Posts Tagged ‘Zeusminer’

Raspberry Pi Images Designed for ZeusMiner Scrypt ASIC Devices

18, Jun 2014

zenos-cloud-based-control-rpi-based-zenminer

By default most ZeusMiner Scrypt ASICs do come prepared for direct connection to a PC over a USB cable and for use with the supplied cgminer version with support for Zeus chips. There is however an option to use these miners, smaller or larger, with a Raspberry Pi controller and make them PC independent. In fact some of the companies selling these Scrypt ASICs do offer an option to buy a separate Raspberry Pi controller for the ZeusMiner-based products or even do bundle one with a custom image that supports them – either basic solution with console only monitoring or with a nice and feature rich web-based interface. We have tried to compile a list of who offers what to help you start up with using Raspberry Pi controller for your ZeusMiner ASIC devices. Apart from Zeus directly and their official distributors, there is also GAWMiners with their own branded miners and HASHRA as well selling products that are also based on ZeusMiner Scrypt ASIC chips.

ZeusMiner offers an official Raspberry Pi image for their miners, however it seems to be a very basic one with console only support as well as a slightly more advanced ZeusController image offering a basic web interface. So a good start up point if you want to try out what is available as options.

MinerEU has just released a Scripta based Raspberry Pi image with some additional extras such as pool priority, pool switch on the fly from web UI as well as cgminer options that can be specified in key/value pair directly from the web browser. Scripta is probably the most feature rich web-based RPi solution, so if you like to have more options and control directly from the web interface you should try this image.

HASHRA has updated their own Hashra Controla RPi image with web-based interface to support the new custom branded Zeus-based products they are currently offering to their customers. This image is a bit simpler in terms of features if you compare it to a Scripta-based image for example, but still works very well and gives you easy access to all the important settings and information.

GAWMiners has partnered with ZenMiner and offers Raspberry Pi with preinstalled ZenController as an option to buy along and also bundled with some of the bigger Zeus-based miners. This is a quite interesting solution as it provides you with an easy to use and very convenient web-based control panel for your miners from anywhere in the world. No need to use a real IP address or be on the same local network as your miner or have to use remote connections etc. It is the type of solution that you just need to plug in and it should start working automatically, so great for people that are not way too technical to deal with possible configuration issues.

There could be other RPi images for ZeusMiner available out there, but we might have missed some of them, so if you know about something missing in this list feel free to point us to it and we’ll include it.

New bfgminer 4.2.1 Release with Support for ZeusMiner Scrypt ASICs

17, Jun 2014

bfgminer-4-2-1-zeus-windows

The new fork of bfgminer with support for ZeusMiner’s Scrypt ASICs (Litecointalk development topic) that we have told you about a few days ago is seeing some nice development. The fork that is compatible with ZeusMiner, GAWMiners and Hashra Zeus-based Scrypt ASICs has been updated to bfgminer 4.2.1 and the driver has been reworked a bit including some changes to the command line options that are no longer the same as the initial cgminer release with support for ZeusMiner ASICs.

The latest release even has an option to “override” the maximum frequency of 382 MHz that the ZeusMiner ASICs are apparently limited to, however this only overrides the software check, but does not actually make the miner work at higher frequency (the 382 MHz maximum might be a hardware limitation). Also do note that there might be some issues running multiple miners in a single instance, so you might need to run 5 or more units in a single miner per instance of bfgminer configuration.

Below you can find a windows binary of the bfgminer 4.2.1 that you can try, just make sure to set the right number of chips depending on your miner model as well as the virtual COM port at which the miner is detected. The recommended operating frequency still seems to be 328 MHz for most people as a good balance in terms of performance and HW error rate, though you are welcome to play with it.

– You can download the new bfgminer 4.2.1 ZeusMiner binaries for Windows OS here…

Should You Modify Your ZeusMiner Blizzard Scrypt ASIC or Not

17, Jun 2014

zeusminer-blizzard-1

The ZeusMiner Blizzard Scrypt ASIC also available as the GAWMiners Fury is a nice little device that comes at a really attractive price for the hashrate it offers. They are the ideal choice for smaller miners that want to get a Scrypt ASIC miner, but don’t want to spend too much for it… and quite a lot of people like that already have purchased these devices. Being so attractive with their current prices and performance of about 1.3-1.4 MHS it is no wonder people are also interested in modifying them for even higher performance. The simpler thing that you could do is to try to improve the cooling with the addition of some heatsinks directly on top of the 6 ASIC chips to get a little more headroom for increasing the operating frequency with lower number of HW errors. The more complex thing is to try to do a voltage modification in order to allow for the chips to have no trouble operating at higher frequency.

People that have used or still use the smaller 5-chip Gridseed Scrypt ASICs and have done a voltage modification to them knwo that these small miners were able to handle a significant performance increase without trouble. The reason for that was the fact they they were originally designed to be used for mining both LTC and BTC, thus they could handle higher voltage and operating infrequence easily if you only used them for Scrypt mining. The case with the ZeusMiners however is not the same, it seems that their miners are already pushed quite high in terms of power usage and operating frequency not leaving you with much headroom for experimenting. Voltage modification of a ZeusMiner Blizzard or GAWMiners Fury is possible and can be done with the replacement of resistors just like on the Gridseed ASICs, however the advantage you can get in terms of hashrate increase is not going to be that attractive so that a lot of people would be willing to do it. There is a topic on the Bitcointalk forum where people are trying to modify their devices and are reporting some useful information and their experience and results, so you might want to check that out if you are interested.

– To see the topic at the Bitcointalk forum about Fury/Blizzard tuning and mods…


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