GekkoScience Compac BM1384 Stickminer Support Thread

######################################## #GekkoScience Compac BM1384 Stickminer Support Thread# ######################################## ================= =Thanks To The Community= ================= First off, I gotta say this project wouldn't have happened without the awesome support from all of you. Huge shoutout to everyone who helped out, big or small, whether it was through reviews, discussions, ordering the product, or whatever else. Special thanks to TheRealSteve for the amazing render of the compac that I kinda borrowed because it looks awesome, and to Luke-Jr for hooking us up with bfgminer support and those hex files for the CP2102. =============== =Purpose of this Thread= =============== This thread is all about gathering resources, sharing instructions, and answering any questions you have about the miner. If you're running into issues, this is the spot to get help. ======= =Software= ======= The stickminer shows up as an antminer U3 on cgminer (as long as your cgminer version supports the U3), and it should work just fine. It might throw some warnings about "no valid hashes within 3 seconds," but don’t worry, that’s normal since the U3 has a higher hashrate, which can confuse cgminer but won't really impact performance. If your hardware errors are low, you’re good to go. Just a heads up, those older cgminer versions cap the clock rate at 250MHz. That’s decent for most folks, since it's a moderate power level, but theoretically, the chips can handle up to 500MHz. Luke Jr added bfgminer support in version 5.3.0, so feel free to use that version.

Great job, novak!

Awesome! Cant wait till mine arrive

I can't wait to try mine once they arrive.

Nice I will set up one of my 2 sample sticks on bfgminer today

I need to try the same thing. I currently have it working perfect with cgminer.   But am interested in trying bfgminer for fun. Congratz on making it this far on a product.  I still hope to see even more products from GekkoScience.

The sample sticks won't actually work with BFG or cgminer-gekko. The new softwares use our modified manufacturer and device strings in the CP2102 (that's the hex files Luke-Jr provided) to ID the sticks uniquely from other devices. The Icarus driver doesn't really do that; it sends work in specified formats and parses the response, compares it to known formats and assumes it knows what miner is running based on that. This is why the stick will ID as a U3 in stock cgminer, because it's the closest matching device that cgminer knows how to work with. The test sticks have not been updated to the proper hex, so the CP2102 will still ID with stock details. BFGMiner will not recognize it at all, and cgminer will still think it's a U3.

Info is helpful thanks as  I saved time .

I added a couple lines to address the points Phillipma made.  Phil, can you run on/build on linux?  If so I might have a version just lying around with the ramp initialization but not checking for the serial number or product string.  If you want I could just post it for you to test your samples with as you seem pretty eager (I think your sticks should be in the mail today though so the wait is coming to an end anyhow). -- novak

My software skills are pretty weak. Not a big deal as the new ones are coming. I also have a house full of pcs and or macs. So when the new ones come I will setup one with the bfgminer and one with the new cfgminer. As for running Linux I should learn, but most likely I  just do not have the time.

Happy to be part of this awesome project!

That's fine I just wasn't sure if you had a pi or something that you could build cgminer on- thought I'd offer. If you have any trouble with the cgminer let me know, this is my first time making my own driver for it.  As for everything you'll need zadig on windows. -- novak

TY sidehack and novak! came nicely and safely packaged. I'll play with it later tonight! https://i.imgur.com/MjgcFh8.jpg https://i.imgur.com/7bcg433.jpg

Should work fine, just won't autodetect. So you'll need -S compac:\\.\COM1 (or whatever; compac:all is fine too).

I like the all green looks pretty sexy.   Everything from PCB to heatsink. Thanks for posting closeups of final product.

NP I just posted them hoping that it would motivate a few people on the sidelines.

OK I'll be that guy...have no idea how to set up a usb stick so.....if someone could point me to the dummy directions I'd appreciate it be step by step ....my first ASIC was a plug and play KNC Jupiter 550gh ....so never had to learn any of this stuff to top it all off I'll likely run them on a Unbuntu machine(s) (which i just run putty.exe on) so them skills are lame to (the 2 laptops monitoring with putty.exe my Titan(s)) (there is always that one clueless guy ..yep its me)    lost in the cornfield maze need a search and rescue team

If you want to run the sticks on linux, you'll need either bfgminer or cgminer.  Either way you are probably going to have to compile them, but I've had little trouble with this so it's probably just a matter of running a few simple commands. Here's what you'd do to get cgminer on linux going: 1. Open a terminal. 2. wget http://gekkoscience.com/misc/cgminer-gekko.tar.gz             This downloads the file- you can save it from your browser instead, it's the same thing. 3. tar -xvzf cgminer-gekko.tar.gz This extracts the files. which are compressed (like a zip file for linux) 4. cd cgminer-gekko   Enters the cgminer-gekko folder you just extracted. 5. sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf automake libtool You need to install the dependencies for cgminer. 6. ./autogen.sh This will generate a configure script for you which will set up compiling for your system. 7. ./configure --enable-gekko This will configure the build.  This is the most likely place to have anything go wrong, if it does, let me know exactly what's up.  Odds are it would be some package that you should have installed. 8. make Performs the build.  If you get an error there- again, let me know details. You are ready to run cgminer.  This should look something like: ./cgminer -o stratum+tcp://stratum.mining.eligius.st:3334 -u 1BURGERAXHH6Yi6LRybRJK7ybEm5m5HwTr --compac-freq 150 Although if you don't have permissions setup you may have to become root or use sudo, eg, sudo ./cgminer -o stratum+tcp://stratum.mining.eligius.st:3334 -u 1BURGERAXHH6Yi6LRybRJK7ybEm5m5HwTr --compac-freq 150 cgminer should now detect any compacs plugged in while it is running.  Obviously you'll use a slightly different command to launch cgminer, if you use that one you'll be mining for us!  Most pools even post example commands, let me know if you need help figuring it out. -- novak

Thanks Novak, I'll try loading cgminer-gekko up on the Pi today after work. So hopefully by the time the sticks arrive, I'll have the hub and everything else ready, then all I have to do is plug, tweak a little, and play

I don't have my sticks yet, but I'm configuring the software to get ready. I'm using Minera on a Raspberry Pi, but ran into some problems this morning. If anyone else is using Minera on a Pi, hopefully this info will be helpful. The version of bfgminer that comes with Minera is too old to use with the sticks. It has to be at least v5.3.0. Unfortunately my attempts to build the latest bfgminer have not succeeded. When using the Minera script (i.e. "build_miner.sh bfgminer"), I ended up with a very old version of bfgminer being built. And when I manually built bfgminer from the git trunk, I ended up with 5.2.0, which is also too old. I've posted on the minera and bfgminer threads, but decided to move on and try Novak's cgminer-gekko. Novak's instructions on this thread (the usual configure, make, sudo make install pattern), work fine. You should ssh in as the minera user (password "minera" if you didn't change it) then follow Novak's instructions to build and install. Once built, you have to make the binary "visible" to minera by copying it to the "custom" minera folder (you also have to use a different name than "cgminer"): Once copied, enable this binary as a custom miner by going to Settings -> Custom miners in the minera web GUI. There should be an entry for "cgminer-gekko" which you just have to turn on. If there is no "cgminer-gekko" entry, refresh the page so that minera will take a fresh look a the "custom" folder. Once the new cgminer-gekko is configured as a custom miner, you can select it from the popup list under Local Miner Settings. Then you can specify your frequency under Manual options (e.g. --compac-freq 150). You would also set up the usual options using the web GUI, like your pools. When you start up your miner, you can see the log in the Minera GUI, if logging was enabled. You can use the log to troubleshoot as needed. I typically disable the log after things are working just to reduce wear and tear on the SD card. If you want to get super fancy, you can install ramlog to put the log files in on a ram disk. I have a tutorial for that on the forum, but I have to admit that I don't bother setting this up any more. Once I've resolved the bfgminer version issues, I might set it up as an alternative local miner. But first I'll probably try the above "cgminer-gekko" configuration (once my sticks arrive). Hope this helps...