Farming Hardware: Odroid-U3

workin on it:

crowdfunding starts next week too :slight_smile:

@happybeing
Hi Happybeing,

I’ve been reading and rereading this thread for a while now with your excellent detailed posts and at the start I was going to go for an HP Proliant Microserver but looking at your running costs compared to an HP box the numbers would never stack up sooooo…I’m just about to order an Odroid U3 and wonder if you could have a brief look at what I’m ordering and let me know if I’m doing anything dumb please, hopefully this will also help others who may have similar questions on placing a final order. I would hate to mess this up and have to wait another three weeks and more delivery charges.

After reviewing posts from people who have already ordered it still seems HardKernel is the best place to order from and delivery time is three weeks, this is fine

I’m ordering from Hardkernel the below four items:

1 x Odroid U3
1 x 64GB eMMC for Linux (This I understand will come with Ubuntu 14 on)
1 x Odroid U3 case
1 x Wifi Module (even though I hope to use ethernet port)

Optional’s I don’t need for farming but I like the look of:
1 x Odroid Show 2
1 x Cooling Fan U3 (I think I would need to remove the original heat sink to fit this)

I live in the UK and wonder if there is a better power supply with a UK plug rather than the one on their site which looks like it will need an adapter to work in the UK, could I use a Raspberry PI adapter? I see the Hardkernel have a DC plug assembly kit but would prefer a proper sealed unit rather than wiring.

Thanks for your posts and hope you can advise.

Many Thanks Happybeing
Al

Hmmm, just looking at the fitlet range also now, that looks like a cracking small pc also…

Hi @Frontrow_Al

That’s pretty much what I ordered and looks fine. I also think the Lite version looks good, but haven’t bought one…yet.

You are right that the power supply is two pin, so needs a mains plug/socket adapter (not supplied).

It is rated 5v 2A, but any alternative would need to match the Odroid power socket which looks a bit unusual to me - unusually narrow. I don’t have a Pi to compare it with so you’d need to check this.

Edit: BTW The Raspberry Pi 2 has just gone on sale with a useful spec for just £25. Very tempting!

Thanks @happybeing

I saw the Pi released today and that the spec was a little lower and that spurred me on to get moving on the Odroid but if its just going to be dedicated to farming I may save myself the hassle of ordering from oversea’s and just buy two of the Pi’s, I’m also looking at the Gigabyte brix PC at the moment also but even that I think the W’s are going to be too high, especially if I want to start building a bank of these things, Will probably start with a Pi then…

Thanks again…
Al

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You’re welcome :-). I take it you’ve seen this and useful comments by David on what’s needed to run a vault:

Hi Happybeing,

I hadn’t seen it but happy I have as I bought two of these Pi’s today, the two boards from Maplin who were £15 more than RS but had stock to deliver on Friday. I bought the power supply’s and shell’s from RS and then the SD cards from Novatech. I hope it all arrives for Friday as I’ve cleared the weekend for tinkering…

Many Thanks
Al

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Having read this thread as a non-coder, interested in farming and now armed with a shopping list; Can I ask what do I do with my goodies once I get home?
Could a techie please make a step by step guide - especially any bits that include any “compiling” and the like? Many thanks

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Great thread thanks for all the info.

I decided to go with the cheapest setup to start, android C1 with micro SD 16G. I’ll plug a external hdd to it for the vault, I haven’t chosen which one yet. Internet is 10 MBit down and 1.5MBit up. I’ll also be using an old computer that’s been gathering dust and a mac mini. We’ll see how they will all fair, I’ll share my data when it goes live.

And I might get tempted by the very sexy looking Inal model V t1.

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It’ll be much easier if you wait for the installers - no compiling then!

You’ll get plenty of help if you need it, but obvs MaidSafe will be producing guides, and it would be a good test of the user experience for you to see how easy or hard it is to do on your own - but of course we’ll make sure you get it going :smile:

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Hi All,

There seems to be a really good deal on Hitachi storage from www.cclonline.com 4TB for for £118.

Its not the largest amount of space for the price but these disks seem to be getting really good reliability reviews from the cloud storage firms at the moment which you can read below.

I bought two for my two Raspberry PI 2’s

not NAS, just USB though.

Cheers
Al

p.s., talking about reliability, I’m happy to wait for Maidsafe to come online, reliability wins every time for me.

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If you’re not a “techie”, and this is only for farming, I’d say don’t try to manually compile a vault before TestNet3 is finished – unless you really want to / Linux is pretty fun if you’re interested. I don’t know when testnet3 will end (next month or so?), but if you’re interested in farming, I suggest focus more of your time on the hardware. When BETA testing is complete, the installer package will be a 3 or 4 click plus fill in a few fields affair (I.e. no coding needed. [Disclosure, I don’t work for MaidSAFE]).

In terms of a guide, you’ve probably gathered that it’s a bit of a wild wild West right now. There are no “best practices in MaidSAFE farming” to avoid those gaming the system (among other reasons). At this point, short of learning to code and studying up to be more techie (the fact that you’re on this forum in my mind means you’re already a techie BTW!), just start studying basic PC components, if you haven’t already. For example, I’ve built two stable DDR2 based desktops (Intel LGA775 CPU sockets) in the last month or so, and have almost bought all components for a DDR3 desktop all in prep to farm. My own “testnet” will involve various benchmarks, variables, criteria etc.

I’d rather encourage over dis…, but you won’t learn to code in one or two months, unless you have one language in mind and can commit full-time to it. There are countless how tos and guides on YouTube for building PCs, assuming you have beginner knowledge.

HGST is awesome, used to be Hitachi, split as a subsidiary type brand, then it seems Western Digital bought it (if you buy an HGST, you’ll see a WD on the case), but luckily kept the quality standards!

Hi @gonefarmin
Has testnet3 started?, I’ve been watching the ants and they haven’t moved so thought we were still waiting, I’ve got my two Pi’s waiting to join for some testnet fun…

Hopefully WD will keep Hitachi high standards for a while…

cheers
Al

It seems to me they’re knocking off “to dos” on testnet 2 and 3 at the same time (makes sense, that’s the way software dev goes).

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I’m installing a 7.5 KW solar panel system next week! I’m so exited I can’t wait!

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That’s a lot of panels etc. Would love to hear about it (in off-topic). Mine is 720W (yes W) :slight_smile:

So I’ve been looking around for some hardware to use as a server/ farming rig. It would be sitting on a 100Mb/s symmetric connection.

I spotted there is a new Odroid out the XU4 which has USB 3.0

I was thinking of trying that with a hybrid SSD 4Tb drive:

Via this enclosure:
http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G137448544866

It would come to about £195.

What would be the bottleneck in this system do you think? Is there a better system for £200

Thanks

Sam

I wouldnt go for any kind of decaying technology such as SSD with high writes or big turnaround of data. We all dont know anything about how (maid)safenet will act and what it will turn out i/o and load wise. Id say you better go for a simple hard drive first and do some mid- to long-term (or even short) oberservations before your throw SSD at it. First observe. Then think about it. Then act. Cheers.

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Fair point about going for tried and tested…

I guess as I’ll have two USB 3.0 ports it might be an interesting experiment to plug in two drives, one SSD hybrid and one conventional. Setting them up as two vaults and seeing if there is a difference.

I’ll consider whether I want to chuck another £120 at it to do the experiment…

Thanks

Sam

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