Scrypt mining on a PC using GPUs can be very power intensive. With just one Radeon GPU, I was easily consuming over 200 watts of power to get about 333KH/s.
Using a Rapberry Pi is the a great choice when looking for a low power solution. With a Pi, this is a lot lower, normally in the 2 to 3 watt range.
I purchased a Gridseed ASIC These can hash about 360KH/s without overclocking and consume about 7 watts of power.
To power the Gridseed, I ordered this cable and hooked it up to an old PC power supply.
To power everything up:
1. Hookup the power cable to the 6 pin PCI-E power cable on the PC power supply
2. Hookup the USB cord to the ASIC, then into the Raspberry Pi USB port
3. Power on the Raspberry Pi
For this install, we are using the latest version of Raspbian found here.
Once your system comes up, you should be able to detect the Gridseed:
$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 0483:5740 STMicroelectronics STM32F407
Now that your device is connected and ready to go, let’s get the mining software.
There is a fork of cgminer, that is specifically designed for the Gridseed that we will use.
Let’s clone it and build!
Install git:
$ sudo apt-get install git
You may need these packages:
$ sudo apt-get install libncurses-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libudev-dev
Clone cgminer:
$ git clone https://github.com/dtbartle/cgminer-gc3355.git
Build cgminer:
$ cd cgminer-gc3355
$ ./configure --enable-scrypt --enable-gridseed
This might take awhile to configure. Afterwards, you should see this output:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
cgminer 3.7.2
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Configuration Options Summary:
libcurl(GBT+getwork).: Enabled: -lcurl
curses.TUI...........: FOUND: -lncurses
scrypt...............: Enabled
OpenCL...............: Detection overrided. GPU mining support DISABLED
ADL..................: SDK NOT found, GPU monitoring support DISABLED
Avalon.ASICs.........: Disabled
BFL.ASICs............: Disabled
KnC.ASICs............: Disabled
BitForce.FPGAs.......: Disabled
BitFury.ASICs........: Disabled
Hashfast.ASICs.......: Disabled
GridSeed.ASICs.......: Enabled
Icarus.ASICs/FPGAs...: Disabled
Klondike.ASICs.......: Disabled
ModMiner.FPGAs.......: Disabled
Compilation............: make (or gmake)
CPPFLAGS.............:
CFLAGS...............: -g -O2
LDFLAGS..............: -lpthread
LDADD................: -lcurl compat/jansson-2.5/src/.libs/libjansson.a -lpthread -lm compat/libusb-1.0/libusb/.libs/libusb-1.0.a -ludev -lrt
Installation...........: make install (as root if needed, with 'su' or 'sudo')
prefix...............: /usr/local
This tells you that ASIC mining is enabled:
GridSeed.ASICs.......: Enabled
Now, we will compile cgminer, which should take awhile:
$ make
Use the cgminer binary to run against your favorite mining pool. You will need to use sudo, since it needs access to the USB device.
I am mining Dogecoin on nut2pools. Here is an example:
$ sudo ./cgminer --scrypt -o stratum+tcp://dogus.nut2pools.com:5585 -u XXX -p password --gridseed-options=baud=115200,freq=850,chips=5
You should see some output from cgminer, letting you know that is is all working:
cgminer version 3.7.2 - Started: [2014-06-02 05:53:47]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(5s):359.5K (avg):360.1Kh/s | A:320 R:0 HW:0 WU:4.6/m
ST: 2 SS: 0 NB: 2 LW: 11 GF: 0 RF: 0
Connected to dogus.nut2pools.com diff 64 with stratum as user XXX
Block: 6b81ca93... Diff:812 Started: [05:53:51] Best share: 234
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[P]ool management [S]ettings [D]isplay options [Q]uit
GSD 0: 6D92285E4857 850 MHz | 360.0K/360.1Kh/s | A:320 R:0 HW:0 WU: 4.6/m
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2014-06-02 05:53:45] Started cgminer 3.7.2
[2014-06-02 05:53:46] GridSeed options: 'baud=115200,freq=850,chips=5'
[2014-06-02 05:53:46] Device found, firmware version 01140113, driver version v3.8.5.20140210.02
[2014-06-02 05:53:46] System reseting
[2014-06-02 05:53:46] Set GC3355 core frequency to 850 MHz
[2014-06-02 05:53:46] Probing for an alive pool
[2014-06-02 05:53:47] Pool 0 difficulty changed to 64
[2014-06-02 05:53:47] Network diff set to 731
[2014-06-02 05:53:51] Network diff set to 812
[2014-06-02 05:53:51] Stratum from pool 0 detected new block
[2014-06-02 05:53:54] Accepted 015cce8d Diff 188/64 GSD 0
[2014-06-02 05:54:10] Accepted 02ae8b33 Diff 95/64 GSD 0
[2014-06-02 05:54:19] Accepted 020687a1 Diff 126/64 GSD 0
[2014-06-02 05:54:21] Accepted 011872eb Diff 234/64 GSD 0
[2014-06-02 05:54:27] Accepted 02860798 Diff 101/64 GSD 0
Now that this is running, I am saving a lot more power. Here is how we ended up:
Raspberry Pi = 2 watts
PC Powersupply = 20 watts
Total = 22 watts
Previous usage = 200 watts
This is about 10 times less which will help my PG&E power bill.
Happy Mining!
