lot more HW errors when I run my U3 on minera than on a windows host. (connected using the same USB hub or directly, no difference)

[.anto.]

It really reminds me of a short distance HV discharge.

The noise of high voltage charge/discharge is quite close to the one that I heard coming out of my Antminer U3. If you had ever opened up the back of your CRT or Tube TV, you might be familiar with that noise.

[.anto.]

I would also be interested where the sound is coming from on the device specifically.  As far as I know there are no speakers on the circuit board or anything.  Is it some sort of feed back sounds from the electronics, or is it a honest beep from a speaker?

I was wondering myself when I got it the first time. I even disassembled the whole miner, split into 3 parts. There is definitely no speaker or something with diaphragm which can translate electrical wave into noise. So I couldn't figure out how that noise could come out of the electronic circuit. Is it possibly the Elco or something? But if it would be due to broken electronic components, my miners would not be able to mine normally again after I power cycle and unplug/plug the USB connector.

[JaredKaragen]

Its like the U3 gets stuck in some sort of initialization loop and some of the circuitry is allowing spikes by design.   I really dont feel like making a schematic for this thing to look for possible culprits...

How it is translating to sound.... a HV discharge is my only logical recourse.  I doubt those capacitors are the source of the sound... maybe the cause if they are over-rated for the device...


Its intriguing for sure;  and possibly could help point out some of the stability issues we have had.


My recent issue is with getting Minera to read my hardware.   It worked fine for months (with either gridseeds or my U3 hooked up) then started going offline for half a day now and then... then finally it just wouldn't go 'online'.  it would do an infinite loop when choosing "start miner" because the app wont run properly, and I cant find logs to show what exactly is going on.  I can only find the logs/reminants of the last instance when it was hashing. When I say "online" here;  people who use minera will know what I am talking about, the miner "online" status light.


But so far my U3 is still online (I have hotplugged it a few times in these days).  Started cgminer on 10-23-15, and its still going.   When it get a little too hot it starts spitting out invalid nonce/HW errors, but usually recovers fine.  Its running on my main box, with 11 gridseeds, and a GTX980 all while I use the PC for my day to day stuff. (dual xeon server)

To keep it a little cooler, I have it balanced on the top of a powered on gridseed 5chip.  The gridseed fan helps keep it much cooler.

[Mikestang]

Its like the U3 gets stuck in some sort of initialization loop and some of the circuitry is allowing spikes by design.   I really dont feel like making a schematic for this thing to look for possible culprits...

<snip>

To keep it a little cooler, I have it balanced on the top of a powered on gridseed 5chip.  The gridseed fan helps keep it much cooler.

I chatted with a member here who took one of my U3s apart and he mentioned something about how crappy the circuitry is regarding the power and usb.  I don't know enough about hardware tech to repeat what he told be, but yes, I think there is a "short cut" somewhere in Bitmains schematic that causes most of the issues with these devices.

I also performed a similar cooling mod.  I run my U3 at 237.5freq 785volt, and even that makes the bottom heat sink almost uncomfortably hot.  With this mod it's barely warmer than ambient.