Hello,
I am doing a little study and testing with a friend of mine, regarding ASIC Mining and Bitcoin. I am not big into Bitcoin mining myself, however I am intrigued by it and understand the basis of what it is and how it works. The study is to document the usefulness of low cost mining equipment combined with low power consumption vs. top shelf mainstream mining equipment that is generally expensive and have a higher power consumption. The cost of equipment and the cost of power consumption are two really big factors in Bitcoin Mining. Albeit we understand that lower cost setups are not going to generate the same yield as larger and more costly setups.
Firstly, I feel I should go over exactly what I am using before explaining the problem, to further asses what the problem I am experiencing might be.
I am using a USB ASIC Block Erupter and a Raspberry Pi Model B. The Block Erupter is connected to a powered USB hub, which is connected to the Raspberry Pi. The Pi is connected directly to my router via ethernet cable. As for the mining pool, I am using Slush's Pool, which is easy to use, popular, and trusted within the Bitcoin community and its users. The problem is, I am having quite a bit of trouble getting whatever software I try on the Raspberry Pi to detect the ASIC Miner. I know the ASIC Miner works, as I have tried it on my laptop to confirm that it was in fact working as well as working with Slush's Pool, therefore these do not seem to the problem.
The first software I tried was Minepeon which is capable of using both bfgminer and cgminer, which are both compatible to use with Slush's Pool. I managed to get Minepeon to recognize the ASIC Miner after a little tinkering and it appeared to be mining, however my dashboard over at Slush's website showed my worker as being 'offline'.
The second and third software I tried was using Raspian alongside installing both bfgminer and cgminer directly. I also installed 'screen' on the Pi alongside a program on my laptop called Putty to SSH into the Terminal on the Pi, allowing me to view and enter commands in the terminal using either bfgminer or cgminer. Unfortunately I could not get either program to detect the ASIC Miner as being connected, even trying several versions of both programs. Cgminer was able recognize the ASIC Miner sometimes but only when I had the program manually list all available hardware, as it would not detect it automatically like it would in various tutorials. When attempting to select the ASIC Miner in order to start mining, I couldn't get the program to select it. At one point during one of my earlier attempts, I did manage to get it to start mining, or at least appear to be doing so, however again like with the Minepeon software, my dashboard over at Slush's website showed my worker being 'offline'.
So far I have had the most success with Minepeon which as mentioned is my favorite out of the three, however with the worker showing offline on Slushs website, it led me think that the Raspberry Pi and ASIC Miner weren't actually mining. Every tutorial I read or watched, the person seemed to get it working right off the bat and no matter the program, it would always detect the ASIC Miner automatically without having to fiddle with the program. It seemed pretty straight forward and even after many attempts and following various tutorials preciously, I just don't understand what is going on.
Currently I have re-installed Minepeon and I am about to starting fiddling with it again in hopes I can get it working properly so we can continue our study. I will keep you posted.
If anyone with experience on this matter could shed any light on the subject and help me get this running properly, I would be most gracious.
