Setting up an AvalonMiner comes down to five things: supply it the right power, put it on a wired network, find its IP address, log into the web dashboard, and point it at your mining pool. This guide walks each step for the modern Canaan A-series (A10xx through A15) — the integrated-controller units that ship without an external Raspberry Pi — and flags the mistakes that most often keep a new unit from hashing.
Before you power on
Inspect the unit first. If the outer packaging arrived crushed or the miner rattles, photograph it and open a claim before plugging anything in — loose hashboards and cracked heatsinks travel badly. Then confirm your site can actually feed it.
- Power. Modern industrial Avalons require a 200–240 V AC supply and will not run on a standard North-American 120 V circuit. Each unit pulls roughly 3,000–3,500 W depending on model and mode, so give it its own dedicated breaker and a properly rated cord — do not daisy-chain it off a shared 15 A outlet.
- Network. Industrial Avalons are wired Ethernet only — there is no Wi-Fi. Run a solid Cat5e/Cat6 line to a switch or router that hands out DHCP.
- Environment. These are hashcenter machines: loud, hot, and dust-hungry. Site the miner where it can pull cool air in the front and exhaust freely out the back, and never restrict either fan.
Step-by-step setup
1. Connect power and network
Seat the AC connector fully into the PSU and the Ethernet cable into the miner’s control-board port, then energize the circuit. Watch the fans: they should spin to full speed on power-up as a self-test, then settle. A unit whose fans never spin, or that immediately alarms, has a power or hardware fault — stop and diagnose rather than forcing it.
2. Boot and find the IP address
Give the miner two to five minutes to finish booting. By default it requests an address over DHCP, so the fastest way to find it is your router’s DHCP client list — look for the Canaan/Avalon hostname or the miner’s MAC. Alternatives:
- Use a network scanner (for example
nmap -p 80,4028 192.168.1.0/24) and look for a host answering on port 80 (web dashboard) and port 4028 (the CGMiner API these units expose). - If your model carries an IP-report button or a small display, use it to read the address off the unit directly.
Note that discovery here is a scan-and-answer over the LAN, not a lookup table — the miner has to be on the same broadcast domain as the machine you are searching from.
3. Log into the dashboard and change the default password
Open the IP address in a browser. Avalon units ship with default credentials of root / root. Log in, then immediately change that password. Leaving the factory login in place is the single most common way mining LANs get compromised, so treat this as a required step, not an optional one. For real protection, keep every miner on an isolated management LAN or VLAN with no direct inbound path from the internet.
4. Configure the network
DHCP is fine for a single unit, but for anything you plan to monitor long-term set a static IP so the address never moves. In the network settings enter an IP inside your subnet, the correct subnet mask, your router’s address as the gateway, and a working DNS server (your router or 1.1.1.1). A wrong gateway is the classic reason a miner shows “connected” locally but never reaches the pool.
5. Enter your pool details
In the pool/configuration section, fill in up to three pools (primary plus backups, tried in order):
- URL: your pool’s stratum address, e.g.
stratum+tcp://pool.example.com:3333 - Worker: usually
<your-account>.<rig-name>— match the exact format your pool documents - Password: typically
xunless your pool specifies otherwise
Adding at least one backup pool means a single pool outage won’t idle the machine. Remember that losing the pool or the network doesn’t make a miner run flat-out — the firmware simply idles and keeps retrying until a pool answers.
6. Choose an operating mode, then apply
Most A-series units let you pick a work mode — commonly a normal/standard profile, a high-performance profile that trades efficiency for hashrate, and on some models a low-power profile. Start in the standard mode until you have confirmed cooling and power are solid; only step up to high-performance once the unit has run stable. Avalon regulates voltage per power domain directly from the control SoC — there is no PIC chip and no per-chip trimming — so the mode you pick is the tuning lever you get. Save the configuration and reboot when prompted; the miner will come back up and begin hashing to your pool.
Verify it’s actually hashing
Don’t walk away on a green light alone. On the dashboard confirm the real-time hashrate climbs toward the model’s rated figure within 10–20 minutes, that all hashboards report chips found (a board short of its full chip count is a repair flag), and that inlet/outlet temperatures sit in range. Finally, check the worker shows online with accepted shares on your pool’s dashboard — that is the only proof the whole chain works end to end.
Common setup mistakes
- Feeding it 120 V. An industrial Avalon on a 120 V circuit either won’t start or badly under-performs. Confirm 200–240 V first.
- Wrong gateway or DNS. The miner boots and shows an IP but never connects to the pool. Recheck the gateway and DNS entries.
- Worker name format. A rejected worker is almost always a formatting mismatch — copy the exact pattern from your pool’s help page.
- Restricted airflow. A miner crammed into a closet throttles and error-codes on heat within minutes. Give it front-to-back clearance.
- Skipping the password change. Default
root/rooton a routable network is an open door.
A word on safety
Inside the miner, the DC busbars feeding the hashboards run at low voltage and are not a shock hazard. The danger lives on the mains side of the PSU, where filter and PFC capacitors hold roughly 400 V and stay charged after unplugging. Never open a running unit, and give a disconnected PSU several minutes to bleed down before touching its input side.
When it won’t cooperate
If the unit boots but a hashboard is dead, a fan is alarming, or the hashrate sits far below rated, that is a hardware condition, not a setup one — work it as a repair. Keep firmware to official signed images from Canaan’s own portal; never flash an unofficial build onto a production unit. If you’re stuck, Canaan aftersales can be reached at avalonsupport@canaan.io, and D-Central can take it from there.
Related: Match your fault to a fix with the ASIC Fault Finder, pull the paperwork for your unit from the miner manuals library, and when a board or fan needs to come out, start a repair with D-Central.
