Quote from: emoomjean on March 05, 2014, 12:27:31 AM

Quote from: worldlybedouin on March 04, 2014, 11:57:19 PM

Quote from: richmke on March 04, 2014, 11:31:39 PM

Can anyone comment on using Raspberry Pi vs. the Controller?

Can the RasPi vary the Mhz up to 900?
Does the RasPi get the same hashing rate for the same speed?
Can it run the miners without rebooting (or rebooting only one miner when the miner disconnects)?

Any other advantages or disadvantage of the RasPi vs the controller?

I've got 10 running off my RasPi:

1. Yes, you can vary it using the --freq=900 flag for minerd.
2. Yes, in fact I'm seeing a slightly higher rate, but that could just be because of the improved stability.
3. Yes, running rock solid for 3 days straight now with no reboots, freezes, etc.

I won't switch back to the controller unless they do something amazing with that firmware.

I like the concept, but i'm curious how well it can scale with a more sizable amount of miners. Would a RasPi be able to support dozens of units? I've heard the controllers that ship with the units can technically support up to 20 units, but they are underpowered and the hashing increase tapers off as you add miners (sorry I don't have the source for that report).

-Moomjean

I think it's fair to say the controllers aren't the best and when it comes to 20 miners it does in fact have issues. From what I understand it has to do with the limited amount of memory on the controller (or so I recall reading in someone's post who had "hacked" the LightingASIC firmware).

Unfortunately I cannot test this for you to say for 100% certainty but I don't think 20 miners would be a problem for RasPi at all.

Additionally, the official controller units cost somewhere between $60-$100 depending upon who you buy a replacement from should it break down...and a RasPi only costs $50 and is easily sourced/replaceabled (Amazon for a RasPi, source code via GitHub, and a bit of time to put it together). Or if you get it setup and working the way you want on 1 RasPi you could clone the RasPi's SD card and just setup another batch of 10 or 20 with a 2nd RasPi...

Later down the line the guys from Scripta are going to include Gridseed 5-chip miner support in their RasPi distro...which means a nice clean WebUI, fail over pools, saving/restoring configurations,... You get the idea.