As the proud owner of a Bitmain cryptominer, you can look forward to a very simple setup. In the tutorial below, we will explain how to log in to Antpool and get your miner up and running.
1. Basic
First of all, we would like to point out that your cryptominer consumes a lot of power, so you will need an appropriate power supply. We therefore recommend cold appliance power cables with at least 1 mm² cable cross-section.
Do not use cheap power cables which are already conspicuous by their much too soft sheathing. The printed cable cross section of 0.75 mm² is not reached in reality and a cable fire can occur.
For this reason, we have simulated a cable fire under safe conditions (dangerous – do not copy!):
Scorched power cable
In the event of a cable fire, a load fuse will not necessarily trip and sparks will fly.
Therefore, the following also applies here: Do not use unnecessary extension cables or make sure that the cable cross-section is appropriately large and place the miners in a safe environment. A functioning grounding is also useful for the metal housings in addition to a RCD.
For our tutorial, we used a Bitmain Antminer S9j. However, the web interface on Bitmain is identical or very similar for all miners.
2. Connecting the Miner
Bitmain Antminer S9j
The Antminer consists of a housing with the ASIC modules and a controller board with LAN connection. The power connectors of the ASIC modules protrude from the housing and are connected to the controller board. The housing forms an elongated air duct with a fan on the front and a fan on the back. This pulls cool air in a stream through the case and ensures adequate cooling
When connecting the power supply, make sure that the cables are plugged in the correct direction. For this, each connector and cable has a clip, this clip should snap once in place.
For larger miners with more ASIC boards and multiple power supplies, there is a bit more to consider. For example, connecting different power supplies on the same ASIC board is not recommended and may damage the hardware. Therefore always connect only the power cables from one power supply to one ASIC module.
After all cables of the power supply have been connected to the ASIC modules and the controller board, the miner can also be connected to a router or switch and then to the power supply. Once the power cable is plugged in, the miner will automatically boot, running the fans at maximum speed.
3. Registration in AntPool
Now we can start (preferably before we switch on the miner) the registration on AntPool.
Registration is possible on antpool.com by clicking on “Register”. In the course of the registration only an e-mail address has to be entered, which will be confirmed with a code sent by e-mail.
After successful registration, a new worker account must be added by clicking on “Worker” -> “Create a Sub-Account”.
Note: The name of the sub-account must not yet exist in the AntPool. Therefore, if an already assigned user name is selected, the creation of the sub-account will fail.
After the sub-account has been created, it can be configured directly. To do this, call “Setting” and next to the corresponding sub-account “Configure”. In the following view, the wallet address for withdrawals can be changed after clicking on “edit” and saved by clicking on “Confirm”.
In our tutorial, we selected the username “millionminer-test”.
4. Setting up the Bitmain AntMiner
After we have wired our AntMiner and created an account with AntPool we come to the setup of the cryptominer itself.
According to this, the miner should be connected to the router / switch and turned on
Note: If the fans do not work, the miner should be turned off and the fans replaced.
Afterwards the IP address of the AntMiner must be determined, this goes fastest by searching in the router in the appropriate menu for clients in the local network. There the miner will be listed similar to the following screenshot:
In our tutorial, the miner is running at IP address 192.168.1.244 – we can enter this address in the address bar of any browser, such as Firefox or Chrome.
In the following, we are prompted to enter the Antminer default username and password.
The username is root and the password is also root – of course, it is recommended to adjust this at the end.
After that the overview page of the web interface is displayed, here we switch to the tab “Miner-Configuration”.
Afterwards the three different addresses of the AntPool can be entered. The workername is always composed of the user name, a dot and a freely chosen worker name. In our example the user name is millionminer-test and the worker name is 10×32, so the worker name to be entered is
millionminer-test.10x32If several miners or workers are operated under the same user name, the miners could also be named as follows:
millionminer-test.miner1
millionminer-test.miner2
millionminer-test.miner3
millionminer-test.miner4
millionminer-test.miner5The three addresses of the AntPool are:
stratum+tcp://ss.antpool.com:3333
stratum+tcp://ss.antpool.com:443
stratum+tcp://ss.antpool.com:25In our example miner we therefore enter the following values and confirm the entry with “Save&Apply”.
For clarification, the username and workername have been highlighted once again.
After some time the ASIC modules start working and connect to the pool.
The individual workers are then visible under the tab “Worker” in the AntPool (can take up to 15 minutes).
The status of the ASIC modules can be checked via the “Miner Status” tab in the miner’s web interface.
The most important information here is:
GH/s (avg), ASIC status and chain – where GH/s (avg) represents the average hash performance and ASIC status reflects the status of the individual ASIC chips on the ASIC modules. A status of 00000000 is very good and means that all chips are working properly.
The rate of hardware errors (HW), on the other hand, can also be ignored, because these hardware errors are usually corrected automatically by the software of the miner.
The chain number becomes interesting when it comes to identifying defective boards, because the chain number corresponds to the number of the corresponding connector on the controller board:
5. Good to know
Some readers might have noticed that in our test we used only two active ASIC modules in a miner with three ASIC modules. Such a configuration by unplugging the unneeded ASIC modules is easily possible on many Bitmain models.
It is also possible to adjust the power consumption and performance up or down under “Miner Configuration”. In our example we used the power saving mode, because we only wanted to demonstrate the setup of the miner.
Still have questions? Just write an answer in the comments!
6. Webinterface
Last but not least, we have summarized the entire web interface in a short video.