Some notes:
2016-11-11
I noticed that the longer the USB Cable, more hardware errors occurs: this is because (I think) the distance and the curves in the cable creates some interference in the communications. I discover than longer than 1M can start to introduce this problem to the USB Stick.
By using the superbpag 7 USB Ports I don't need a Y USB cable, but I noticed that it get pretty hot after a few hours of use. Consider to set a cooling system for the USB hub.
I'm using 3 stickminers (the 727 I burned down by accident: kids always use a fan and a good heat sink if you pretends to set more than 150MHz), with 3 meters long USB cables, an old laptop fan cooler (around 31 dB) and some old but useful heat-sinks 9Y692
https://s21.postimg.org/v43qkpzsn/Screenshot_from_2016_11_11_11_44_20.pngThe voltages are 0.798V for the 709, 0.803V for the 714 and 0.799V for the 727. As you can see, there are running @ 350MHz without any problem after a long period of time, the rejected are because my bad internet connection, thats the price of living in the Dominican Republic. I managed to get up to 380 MHz, but every 5-10 minutes the 727 starts to give 1 HW and after an hour, every 10 seconds the 3 of them. Between 360 Mhz and 370 MHz, for some reason, 727 goes full zombie.
The internet is important: this configuration only uses up to 6KB/s of bandwith, so is 2KB/s per device.
I'm building a small cold chamber for the sticks using some Peltier cells and big-ass heat sinks and fan coolers, at least 500,000 mm³ for the final implementation, but for now I'll try with just some NF-F12 fans and the current heat sinks I have.
There are pretty expensive right now, only on
Amazon at the moment of writing. I got mine on august at USD$60 each on eBay, now "no found results". Because of this,
having more than 1 its not cost effective, remember these Stickminers are only for those who wants to test/have fun, so keep that in mind.
The electric bill in my country is a very corrupted system and the dollar exchange rate vary a lot: for September the bill was around USD$12, for an increment of USD$2 and I generated USD$0.60, for October was almost USD$23, for a false increment of USD$11. It's false because in october I only generated USD$0.47 and used my stickers 6 days less than september. To calculate the estimated electric cost just think about the power consumed by the USB Hub, add the computer/RaspBerry's power used, multiply per every hour of use and multiply by the cost of every consumed watt. To make this calculations shorts, I'm suppose to pay no more than USD$5.00 just for using my current mining rig and my main laptop.
Noise: I strongly believe that everything louder than 35 dB (common conversation level) its too much for a home, so keep in mind to use quiet fan, no more than 25 dB. Some of the new AntMiners, specifically the S9 are too loud, around 75 dB. THAT'S A JUMBO JET!!!
The current heat sinks of the Gekko, I think and I'm sorry for my offense, it's bad designed. It has vertical channels instead of horizontal ones to allows a correct air flow. But, we can change that with very little effort/cost. Just a quick search in Amazon or eBay.
