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nightwalker
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Feb 25, 2007
- Messages
- 2,555
I thought I would start a proper thread on these as we don't have one yet.
I've had quite a few of them hashing away for a while now so I'll share my thoughts.
Buying the actual units:
I've been a lurker on the BTCtalk forums for quite a while now, that place is crawling with scammer's so please be careful who you buy from if you're hunting on there. I bought both of my shipments from Zoomhash and I can say he is 100% legit. But if you are buying more than a couple of units they will ship from China, granted he does use Fedex International Priority so it is very fast. (Took about 3 days to get to me each time).
Even though they supposedly sell 'plug and play' kits now I'm still not convinced it really is.
There are several ways you can power / configure these units. The worse part about getting mine was that the USB cables bundled with them did not even fit the units, the first batch I had to melt down part of the plastic around the mini-USB connector so it would slide into the Gridseed. Then the second batch, they sent micro-USB cables instead *uber facepalm*. You can use your own USB hubs but not all of them will work, at the moment I've tested a 10 port Rosewill one that works and it must be USB 2.0. The Gridseed gear does not like anything USB 3.0.
Powering the units is personal opinion which way you want to go about it, personally I went the way of spending the extra money on getting power bricks for every unit so I didn't have to hack together wires to use the LED / hobby PSU's that most people use ( and also only 1 would fail at a time instead of the whole rack). If you want to go that route then diagrams are available online so you can see how they wire them up. It is not difficult and all you need is the barrel connectors and some wire. I used 18 gauge Pyle speaker cable for testing mine and it worked perfectly.
Configuring them:
As of late, most people are selling bundles with a RasPi as they can easily run 20+ units.
I am using both the Wiibox controller and Windows on different setups.
The Wiibox controller is handy if you don't want to use a computer to run them, you just track down the IP of it in your router settings and you can get into it that way through a browser. It is very straight forward to set up, but you cannot see the stats of each unit. The only thing you see is how many are running and the pool settings. There are firmware upgrades floating around to be able to see more options but I have not messed with any of that as I've heard of people having their pool settings jacked and basically mining for someone else :/
Edit: The last Wiibox i got in a pack refused to work with any settings, so YMMV with these.
CPUminer / CGminer can also be used. There are compiled versions out there specifically for the Gridseeds.
For the Gridseed version of CGminer (Scrypt Only) :
DL Link http://cryptomining-blog.com/wp-content/files/cgminer-3-7-2-gridseed-windows.zip
Download and open Zadig : http://zadig.akeo.ie/
Go to 'Options' and 'List All Devices' then install the driver for the Gridseed, it will probably be named STM32 Virtual COM Port in the device list.
Edit the .bat file with your user / pool info before launching it, once it's connected to your pool then plug the Gridseed unit into a USB 2.0 port then it should start hashing away a few seconds later. If it's not hashing then check the 'hotplug' command in your .bat file, it may need to be changed from 0 to 5. Remember that the miner must be unplugged from the USB port every time you start CGminer.
And lastly, yes, they can mine SHA256 as well as Scrypt, but it really is not worth it profitability wise and they use a lot more power.
That about covers the basics, so really, are they worth it? That depends....
The Good:
They are small, run cool, and mine Scrypt at least 300 khash per unit.
Obviously the best part is the power consumption, the worst case scenario i've seen by plugging a K-A-W meter into a set of 10 units with a controller was 120 watts mining Scrypt.
The Bad:
They will not mine anything other than Scrypt / SHA256, so if you have a big GPU setup don't think about selling it all off to buy these, as we all know, when Scrypt gets ASIC bloated, the next best coins to mine will be something like Scrypt-N.
The price, they are fairly expensive so I only suggest buying these if you don't care about ROI, or if you've got coins burning a hole in your pocket. After all, it's not ALL about making $$$ right?
Amazon links for bits and pieces that I use (or have used) that 100% work.
10 Port USB hub: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004F38WT4
Barrel Connectors: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0058RLD9C
Power Supply: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00D7CWSCG
Wire: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003ZX8NX0
Single Power Bricks (for people who don't want to make their own wires): http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003TUMDWG/
I hope this helps some curious people.
I've had quite a few of them hashing away for a while now so I'll share my thoughts.
Buying the actual units:
I've been a lurker on the BTCtalk forums for quite a while now, that place is crawling with scammer's so please be careful who you buy from if you're hunting on there. I bought both of my shipments from Zoomhash and I can say he is 100% legit. But if you are buying more than a couple of units they will ship from China, granted he does use Fedex International Priority so it is very fast. (Took about 3 days to get to me each time).
Even though they supposedly sell 'plug and play' kits now I'm still not convinced it really is.
There are several ways you can power / configure these units. The worse part about getting mine was that the USB cables bundled with them did not even fit the units, the first batch I had to melt down part of the plastic around the mini-USB connector so it would slide into the Gridseed. Then the second batch, they sent micro-USB cables instead *uber facepalm*. You can use your own USB hubs but not all of them will work, at the moment I've tested a 10 port Rosewill one that works and it must be USB 2.0. The Gridseed gear does not like anything USB 3.0.
Powering the units is personal opinion which way you want to go about it, personally I went the way of spending the extra money on getting power bricks for every unit so I didn't have to hack together wires to use the LED / hobby PSU's that most people use ( and also only 1 would fail at a time instead of the whole rack). If you want to go that route then diagrams are available online so you can see how they wire them up. It is not difficult and all you need is the barrel connectors and some wire. I used 18 gauge Pyle speaker cable for testing mine and it worked perfectly.
Configuring them:
As of late, most people are selling bundles with a RasPi as they can easily run 20+ units.
I am using both the Wiibox controller and Windows on different setups.
The Wiibox controller is handy if you don't want to use a computer to run them, you just track down the IP of it in your router settings and you can get into it that way through a browser. It is very straight forward to set up, but you cannot see the stats of each unit. The only thing you see is how many are running and the pool settings. There are firmware upgrades floating around to be able to see more options but I have not messed with any of that as I've heard of people having their pool settings jacked and basically mining for someone else :/
Edit: The last Wiibox i got in a pack refused to work with any settings, so YMMV with these.
CPUminer / CGminer can also be used. There are compiled versions out there specifically for the Gridseeds.
For the Gridseed version of CGminer (Scrypt Only) :
DL Link http://cryptomining-blog.com/wp-content/files/cgminer-3-7-2-gridseed-windows.zip
Download and open Zadig : http://zadig.akeo.ie/
Go to 'Options' and 'List All Devices' then install the driver for the Gridseed, it will probably be named STM32 Virtual COM Port in the device list.
Edit the .bat file with your user / pool info before launching it, once it's connected to your pool then plug the Gridseed unit into a USB 2.0 port then it should start hashing away a few seconds later. If it's not hashing then check the 'hotplug' command in your .bat file, it may need to be changed from 0 to 5. Remember that the miner must be unplugged from the USB port every time you start CGminer.
And lastly, yes, they can mine SHA256 as well as Scrypt, but it really is not worth it profitability wise and they use a lot more power.
That about covers the basics, so really, are they worth it? That depends....
The Good:
They are small, run cool, and mine Scrypt at least 300 khash per unit.
Obviously the best part is the power consumption, the worst case scenario i've seen by plugging a K-A-W meter into a set of 10 units with a controller was 120 watts mining Scrypt.
The Bad:
They will not mine anything other than Scrypt / SHA256, so if you have a big GPU setup don't think about selling it all off to buy these, as we all know, when Scrypt gets ASIC bloated, the next best coins to mine will be something like Scrypt-N.
The price, they are fairly expensive so I only suggest buying these if you don't care about ROI, or if you've got coins burning a hole in your pocket. After all, it's not ALL about making $$$ right?
Amazon links for bits and pieces that I use (or have used) that 100% work.
10 Port USB hub: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004F38WT4
Barrel Connectors: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0058RLD9C
Power Supply: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00D7CWSCG
Wire: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003ZX8NX0
Single Power Bricks (for people who don't want to make their own wires): http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003TUMDWG/
I hope this helps some curious people.
Last edited:
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