Laur IVAN

Vega 56 and ETH – Keep Your Cool

TL;DR: Keep your Vega cool if you want high hash rates! Recently, I’ve got a AMD Vega RX 56, to see for myself how good it is on mining. If you ignore the power consumption, it’s quicker than my RX580 cards. I’m getting 33+MH/s consistently: At the beginning of the session I even got 36MH/s, but, as temperature rose, the hash rate dropped to 33+ stable. Unfortunately, my setup is less than ideal: No decent linux support and I haven’t got the time to tweak a vanilla Ubuntu install with…read more

Sep.01

Mining Rig Build Log – 1

Posted by laur in Hardware, Tutorial

I’ve decided to join the recent trend of mining cryptocoins with GPUs. First, I got a GPU (an EVGA 1070) to complement my 970 and stuck it in my desktop. This is nowhere near profitable because I’d have to block an I7 machine to mine on 2 cards, and also get annoyed because I can’t use it. also, rather than my previous attempt few years back using a couple of cards stuck in a desktop PC and having all family complaining of the noise, I’ve decided to build a proper…read more

Jun.23

SoundMachine Build Log 02

Posted by laur in Hardware, Tutorial

I’ve decided to put in a knob to control the volume directly on the box itself. It will be controlled by volumio itself via a plugin, much like the GPIO Buttons plugin. Since this is really a development kit approach, the hardware consists of: A KY-040 rotary encoder and A screw-based prototype board Both are relatively easy and cheap to find and buy. Rotary encoder The encoder is straight-forward cheap version, with a push button too, just in case. It’s even mounted on a PCB and has pins too, so…read more

Jun.15

SoundMachine
Build Log 01

Posted by laur in Hardware, Tutorial

A while ago I’ve decided to try my hand at replacing my Sonos system with a DIY version of a sound system. I have two reasons to do this: I think it’s going to be fun and I have a bunch of FLAC files at odd resolutions which are not really playable by the Sonos system. After giving it some thought, I’ve settled on the following configuration: A Raspberry Pi A sound card for the Raspberry Pi. For starters I’ll be going with a Chinese clone An amplifier A couple…read more

Jun.13

HifiBerry Pin Usage

Posted by laur in Hardware, Tutorial

The past few days I’ve been struggling with the unknown of how many pins from the GPIO interface are actually used by the HifiBerry sound card (or my clone). Fortunately, I’ve found the used pins: As you can see, there are quite a few pins left for other things, which means I won’t have to use an arduino to control things anymore :) HTH, A little experiment: If you find this post and ad below useful, please check the ad out :-)

Apr.20

My Raspberry Pi 3 Config.txt for Volumio

Posted by laur in Hardware

My stable configuration file for Volumio looks like this now: Basics:

initramfs volumio.initrd
gpu_mem=16
max_usb_current=1
disable_splash=1

initramfs volumio.initrd

gpu_mem=16

max_usb_current=1

disable_splash=1

Sound card:

dtparam=audio=on
dtparam=i2c_arm=on
dtoverlay=hifiberry-dacplus
dtoverlay=lirc-rpi:gpio_in_pin=26

dtparam=audio=on

dtparam=i2c_arm=on

dtoverlay=hifiberry-dacplus

dtoverlay=lirc-rpi:gpio_in_pin=26

WaveShare screen:

max_usb_current=1
hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=87
hdmi_cvt 1024 600 60 6 0 0 0
hdmi_drive=1

max_usb_current=1

hdmi_group=2

hdmi_mode=87

hdmi_cvt 1024 600 60 6 0 0 0

hdmi_drive=1

Network:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet manual
    wpa-roam /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
    post-up ifdown eth0
iface default inet dhcp

auto lo

iface lo inet loopback

allow-hotplug eth0

iface eth0 inet dhcp

allow-hotplug wlan0

iface wlan0 inet manual

wpa-roam /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

post-up ifdown eth0

iface default inet dhcp

The only more convoluted configuration is the networking, which allows me to connect to my wireless network. Once the setup will be stabilised, I will be able to connect it via ethernet, making the whole last section obsolete. And the wpa_supplicant.conf file looks like:

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1

network={
  ssid="ssid"
  psk="passphrase"
  id_str="Home"
  proto=RSN
  key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
  pairwise=CCMP
}

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev

update_config=1

network={

ssid="ssid"

psk="passphrase"

id_str="Home"

proto=RSN

key_mgmt=WPA-PSK

pairwise=CCMP

}

HTH, A little experiment: If you find this post and ad below useful, please check the ad out :-)

Apr.19

Configure Volumio with PiFi DIGI DAC+

Posted by laur in Hardware, Tutorial

The other day I’ve got a Chinese clone of HiFiBerry, a PiFi DAC+ v2.0: Here are the steps to configure it with Volumio. First, you need to install Volumio 2 (2.129 at the moment of writing). You need to configure it to e.g. connect to the network, index songs. Note: Back up your config.txt (and wpa_supplicant.conf) Once you’ve got it up and running, select the Playback menu: … and select the Hifibetty DAC Plus for the Output Device and *DAC Model. Make sure you enable I2S DAC: For the options,…read more

Oct.11

AppleIntelSKLGraphicsFramebuffer – Kernel panic with Intel530

Posted by laur in Hardware, IT

TL;DR: My solution was to just set the DVMT (Dynamic Video Memory Technology) to 64M. YMMV though… Yesterday I decided I want to start building a hackintosh to replace my old mac mini. My system has the following components: Asus Maximus Hero VIII Alpha 16 GB of RAM I6700k Some SSDs, HDDs and a NVMe I chose not to get a graphics card since the nice ones are both expensive (600+ for a GTX1080) and unsupported (there are reports of RX480 working-ish). So, for the time being I’m stuck with…read more

Aug.10

Fix “No Voice” with Kraken 7.1 and VLC on OSX

Posted by laur in Hardware

Today I had an odd issue with my Kraken 7.1 Chroma: I could not hear the voices in a movie in VLC. I could however hear the other sounds (like the voices were filtered out). I could also hear everything with the internal speakers or one of the monitors… I’ve tried finding answers online but the only bits I could find were for Windows. So, without further ado, my solution is to install Boom 2 (as a trial). I’ve ended up buying it because it boosts up audio nicely. If…read more

Feb.24

Definitive Tutorial to CM13 on LG G2 D802

Posted by laur in Hardware, IT, Tutorial

&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE&lt;/strong&gt;: You need to be able to reach download mode at least (&lt;strong&gt;Power + Volume Up&lt;/strong&gt;).

1 2	<li><strong>NOTE</strong>: You need to be able to reach download mode at least (<strong>Power + Volume Up</strong>).

If you don’t you need to go search somewhere else how to get to this point. Prerequisites You’ll need the following: A Windows machine. Windows 8 is what I tried, but I think Win 10 will do as well. USB 2.0. I haven’t tried with USB 3 port. LG Recovery Tool 2014 A Lollipop Stock ROM (kdz). You can get one on DevTester AutoRec for your phone variant (Play store) The One Click Recovery TWRP from BlastGator – Get the highest 2.8 and a 3.x version CM13 ROM Hybrid…read more