GekkoScience Compac BM1384 Stickminer Official Support Thread

[sidehack]

Appears to be something with the low-side FET. The damage is at the gate pin. Not sure what's up.

But if the buck is bouncing up to 1.1V, that's the point the ASIC will shunt it off to.

The low-side FET should never not conduct at all unless it's sorely damaged. Even if the gate doesn't kick the transistor on, the body diode would still conduct during the low swing of the switching. It'd run hot and not very efficient; I forget the Vf of the body diode but it's probably around 0.8V so if you were trying to crank 4W into the ASIC at 660mV that's six amps and a good 5W dissipated by the low-side FET with about 85% duty. The FET itself is rated much higher than that but this installation lacks the required PCB heatsinking to hold up. If the FET completely shot craps such that the switch and body diode aren't conducting at all, it's possible that the high-side could cause an overvolt condition.

I watch the current levels on every stick I test, and they're always in the same range (with about 5% variance) so it should have been working when it left my bench. But that doesn't always mean it'll work forever, unfortunately, and something could have gone wrong caused that transistor to drop out.

If you want to mail it back to me I'll send you a replacement. If you want I'll send it straightaway, or you mentioned ordering more and I can add one to that order when it's eventually placed.

[edonkey]

I'm actually impressed, that make it super simple and super modular. How do you cut the plastic? With a wood saw? And where do you get those... "Egg Crates" for cheap? Then you just tie wrap the miner stuff and maybe hot glue or screw the plastic in place.

Right now i just put my stick on the hub and put it on the side so that the USB fan sticking out from the mobo blow air on it.

Egg crate is made of stiff polystyrene plastic, so it's easy to cut. I typically use diagonal cutters. The plastic easily splits along the cut line. Very easy to work with. Got the idea to use this stuff from a very different hobby (salt water aquariums).

I bought a big panel a couple of years ago and have built out three small scale rigs out of the stuff. Usually I just tack down the power supplies, hubs, etc. with zip ties. Once the components are in place, the rig is effectively portable.

It's typically used as paneling for lighting fixtures, especially comercial fluorescents, in the US at least. Any building supply or lighting company should have it for pretty cheap. If you search for "egg crate plastic" you'll find a ton of options.

[notlist3d]

I'm actually impressed, that make it super simple and super modular. How do you cut the plastic? With a wood saw? And where do you get those... "Egg Crates" for cheap? Then you just tie wrap the miner stuff and maybe hot glue or screw the plastic in place.

Right now i just put my stick on the hub and put it on the side so that the USB fan sticking out from the mobo blow air on it.

Egg crate is made of stiff polystyrene plastic, so it's easy to cut. I typically use diagonal cutters. The plastic easily splits along the cut line. Very easy to work with. Got the idea to use this stuff from a very different hobby (salt water aquariums).

I bought a big panel a couple of years ago and have built out three small scale rigs out of the stuff. Usually I just tack down the power supplies, hubs, etc. with zip ties. Once the components are in place, the rig is effectively portable.

It's typically used as paneling for lighting fixtures, especially comercial fluorescents, in the US at least. Any building supply or lighting company should have it for pretty cheap. If you search for "egg crate plastic" you'll find a ton of options.

Very clean setup.  I really like the plastic.   I really wonder what a 3d printing master could do with plastic.

How fast are you running those 2 compacs?

[powrslave]

Here is something you might like

PCB UV inspection - Find bad capacitors and other problems on a PCB
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0qTOLBhlVs

[VirosaGITS]

I'm actually impressed, that make it super simple and super modular. How do you cut the plastic? With a wood saw? And where do you get those... "Egg Crates" for cheap? Then you just tie wrap the miner stuff and maybe hot glue or screw the plastic in place.

Right now i just put my stick on the hub and put it on the side so that the USB fan sticking out from the mobo blow air on it.

Egg crate is made of stiff polystyrene plastic, so it's easy to cut. I typically use diagonal cutters. The plastic easily splits along the cut line. Very easy to work with. Got the idea to use this stuff from a very different hobby (salt water aquariums).

I bought a big panel a couple of years ago and have built out three small scale rigs out of the stuff. Usually I just tack down the power supplies, hubs, etc. with zip ties. Once the components are in place, the rig is effectively portable.

It's typically used as paneling for lighting fixtures, especially comercial fluorescents, in the US at least. Any building supply or lighting company should have it for pretty cheap. If you search for "egg crate plastic" you'll find a ton of options.

Thank you, this is great, i found this;
http://www.homedepot.ca/product/egg-crate-white-louver-2375-inch-x-4775-inch/924867

Its like 10$USD for 24*48inch~ thats a ton of material and its hella cheap. I'll have to pick some up next time i got the car. I will definitively use this as base from now own instead of the convoluted stuff i came up with for my GPU rig. And on top you can have air from go through. Great find!

With this i might even be able to afix the Sidehack stick to my GPU rig that has a box fan blowing air between the GPUs. Wont need to use the USB Fan.

[edonkey]

Very clean setup.  I really like the plastic.   I really wonder what a 3d printing master could do with plastic.

How fast are you running those 2 compacs?

Currently both of them are running at 306. That results in about 16.9 GH/s with 0.08% HW errors.

I would have gone higher, but one of the units is a little weaker. I had to turn up the voltage proportionally more on the weak unit to get to 300-ish.

I probably could mess around a bit more with the voltage and frequency to go higher. Or I could explore per-unit frequency options since one stick outperforms the other. Assuming that cgminer-gekko can in fact do that (I don't know).

In the end it seemed good enough to get double the stock hash rate for the amount of fiddling I did.

[AJRGale]

...

I am assuming this is the root of my failure.

...

to me that just looks like flux residue..

already shipped back? sidehack, I'm interested in a autopsy..

[sidehack]

Already shipped back? No, the discussion is only about four hours old and the post office doesn't run on Sundays.

[AJRGale]

Already shipped back? No, the discussion is only about four hours old and the post office doesn't run on Sundays.

lol, i didn't even check when it was posted, thought it was a few days back!

don't take it the wrong way, I do have interest on failures like this, maybe that's the reason 90% of my miners are dead

[edonkey]

Thank you, this is great, i found this;
http://www.homedepot.ca/product/egg-crate-white-louver-2375-inch-x-4775-inch/924867

Its like 10$USD for 24*48inch~ thats a ton of material and its hella cheap. I'll have to pick some up next time i got the car. I will definitively use this as base from now own instead of the convoluted stuff i came up with for my GPU rig. And on top you can have air from go through. Great find!

With this i might even be able to afix the Sidehack stick to my GPU rig that has a box fan blowing air between the GPUs. Wont need to use the USB Fan.

You're welcome. Post some picts when you've got your rig set up.

The only downside of egg crate is that when you cut it, you can end up with a jagged edge. You can scrape yourself on it if you're not careful.

[sloopy]

Already shipped back? No, the discussion is only about four hours old and the post office doesn't run on Sundays.

lol, i didn't even check when it was posted, thought it was a few days back!

don't take it the wrong way, I do have interest on failures like this, maybe that's the reason 90% of my miners are dead

I am the same way and have a big interest to hear Sidehack's official cause of death.

Sidehack, I appreciate you being willing to send one out under warranty. That's a standup decision and I hope people recognize such.

I am going to PM you to confirm any RMA information, the ship to address, along with discussing ordering a couple more.

The more I play with these bad boys and develope some of my more

 

[HerbPean]

Trying to install CGMiner gekko in my Raspi

sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf automake libtool libcurl4-openssl-dev pkg-config libncurses5-dev libudev-dev

Getting this =>
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
autoconf is already the newest version.
automake is already the newest version.
build-essential is already the newest version.
libncurses5-dev is already the newest version.
libtool is already the newest version.
libudev-dev is already the newest version.
pkg-config is already the newest version.
The following extra packages will be installed:
  comerr-dev krb5-multidev libgcrypt11-dev libgnutls-dev libgnutls-openssl27
  libgnutlsxx27 libgpg-error-dev libgssrpc4 libidn11-dev libkadm5clnt-mit8
  libkadm5srv-mit8 libkdb5-6 libkrb5-dev libldap2-dev libp11-kit-dev
  librtmp-dev libssh2-1-dev libssl-dev libssl-doc libtasn1-3-dev
Suggested packages:
  doc-base krb5-doc libcurl3-dbg libgcrypt11-doc gnutls26-doc krb5-user
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  comerr-dev krb5-multidev libcurl4-openssl-dev libgcrypt11-dev libgnutls-dev
  libgnutls-openssl27 libgnutlsxx27 libgpg-error-dev libgssrpc4 libidn11-dev
  libkadm5clnt-mit8 libkadm5srv-mit8 libkdb5-6 libkrb5-dev libldap2-dev
  libp11-kit-dev librtmp-dev libssh2-1-dev libssl-dev libssl-doc
  libtasn1-3-dev
0 upgraded, 21 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 2,711 kB/8,018 kB of archives.
After this operation, 17.3 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
Err http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ wheezy/main
libssl-dev armhf 1.0.1e-2+rvt+deb7u16
  404  Not Found
Err http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ wheezy/main
libssl-doc all 1.0.1e-2+rvt+deb7u16
  404  Not Found
Failed to fetch
http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/pool/main/o/openssl/libssl-dev_1.0.1e-2+rvt+deb7u16_armhf.deb
 404  Not Found
Failed to fetch
http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/pool/main/o/openssl/libssl-doc_1.0.1e-2+rvt+deb7u16_all.deb
 404  Not Found
E: Unable to fetch some archives, maybe run apt-get update or try with
--fix-missing?

[Jake36]

Trying to install CGMiner gekko in my Raspi

sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf automake libtool libcurl4-openssl-dev pkg-config libncurses5-dev libudev-dev

Getting this =>
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
autoconf is already the newest version.
automake is already the newest version.
build-essential is already the newest version.
libncurses5-dev is already the newest version.
libtool is already the newest version.
libudev-dev is already the newest version.
pkg-config is already the newest version.
The following extra packages will be installed:
  comerr-dev krb5-multidev libgcrypt11-dev libgnutls-dev libgnutls-openssl27
  libgnutlsxx27 libgpg-error-dev libgssrpc4 libidn11-dev libkadm5clnt-mit8
  libkadm5srv-mit8 libkdb5-6 libkrb5-dev libldap2-dev libp11-kit-dev
  librtmp-dev libssh2-1-dev libssl-dev libssl-doc libtasn1-3-dev
Suggested packages:
  doc-base krb5-doc libcurl3-dbg libgcrypt11-doc gnutls26-doc krb5-user
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  comerr-dev krb5-multidev libcurl4-openssl-dev libgcrypt11-dev libgnutls-dev
  libgnutls-openssl27 libgnutlsxx27 libgpg-error-dev libgssrpc4 libidn11-dev
  libkadm5clnt-mit8 libkadm5srv-mit8 libkdb5-6 libkrb5-dev libldap2-dev
  libp11-kit-dev librtmp-dev libssh2-1-dev libssl-dev libssl-doc
  libtasn1-3-dev
0 upgraded, 21 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 2,711 kB/8,018 kB of archives.
After this operation, 17.3 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
Err http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ wheezy/main
libssl-dev armhf 1.0.1e-2+rvt+deb7u16
  404  Not Found
Err http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ wheezy/main
libssl-doc all 1.0.1e-2+rvt+deb7u16
  404  Not Found
Failed to fetch
http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/pool/main/o/openssl/libssl-dev_1.0.1e-2+rvt+deb7u16_armhf.deb
 404  Not Found
Failed to fetch
http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/pool/main/o/openssl/libssl-doc_1.0.1e-2+rvt+deb7u16_all.deb
 404  Not Found
E: Unable to fetch some archives, maybe run apt-get update or try with
--fix-missing?

Yes, the server where the files are, has been having some kind of trouble or they limited traffic.

It did it to me the other day, just wait a little while and try again, eventually it will come back up and you can get the files. Or you can search around for another source server and add them to your /etc/apt/sources.list (I think that's it).

[HerbPean]

I did an sudo apt-get Update

/fixed !

[edonkey]

I did an sudo apt-get Update

/fixed !

Beat me to it

For completeness sake though, when doing a new install on a Pi it's a good idea to go through the full upgrade process, like this:

Code:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo reboot

On a resource limited machine like a Pi this can take a really long time.

[AJRGale]

Trying to install CGMiner gekko in my Raspi

sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf automake libtool libcurl4-openssl-dev pkg-config libncurses5-dev libudev-dev

Getting this =>

try:

Code:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

then try it

well bugger me.. i was halfway typing this and sorting my workshop

[Jake36]

I did an sudo apt-get Update

/fixed !

Well, I forgot about the sudo apt-get update, being done first 

As long as you got a good powered hub (2.0 for the Pi's) you should be good to go.

Here's 1 week running 5 stick's on a Pi-2 @ 175 freq. in balanced with 4 pools, so I think that's why the GF is 16, + the phone company has been working on the lines, which doesn't help, but still managed to get a best share of 197M (now all I need is ~65B share  ).

XXXX@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo screen -x cgminer
 cgminer version 4.9.2 - Started: [2015-09-21 09:46:46.904]

 (5s):52.79G (1m):48.72G (5m):48.58G (15m):48.36G (avg):48.06Gh/s
 A:7095642  R:4888  HW:0  WU:671.5/m | ST: 2  SS: 186  NB: 1106  LW: 44219876  GF: 16  RF: 0
 Connected to multiple pools with block change notify
 Block: b304a89e...  Diff:59.3G  Started: [18:20:11.018]  Best share: 197M

[2015-09-28 18:21:15.945] Accepted 020dbee9 Diff 125/42 COMPAC 1 pool 0

Deleted the rest to shorten

[notlist3d]

I did an sudo apt-get Update

/fixed !

Well, I forgot about the sudo apt-get update, being done first  

As long as you got a good powered hub (2.0 for the Pi's) you should be good to go.

Here's 1 week running 5 stick's on a Pi-2 @ 175 freq. in balanced with 4 pools, so I think that's why the GF is 16, + the phone company has been working on the lines, which doesn't help, but still managed to get a best share of 197M (now all I need is ~65B share  ).

XXXX@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo screen -x cgminer
 cgminer version 4.9.2 - Started: [2015-09-21 09:46:46.904]

 (5s):52.79G (1m):48.72G (5m):48.58G (15m):48.36G (avg):48.06Gh/s
 A:7095642  R:4888  HW:0  WU:671.5/m | ST: 2  SS: 186  NB: 1106  LW: 44219876  GF: 16  RF: 0
 Connected to multiple pools with block change notify
 Block: b304a89e...  Diff:59.3G  Started: [18:20:11.018]  Best share: 197M

[2015-09-28 18:21:15.945] Accepted 020dbee9 Diff 125/42 COMPAC 1 pool 0

Deleted the rest to shorten

I will warn on powered hub not all 2.0 does the PI's like.  If you have trouble and cannot get to it try to use.   Some have a power feedback - https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=91&t=17560 .  If you cannot get the hub to work try the compac directly on the pi and you can see if you have a hub problem.   

I was kinda a pain for me and my hub but I got it working after some reading.

[Meech]

Trying to install CGMiner gekko in my Raspi

sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf automake libtool libcurl4-openssl-dev pkg-config libncurses5-dev libudev-dev

Getting this =>
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
autoconf is already the newest version.
automake is already the newest version.
build-essential is already the newest version.
libncurses5-dev is already the newest version.
libtool is already the newest version.
libudev-dev is already the newest version.
pkg-config is already the newest version.
The following extra packages will be installed:
  comerr-dev krb5-multidev libgcrypt11-dev libgnutls-dev libgnutls-openssl27
  libgnutlsxx27 libgpg-error-dev libgssrpc4 libidn11-dev libkadm5clnt-mit8
  libkadm5srv-mit8 libkdb5-6 libkrb5-dev libldap2-dev libp11-kit-dev
  librtmp-dev libssh2-1-dev libssl-dev libssl-doc libtasn1-3-dev
Suggested packages:
  doc-base krb5-doc libcurl3-dbg libgcrypt11-doc gnutls26-doc krb5-user
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  comerr-dev krb5-multidev libcurl4-openssl-dev libgcrypt11-dev libgnutls-dev
  libgnutls-openssl27 libgnutlsxx27 libgpg-error-dev libgssrpc4 libidn11-dev
  libkadm5clnt-mit8 libkadm5srv-mit8 libkdb5-6 libkrb5-dev libldap2-dev
  libp11-kit-dev librtmp-dev libssh2-1-dev libssl-dev libssl-doc
  libtasn1-3-dev
0 upgraded, 21 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 2,711 kB/8,018 kB of archives.
After this operation, 17.3 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
Err http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ wheezy/main
libssl-dev armhf 1.0.1e-2+rvt+deb7u16
  404  Not Found
Err http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ wheezy/main
libssl-doc all 1.0.1e-2+rvt+deb7u16
  404  Not Found
Failed to fetch
http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/pool/main/o/openssl/libssl-dev_1.0.1e-2+rvt+deb7u16_armhf.deb
 404  Not Found
Failed to fetch
http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/pool/main/o/openssl/libssl-doc_1.0.1e-2+rvt+deb7u16_all.deb
 404  Not Found
E: Unable to fetch some archives, maybe run apt-get update or try with
--fix-missing?

I ran into the same thing but ended up leaving the "build-essential" off the line and it works great.  
+ the dependencies wouldn't go into the cgminer directory so load into your root user pi directory.

[cryptoglance]

Hmm, I don't fully understand the power requirements.

I'm currently running this USB hub. http://www.oricoonline.us/goods.php?id=4937
12V 3A

Does this mean I can run 4 sticks drawing 0.75A safely, or 2 sticks @ 1.5A each?

What mhz would that be?