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The trophy has been sent to everyone's wallet address, please kindly check it. If you have any problem, feel free to PM us. ;D

Update 26/5/2015

Results of “Speaking IMHO”- The Best Miner is…Contest

Gentlemen and gentlemen, thank you so so so much for your enthusiastic participation and brilliant inspiration!
It is a little pity that in the second day of the contest, the thread was moved to a “Right”section. Many of you don't even have the chance to see it, not to mention bringing any great ideas. :(
But we still inspired by many amazing ideas over hundreds replies!
In the process of selecting awards, you know your wonderful thoughts brought us a fierce debate. It was a tough call. Ladies from marketing loved the strange and creative ideas, which might represents future Miner and potential of Mining industry. R&D team of course paid more attention to technical feasibility and practicability. After several rounds of deadlock, we finally selected the following 3 awards. Applauds to the winners!

1.The Most Creative Answer Reward:  1 BTC
Winner:   OgNasty        Floor No. 33#
Value: “Lava Lamp”, as soon as this idea appeared, it won our marketing girls’ hearts. Which also got positive professional comments from R&D team. Make use of the heat coming from dual mining of SF3301, it might be melting the waxes in the Lava Lamp!

http://i59.tinypic.com/28v56om.png
 

2.The Most “Controversial” Design Award:  100 LTC
Winner:   erre        Floor No. 39#
Value:  This is really a controversial and inspirational idea, numerous replies prove it. The possibility to implement is another controversial topic.

http://i62.tinypic.com/2rzcvg0.png
 

3.The Most Market Appealing Design Award:  100 LTC
Winner:   J4bberwock        Floor No. 11#
Value: Winner understands the BTC Mining industry; and amazingly has strong knowledge of software and hardware technology.

http://i57.tinypic.com/2nuksjr.png
 

In order to express thanks to all of your participation, we also selected a critic’s award each day from 12th May to 17th May. Since the thread was moved, we didn’t get as much as expected, but we will still offer the trophy as we promised, congratulations to the lucky guys!

Critics Award List:        Trophy: 10 LTC
Winner:                   Floor No.                     Date
RadekG                    50#                          12th May
notlist3d                  70#                          13th May
RadekG                    77#                          14th May
diodio1                     85#                          15th May
erre                         93#                          16th May
erre                        101#                         17th May



General Award list:             Trophy: 1000 Dogecoins
 
louise123
Lucax
Meech
NeuroticFish
notlist3d
OgNasty
pajak666
philipma1957
pinhead666
quakefiend420
Rabinovitch
RadekG
rizkyhiw
sambiohazard
Searing
SFMiner
sirslayer
starsoccer9
Tad3j
Testing Crypto
thevictimofuktyranny
UnklAdM
Zich
 

In addition, we also got the result of Contest 2: Joining In Facebook. Same congratulations to the following three winners:

1.   Most “liked”reply                 Trophy: 100 LTC
Winner:    Sebastian Pająk              Liked:  42

http://i60.tinypic.com/fbdv9h.png
 
2.   Second “liked”reply              Trophy: 50 LTC
Winner:    Priyatama Mitrajati              Liked:  39

http://i62.tinypic.com/33kx81u.png


3.   Third “liked”reply                Trophy: 20 LTC
Winner:    Priyatama Mitrajati              Liked:  21

http://i61.tinypic.com/2lnz8k1.png


General award list:            Trophy: 1000 Dogecoins          
 
Achmad Afandi
Alexander Riku
Dheddy Il Capitano
Hery Luiz Nazario
József Bertus
Oki Meilisyanto
Ozora Najwa Alvaro
Priyatama Mitrajati
Radek Gronský
Rocker Anfield
Sebastian Pająk
Tadej Brunšek

Please note some guys in the above list haven’t leave their Dogecoin add yet, please remember to do it.

Sfards reserves the rights to interpret the above statement.


Update 13/5/2015


Sfards upload the latest programs of SF3301 chips. Welcome to download the resources on GitHub.

More details: https://github.com/sfards/ASIC-SF3301


Update 18/5/2015

Dear all,

Thank you for all participation! Our contest is over now. We will calculate all results and publish within a week. Thanks again! ;)

---

Update 12/5/2015

Thank you so so so much for your enthusiastic participation. On the first day of our contest online, we have seen a lot of excellent product concept, some fit for family mining, some fit for big scale farm mining, and there are still some realistic proposal such as a little device of bitcoin full node(Like BITSEED); In addition, we also find some interesting conceptual products such as Tumble dryer, Lava Lamp,ocean wave create electricity miner, hashing the power wasted at your local gym and etc.

We hope more and more people comment on each other's ideas to add details of the products and even to make the ideas can be really developed.

Base on these, we decided to add an special award. You can quote an idea which you interested in and leave your comment there, we will select one critics award per day from the comments on the day, the trophy is 10LTC. Time is from today to the end of this contest, and there will be 6 Critics Awards waiting for you!

---

PS: Just remember, all of you guys can also join our second contest in Facebook, let your friends help you forward, and there are still a lot of rewards waiting for you!

---

Update 11/5/2015


SF3301, latest 28nm chip, low power consumption, dual-mining ability, which gives future miner more exciting feature, brings infinite possibility to industry.
Aside traditional steel box-style miner product, we are looking for all different designs of miner product. We eagerly hope you join us and show your imagination!

Such as:
“ I am a practial investor, my ideal miner has low power consumption, big mining ability……”, good!
“I am passionate in my life, the miner I am looking for is a magic machine which can be used to keep pets, grow flowers, feed my cat and dog…a all-in-one home appliance machine……”, cool!
“I am not a rule-follower, I prefer a miner flush……”, awesome!
“ I wanna a miner drone, even a miner rocket……”, excellent!

Contest 1: Post Your Idea In Thread on Bitcointalk

Contest Time: May 11th – 17th  12:00 pm, Bitcointalk.org time

All participants can reply under this thread, using text or picture to describe the best design of the ideal miner in your heart, one sentence description is OK, but the more details, the better. One ID can join more than one time, each post shall be more than 20 words, repetitve post are not valid, copying from other people’s idea are not valid.
Please leave your DogeCoin Address in your reply, and if you are lucky enough to get our Floor Award, please leave your Litecoin Address too.

Trophy:
1.   General Award:
Each participant will get 1000 Dogecoin.
2.   Winner: ( We will choose the following winners from all participants)

• The most creative answer reward: 1 BTC.
• The most “controversial” design award: 100 LTC.
• The most market appealing design award: 100 LTC

All the results will be published within a week after the contest ended and the rewards will be sent together.
Sfards reserves the rights to interpret the terms of this contest.

Contest 2: Joining In Facebook

Contest Time: May 11th – 17th  12:00 pm, GMT+8 (Beiijing Time)

Follow Sfards’ Facebook account https://www.facebook.com/sfardstech , share the thread of this contest, describe the ideal miner design in your heart and @sfards. Each facebook account can only participate once, description shall be more than 10 words, copying from others’ ideas is invalid.
Please leave your DogeCoin and LTC Address

Trophy:
1.   General Award :
Each participant will get 1000 DogeCoin

2.   Most Popular Award:
The idea you posted gets the most “like” will get 100 LTC, second will get 50 LTC, third will get 20 LTC.
All the results will be published within a week after the contest ended and the rewards will be sent together.
Sfards reserves the rights to interpret the terms of this contest.

Better lower sample chips price, then will be more ideal miners based on your chip.
Or, better give as an estimate price of chip in bulk quantities (1000pcs+)

The most market appealing entry:

I am an accountant at heart counting my debits and credits, my ideal miner brings ROI back using lower electricity and packing more of a punch.  One that is fairly priced, and not made to break customers pocket books.  It's makers realize the hard mining conditions for today's miners and price it with a price that is fair for both miner and the miner makers.   And one that brings new tech to the table, something that makes electricity ratio much less.  A chip that is versatile and lets me underclock in my normal conditions and run on as low of electricity as possible.  But in those special times I need it I can overclock it to a significant amount without the miner stressing a bit.   A miner that is so great not only miners want to buy it, other manufactures want to copy it!

Doge: DCX2BrWdLEAkbG39hnNy7QPDMdp3g9XvAm
LTC: LhjeiSU5cgXJGPUGa3nTjjqLoa2E4HFRDx

I would like the miner come with button to activate power save mode, normal mode and turbo mode.
The setting for that 3 mode should be adjustable via web interface.




Doge: DP2DPsCrmXjrNoGEyc412FRsHsEpEmX3JB
LTC : LXL1QvtXamjoD55eAeK2YfJ3bWv9UcKiwR

I would like the miner have dual band wireless router (2.4GHz & 5GHz) capability, have usb port for connecting 3G/ 4G USB modem & usb storage. We should be able to disable the miner & let the router run alone. Probably miner & controller+router on different board.

Doge: DP2DPsCrmXjrNoGEyc412FRsHsEpEmX3JB
LTC : LXL1QvtXamjoD55eAeK2YfJ3bWv9UcKiwR

The most “controversial” design entry  

I want a device that does not need special boards, limited to just it's needs.  I want a miner that listens to my needs of it being easy to expand and fit my needs.    I want that main board to be built from a Raspberry Pi and miner to work via usb.  Make the miner upgradable!   Have where in this case I can slip in a new board of chips.  Out with old gen and in with new gen!  Support for this miner promised for generations to come!  I want the miner to be able to expand with ease, don't lock me into a certain Terahash of power.  Let me choose and pick how many miners/boards I want to connect to the easy to use Raspberry Pi base!  

Doge: DCX2BrWdLEAkbG39hnNy7QPDMdp3g9XvAm
LTC: LhjeiSU5cgXJGPUGa3nTjjqLoa2E4HFRDx

0.3W/ghs at wall

10th/miner

ROI in 2 months, with calculated 10% increase each difficulty adjustment


 8)

"most creative" entry

I want a miner that is not just some box that sit's on a shelve.  I want to interact with it, see how it's doing. Don't just show some device stats page like others, tie it in with software to support most popular pools.  Show right there it's luck, amount mined at pool level! Don't let design stop at being locked into the "standard" miner. Give us more connectivity.  

Imagine waking up checking your miner seeing it's having good luck at the pool, right there in miner I tell it overclock!  Get in on this luck.  Imagine a smarter miner.  Not some dumb box.  One that I can tell if pool luck is up automatically overclock! If luck is down go for efficiency!  I want it to do the mining for me!

A status indicator of I can see visually.  It does not have to be a fancy lcd screen, but give me some feedback when i look at the miner walking past!

Give up the confines that miners seem to stick to, be more,  be better!

Doge: DCX2BrWdLEAkbG39hnNy7QPDMdp3g9XvAm
LTC: LhjeiSU5cgXJGPUGa3nTjjqLoa2E4HFRDx

Sorry for that, since our first batch of sample chip with a high production cost, after mass production, be sure the price will be down a lot.  
Are you developer? Welcome to join this contest and share your idea in this thread. ;)

I am a realist, so the most controversial design entry would be the following.  

Don't make the next miner to sell to the home users keep them for yourself or larger B2B customers who have over 1$ USD million to invest.

Create a massive farm, using the cheapest electricity in China somewhere in Inner Mongolia typically using 'abandoned' or 'decommissioned' coal fired plants that are fired up just for your farm, and then mine only for larger investors or your company until you ROI massively so you can afford the better smaller more efficient chip and miner you are planning next. Then you can sell those older units in about 2 months to lower level consumers and B2B clients with smaller orders AS IS! Oh and make it an 8 week pre-order for those small home miners and B2B anyone with less than 100K to spend on miners.

Then rinse and repeat that process until you have amassed a great fortune and pretty much sucked all the smaller miners money out of the market all the while increasing the hashrate faster and faster while keeping all the more efficient miners under your control during the process mining for yourself SFRADS.

 ;D

Size: Doesn't matter.
Power: Doesn't matter.
Price $$$: Whatever the market will bear. Someone will still buy up all your older units at cost.


====

Already liked you on Facebook. ;)


Doge: Release to SFARDS upon request.
Litecoin: Release to SFARDS upon request.
Bitcoin: Release to SFARDS upon request.

Ok, I've been working for almost 1 year now when I had time to try and imagine the next mining revolution.

First steps were made with the GC3355 chip in mind, that's why I had most of the schematics ready for the SF3301.

We had CPU, we had GPU, we had FPGA, and now ASICS, next step will be "waste heat recycling":

to replace most of the heating elements needed in house / offices by boards populated with asics.

-Tumble dryer will be one of my first trials later this year since I have 2 of them with defective heating element.
They only need 2 settings for power: 1000w/2000w, so easy to do with a 2 boards setup.

-Space heaters have been discussed for some time now, and I'm sure they will be the first commercial step to this revolution.

-Central heating can even be imagined with a large liquid cooled unit, with heat exchanger to use in a similar way we do with heat pumps, either to replace completely your furnace/boiler, or to help it.

-Low temperature drying is also a good candidate to get potential buyers.

Basically, everywhere you need heat, you could generate it with computing power (and get paid for it) instead of wasting this heat and paying air conditioning to cool down the miners.

Then, we have 2 options:
-selling the units and letting the buyer do whatever he wants with it
-selling the heating units, use the hashing power for cloud mining, and give back some money to the buyer based on the up time / mining revenue.


Doge: D5htmjYnF3i9R29eG5shEFXm1Pm4Woo6S5
LTC: LbkDsxKfznKq8DdVXQkShn2JovD2QGjtv3

Take the Gridseed G-black approach(except for power, give us direct PCIe to the hashing boards please!).  Boards that can be mounted in flexible configurations in various types of chassis and connect to an internal hub via mini or micro USB, no proprietary backplanes that change with each generation or ribbon cables to controllers that can't be upgraded or support more than a hashing board or two.  Keep the mounting points and heatsink requirements the same across several generations so that home miners can buy new hashing boards and reuse the same case/fans/PSUs/heatsinks/USB hubs/etc.  Use a raspberry pi or a beaglebone black for the controller, something easily moddable and hackable/replaceable.  Open source your software, offer rewards for devs doing cool things with it and making new and interesting functionality.  Build a few different types of cases, let miners "build their own" on your website, pick a case, pick 1/2/3 hashing boards, pick air or water cooling, etc etc.

Offer a trade-in program for old hashing boards/miners.  By doing so you will inspire customer loyalty if they know that they can trade up when the new gear comes out.

Make waterblocks that can be attached at the same mounting points as the standard heatsinks and offer a setup with a massive radiator(think car or truck sized) and powerful pump/fan setup.  Make it weather resistant so that home miners can move the heat/noise outside with 10-15 ft of tubing while keeping the miners themselves inside.

That's all I've got right now...

talk to someone at www.bitseed.org incorp an option of a baby miner for fun (with) a bitcoin node device....even if it makes dust..just a chip or two...people would get a kick
out of it and if nothing else it promotes your chip.......something to watch besides the node chug'ing along :)



(i'm about to find out i suspect why this is a BAD idea in so many ways i suspect)

Hey come on,  we believe there must have some more funny creations and special miner ideas. Please not only focused on hash rate and consumption, anything interesting will be applauded.  ;D

Have you guys heard 21 Inc? Just look at the following site and you know Sfards wants to explore the same thing. So get involved and it's more interesting than you think! ;)

“Under the company’s new business plan, 21 Inc. will inset ASIC chips for bitcoin mining into such daily devices as routers, gaming consoles, USB battery charges, toasters, set-top boxes and chipsets.”
http://www.coinspeaker.com/2015/05/10/startup-21-inc-wants-to-put-bitcoin-miner-in-toaster-9190/

Ok sorry!

Running ambient -20C-60C.

Can fit in a 40cmx40cm box, 0db noise and of course an integrated microwave owen.  ;)

And every time when it submit a share, a different nude chick picture come out from it.

This is what we really need from SFARDS and others. But this would kill their own bottom line unless they know they can't compete then it would be very disruptive to all the other big fabs out there.

The only way to break the SFARDS future monopoly in mining would be for SFARDS to produce a chip that would be put into cheap sub $20 miners and bitcoin core node units that would be after market DIY add ons that could be attached to consumer products like a potable and washing hot water heating units these add ons also provide wifi for mining the node and control of the consumer product.

Coffee Miner and Bitcoin Core Node:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/KBG741S-AO.jpg

Hotwater Miner and Bitcoin Core Node:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Japanese_Electric_Water_Boiler_20101026.jpg
Killing two birds with one stone both the core node issue and the distributed mining issue this would be the best solution to future development and distribution of Bitcoin / Altcoins (PoW).

Do not forget to  leave your DogeCoin and LTC Address in your reply!!! Or we cannot send you the trophy!

The following member please reedit your reply and add your  DogeCoin and LTC Address there.

@ElGabo @Bicknellski  @J4bberwock  @quakefiend420   @Searing  @Bicknellski  :)

Ideal miner should re-use heat energy and should be able to scale its power and efficiency - like CPUs and GPUs does, not just underclocking, but also undervolting.

You can simple make heat radiator with shell made from ASIC, but it needs to switch to better efficiency at lower power needed, not just slowering the clock. Also pre-defined times or external pin trigger should switch miner to "efficiency mode" to take an advantage of low price periods (night time). Miners should be passive cooled or very quiet for home use.

High output version of above should have the same key features, but the shell should have heat exchanger with regular pipe connections for central heating. It can also heat warm water, I think 60C is enough for most people, but chips can work at 150C+ (tested).

This is the next step to home miners, without energy re-coupling they can't compete with datacenters.

This thread is for best miner, the electrical concept (such as string design) or ROI or GUI details are not base part of best miner - it is just add-on. ROI will always reflect current diff and price.

Basically, you should divide miners at least for two main segments - home and professional miners. One 4U machine with 10THs+ will be much better even noisy for datacenter, but quiet and small box with pipe connections will be much better for home heating. Small stand-alone "HiFi size" passive or very quiet miner with HDMI output can be very useful for home mining.


Doge: DGsXhaQDQtAC7tbL11SnZdYsaJDXGZR3Sy
LTC: LV64EXaKVgoUyuyo7xxPK1s6WcgfFQCusf

What can I say about ideal miner?  ::)

1) Not overpriced;
2) Standalone with Ethernet (or two Ethernet) port(s), with possibility to deploy wi-fi (like on antminer S3 controller);
3) It should consist of steel (maybe) chassis and (why not?) plastic side/top/bottom panels to reduce weight and shipping cost. Probably good solution is to use a PC case (like in HashCoins Apollo) - buyer can buy specific case (and maybe the components of cooling system) at his/her local market. And yes - miner should be sold without power supply for the same reason. Someone use ATX PSU, someone use server PSU...
4) The cooling of the chips should be worked over very carefully to provide maximum possible heat dissipation. Customer should not rework it, only in case he is geek.  :D Ideal miner should be cold and quiet, or at least devs should try to make it cold and quiet.

LTC: LiCzfZvP2oL3kAUR6n8MztkKVPbNMcEL2o
DOGE: D6ggTX66whJ2qvW5DYAezpgC47KQaELJyC

There is no need for impractical controversal toaster, I think re-use of wasted electric energy is the key. Big datacenters will have always cheaper electricity than home miners.

Why not use peltier coolers to generate electricity from heat? They can cool our miners and produce some energy.


Doge: DGsXhaQDQtAC7tbL11SnZdYsaJDXGZR3Sy
LTC: LV64EXaKVgoUyuyo7xxPK1s6WcgfFQCusf

Try to operate the ASICs in a 'string' like the bitfury chips,
and then get rid of the DC/DC converters.

IMHO the best miner is the one that preserves the very basis on which whole community & industry is dependent.

A miner should thus have following parts/functionality:

1. A full node embedded in it that can be turned on/off or programmed to use certain amount of bandwidth/data (yes, not all people have unlimited bandwidth). This will support the network.

2. A miner that allows user simple options to set it at different power consumption levels e.g. 100W, 125W, 150W instead of dealing in GH/s. This will allow novoice miners to make a choice based on their ability to spend on power. Also, for seasoned miners most important stat for making decision is power consumption. So instead of seeing hash rate, if we can see power consumption & ROI in $/day on a LCD display, then it will be much better.

3. Miner should come by default configured to run on p2pool so that anyone who wants to mine for supporting the network can just plug & play the miner. Even better if miner s/w can determine nearest p2pool node based on IP address(Yes, i want unicorns!! :P )

4. Miner software should allow to configure miner/full node to run until certain conditions are met, e.g. run until power bill for today is $X or Bandwidth usage is X MB. This will allow customers to make decisions w/o monitoring things all day.

5. You can create a line of miners with each one targeting specific group.
   i) For Home miners & bitcoin believers - 50 to 200GH/s or 25 to 100W miners
   ii) For individual investor - 300 to 1500 GH/s or 150W to 1000W miners
   iii) For industrial miners above 2TH/s

I want more unicorns but you might be short on supply so this should suffice for now :D

If you like my idea, my address is in my sig.

EDIT: My LTC addy: LT2N1oqmrGy1Cd5bDSDZxFHizLzamjtueN
         My DOGE addy: DTMfFPxD6QB7LduEPMT7hyoaqSmX5FKSgs

Regards

Sam :)

-Silent
-water coolable

The 'ideal' unit would be something small enough for home use, but large enough that it could be used in larger farms profitably. This is best seen as:


1) 1500-5000GH/unit
2) $400-1500/unit
3) external (user-provided) power supply, hopefully drawing less than 250W/PCIe connector
4) rack-mount dimensions (2U-4U) and stackable. Half-depth would be a smart way to keep the unit small but remain rackmountable.
5) fans that are less than 70dB. That should make it reasonable for home use (at least in a spare bedroom or basement). This means ideally 120mm or 140mm fans only.

6) string design for chips - this is >10% more efficienct
7) design the webUI similarly to what spondoolies-tech built (very detailed settings, stats, logging, scheduling, etc)
8) design the ability to modify BOTH the voltage AND frequency, as well as the fan settings if possible. this allows wider range of users to run it at peak or in quieter modes.

9) basic outer case. put the power and ethernet connections on the same side, use a basic sheet metal enclosure. 2-4 leds is sufficienct, anything more becomes 'too blinky'. something like the SP3x design is ideal.
10) consider a small screen that can readout hashrate and/or IP address.


MY 'DO-NOT' LIST:
1) fans <80mm are loud
2) miners <1500GH mean buyers end up with a huge stack of units. dont build anything with <$400 MSRP
3) miners >40 pounds (~16kg) can be a bit heavy to move around
4) miners that act as nightlights. all i want is a singlular LED that is lit solid in normal operation and isnt blinding.


-Klondike

My first entry moved from here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=985400.msg11343009#msg11343009

D8jxCiXXCPn1fzE3vzywTf9DhPWEv4gtB3  = Doge


LMUmaAu2i194Vod4Pr8j3KDBXQ2zTVtiJb = LTC



My entry is as follows:

The ability to scale the miner's watts per gh  rather then flat line  watts per gh , IS really important.

I want a miner that has a huge freq range and a huge volt setting range.
This allows for maximum flexibility for every miner using it.
Cooling and fan speeds need to be able to scale wide. Thus a quiet highly efficient miner is one and the same with a loud high hashing power hungry miner.   Just depends on what you need for your setup you get to set it the way you need it to be.

 Lastly  the gui should have 4 or more pools not 3 or less pools. With balanced option or rollover option.

Something I was trying to get out of Bitmain's U3, and that I think is very practical and could be very useful for home miners is making it into a heater that can be placed throughout your house.  I have an apartment and my windows are terribly inefficient, so I wanted to place the little U3 units two or three to a window sill to fight back some of the cold, the problem was that they needed to be plugged into a computer via USB, and I could never get them running (still can't), so it was kind of a bust.

But, there is an opportunity to make a good product like this.  Make it stand alone so it doesn't need to be plugged into a computer, and make it connect to WiFi so that it doesn't need to be plugged into a router or switch.  You could even make different sizes, like a 1 chip, 5 chip, etc... model, so you could choose how much heat you wanted given off.  Also a 1 chip model would probably need a smaller power cord, which would be less noticeable if your trying to hide them, then it could scale up from there.  Also, it would be neat to put suction cups or something on them so they could stick to windows and be off of the window sill. Just makes it easier to hide them from view.  I would also like something on the end of the miner that you could swivel or adjust that would blow the exhaust one way or another.  For instance, I could angle the exhaust to the left or right instead of straight out the back.

To be able to down clock the miner with a dial of sorts would be very nice.  So for hotter days all I would need to do is turn the dial and the miner would use less power and give off less heat.  It would also be very practical to have a web UI that would detect all miners on my network where I could easily under clock the units for the whole household at once.

I hope you like my idea, I have gone through the last 2 winters without having to run my heater at all by using mining units, and have saved/made money doing it.  This works great for a smaller apartment, but household wide solutions should be the next step.  Noise can be somewhat of an issue too, so remember that most people will pay a little higher price for a better/quieter fan.

Bitcoin: 1GX8hnuuRLfmh3Do8LHMHmENjXDBNUxu1v
Dogecoin: DNAF93Kv2JDC5iTiuCCCbRWeje4TRnNcQ3
Litecoin: LMU7TtpZ9VT9o13GzrkqFsS3grmPP1NDi7

a smart gui will have 'n+1' or 'n+2' available pool slots, with 'n' being the number of pools already filled in. most users will only have 2 pools setup, but some advanced users might like the option of 4+ pools, as well as the ability to do load-sharing between them

A miner that is also an air conditioner.  One that puts out cold air. ;D

IS this possible?

I would like to have a home miner that can perform and be quiet at the same time. Not asking perfectly quiet, but at least a unit doesn't required to buy other fans or modification to his original case. Better be putting quality fan and maybe one more then the minimum required.

Also easily stackable.

Thanks ! 

my second entry is for

 My controversial design: moved from here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=985400.msg11343104#msg11343104


Would be a  miner that is designed as a usb hub miner but it has 4gb of storage that you can access and program the miner's gui to mine plug n play.

This would mean it would automatically mine in any pc 's usb that you plug it into as long as the pc has an internet connection.  The twister would be it works for 1 hour then turns off for 1 hour.
 So that sipping too much juice from the owner of the pc would be prevented. Kind of a do not be greedy governor.


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I am still thinking on the most original design.

Most controversial entry:

A miner that will be happy outside.  Probably not something where you just set it in the middle of the yard, but something that can go out on the back porch and have shielding from the elements.  A big problem is heat and noise of miners, and moving a miner outside would provide a ton of benefits.

Make it wireless, so only the power chord is needed. (you could even make some kind of built in housing for the power supply so that isn't exposed either.)  Then make the miner enclosed so that water will be kept out.  Summer heat would be a problem, but with high enough quality components, even running at high temperatures should be fine.

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The best miner is, the miner that roi's the fastest. It is all about price point above anything else.
But that aside, here are the details I would like to see in a miner.

1. Fans used should be sourced first to ensure plentiful supply and bang for buck, and should be of the PWM type.
2. Two fans, chip density is such that the heat can still be adequately removed if only one of the fans is active in a 90F(32C) room.
3. Fans are temperature controlled for more efficiency. This control can be modified by the user.
3. Size should be about a shoebox, similar to Antminer S1/S3/S5
4. A Case that efficiently directs the air through and out the heatsink, and is not in danger from clogging with dust quickly.
5. +12V should be powered externally, with 6pin PCI-E as well as a terminal block for powering (similar to antminer S1)
6. Controller should be external to reduce controller redundancy, build costs, as well as allow daisy chaining.
7. Controller software should have the ability to use p2pool.
8. Controller software should have a quick setup network and pool configuration in one spot for plug and play.
9. Management software to configure and communicate to stacks of controllers.
10. That software should also integrate with the bitcoin core to display both bitcoin statistics but also encourage running of a node by improving performance.

4 words...

Bitcoin Miner Lava Lamp

http://cdn1.sempretops.com/wp-content/uploads/starship-lava4.jpg

BOOM!
No fans, no noise, just heat, lava, and a do not touch warning.  :)  Cheap and appealing.

Bonus points for:

• WiFi
• Integrated P2Pool Node
• Cash Register Noise when a P2Pool Share is Accepted
• Rocket Takeoff Noise & Color Change when a P2Pool Block is Found
• Visible Bitcoin Price Ticker

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that would actually be a fun thing to try with some usb miners. only thing is it needs about 25-40W to create the lava, and requires cool underlighting in the form of blinking leds :)

My ideal miner would have an integrated software, and the ability to switch between different mining configurations with one button. The software would be regurarly updated, open source and with a good dev community.
I would like the machine to be modular too, so I can upgrade one outdated part and keep the rest (particularly the cooling system, wich would be very good)

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If anybody made a miner into the base of a lavalamp, they should integrate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavarand as well ;)

( non-participant - plenty of ideas, but I'm largely with whoever's been suggesting small/desktop style miners, which the dev kit pretty much is if connecting the power boards at 90° and putting a case + fan around it )

Fuck... that's huge!  ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

I'm crying.

The most creative answer entry 2.

I want a miner that I put it in the ocean and it uses the waves to make it's own electricity!  No electricity cost, just my miner making it's own electricity!   It would use cellular connection to not even need to worry about wifi.   

I want to be able to go out in a boat drop my miner's out in the water, go home and watch the money come in!

The human work output in agricolture is about 0.074 kw. I want a miner that can convert human work into hashing. That could be controversial, but a great deal for that zones who have a difficoult access to energy but a lot of manpower. In cold zones, you can use the heat too.

Or you can just convert in hashing the power wasted at your local gym...

http://www.inhabitat.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/ReRev-Energy-Generating-Exercise-Machines-4.jpg

Less fat, more hashing!

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If you want a good miner design look no further than here

http://www.spondoolies-tech.com/products/sp35-yukon-power-shipping-from-stock

2U rack mountable enclosure.
Built in server power supply that is easily changeable
> 5TH output
Easily configurable webUI that can handle mutiple miners at once

Sell all that for less than what spondoolies sold the sp35 and you have a winner.

Dogecoin:D9PJqG2jzAwE2LMVSd7ZD3HZXPFXoEJ8Zy

It seems to me that this thread is about discussing potential hardware designs for Sfards - and the discussion may warrant a prize but by leaving the discussion open it is possible that good ideas will come out of it.  While I applaud you actually taking the time to moderate threads I think it is crossing the line here, if we moved threads because off topic discussions occurred then 95% of threads would be moved to some other location--- I think some leeway on this thread is warranted....

The miner should have
1)Mining power more than 1 THS.
2)Generate less heat or have a chamber to contain some water so it will automatically help to absorb heat.
3)Easy to setup with a guide.
4)There should be a package of cable separately form which you can choose one like
         package 1 have 2 Ethernet cable and 1 USB cable.
         package 2 have 2 USB and 1 ETHERNET cable and so on according to the requirement of miner.
5)Both USB and Ethernet compatible.
6)Less power consumption.
7)Highly stable means less downtime.
8)One instant cooling fan which take air from one side and throw it from other side.
9)All miners have ability to interconnect through a cable.
10)Use of more and more aluminium to decrease the weight of the miner.
11)Ability to connect to the number of pools at a time it will also help to decrease the downtime.
12)Ability to switch it off at once and start it at once no need to configure again.
13)coming soon

Been waiting for many years to see, not only in bitcoin, but all PCB's  & components 8)
1)Modular parts, making it possible to upgrade to the next design.
2)Replace BGA with a custom socket (the CGR {cryptography research} or some random name / number?), since modular is a few years out for costly budget.
Keeping the process of upgrades simple & not bound to a set design (unless a new modular unit or socket is created), sure it will be quite a few years though.

1Give4dbry2pyJihnpqV6Urq2SGEhpz3K
Lgive22khLkxDTgw1V3aMCv8vHsQJLnttX
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This thread is full of techical nonsence but what an ordinary husband needs:
Miner has to be pink or red with pretty flower paintings to convince my wife that "we really need it in our bedroom". It should have only few fans whispering softly.Wifi is must,wife hates cables.Net radio playing Barry White songs is bonus.When I proudly presented my A2 terminator screaming like a jumbo-jet my wife told me:"That thing has to leave or I leave".So I don't have wife terminator anymore.If this kind of miner ever will be sold,my wife will buy it to me for a present.Price doesn't matter  ;D.

The interest of Bitcoin/Crypto mining as a hobby or business stems from the differences of mining equipment.
The biggest hurdle to overcome is "What do I do with my old miners?"  Yes, you could sell them but I'm often reluctant to let them go.
What if there was such a design that it would allow us to integrate them into whatever case design and of any manufacturer.
What if there was a way to market it as a "Bitcoin Community Savior to Vaporware"

https://i.imgur.com/HGL29CRt.jpg https://i.imgur.com/ESevgeUt.jpg https://i.imgur.com/fUAX8pkt.jpg   https://i.imgur.com/1VwHZsRt.jpg

Allowing us to keep the communities failures alive by integration.

https://i.imgur.com/l0BhDPgt.jpg

Or integrate it into this to make us all Happy!  Battery powered of course! ;D


- Keep it small and compact.
- Make it chainable to attatch to others without a case and a need for a controller for each.
- Include ultra-cool leds. (my personal favorite).
- Allow for custom cooling.
- Wifi
- Usb or molex connections for power.


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Ltc:    LheMNNCzyAA8vFSWZq2KR83XshK9F58Z2X

Thread being moved to competitions.

Meanwhile the meta discussion regarding refashioning the mining section has been moved here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1058414.0

Update 12/5/2015

We are so sorry that our contest thread has been moved to another section, hope you guys keep following our contest! Cheers!

Thank you so so so much for your enthusiastic participation. On the first day of our contest online, we have seen a lot of excellent product concept, some fit for family mining, some fit for big scale farm mining, and there are still some realistic proposal such as a little device of bitcoin full node(Like BITSEED); In addition, we also find some interesting conceptual products such as Tumble dryer, Lava Lamp,ocean wave create electricity miner, hashing the power wasted at your local gym and etc.

We hope more and more people comment on each other's ideas to add details of the products and even to make the ideas can be really developed.

Base on these, we decided to add an special award. You can quote an idea which you interested in and leave your comment there, we will select one critics award per day from the comments on the day, the trophy is 10LTC. Time is from today to the end of this contest, and there will be 6 Critics Awards waiting for you!

---

PS: Just remember, all of you guys can also join our second contest in Facebook, let your friends help you forward, and there are still a lot of rewards waiting for you!

---

Well, here is what I would like to see:

I would like to see an Open Source Hardware Miner that can easily switch, through it's own software, to mining a number of algos instead of just one.
That would really give the miner a long life span, and of course the company can sell it a bit higher, since the extra cost will be justified.

I know that, this is a bit difficult (if not impossible) since ASICs are made to do just one thing, but what if instead of Application Specific it was made Programmable Application, or Application Touring.
Basically make it work like FPGAs, which you can program to do things.

Well, that's it.
If you can do that, you win!  ;)

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I agree with 2) as it is very important for deciding mine or not to mine :) It takes a lot of calculations and measurements when adjusting by yourself. But I still it is just unnecessary addon.

I also agree with 4). It can also switch energy consumption profiles based on time (night time - quiet mode) or temperature, or whatever. This is also usefull, but unnecessary addon.

For point 5) there can be different targets based on current diff and GH/W, but generally 100W for baginner is good choice - it can ROI. Individual investors can accept machines from 1kW to 3.5kW, industrial needs easy stackable (rackmount) with as low components as possible. One controller for one rack, three PSU per rack. No wires mess, low set-up cost.


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This wins. You could sell about 10000 of those easily.

The ideal miner for me must be quiet! like that my miner  :D
https://youtu.be/VuAu4aiv8Sc

I think instead we can have a Mineral oil lamp with miner floating inside it. That will be perfect for cooling, noise & home mining. Just like modern art showpiece sitting there in living room. I am a genius!! ;D

Hmm nice additions. I think people dont quite realize the potential of morally biased not so profitable ideological mining. I would say everyone should do this. Graphic was made way back in Jan 2015.
https://i.imgur.com/w8Aoj67.jpg

Ya!  Pump it people.  Make Daddy some Btc.  :D

Could you then have incentives for people to work out there, where they would actually be making money back based on their electrical output, as opposed to having to pay a monthly membership fee?

EDIT:  How much electricity could an average person output on a stationary bike by working out for an hour?

^theres too much focus on home mining units. As mentioned above, there are three types of buyer:

1) NOVELTY. Anything that produces <100W will never be cost-effective ROI. There is a market for 5000 units, each worth <$150, or <$750,000 total market.

2) Small Investors. The guys who want to quietly operate a miner at home or in the office that stands a good chance of producing a positive return on investment. They will buy 800-3,200W of power consumption (ideally each being around 800W). At ~$400/800W, theres probably a market for 20,000 units, or around $8,000,000.

3) Big Investors. The Farms. The Early Miners. The Centralized. Those with the ability and desire to build more complex cooling/power in order to use anywhere from 10,000W to 10MEGAWatts, These units are efficient, loud, and should be plug-and-play in a typical server rack (likely with a built in PSU).
   Each unit would likely draw >2500W, and might be built with a L6-30 (30amp, 250V) plug. This level of investor (Assume an average 1000x 20kW for the entire group) would probably be spending $10,000 to purchase 20kW - or a market of almost $10,000,000.

Note that the above all being true would mean that ~40MW of equipment would come online from this manufacturer, spread over a span of 3-4months. That would contribute ~80PH (+25% of the current network hashrate, or about +3% to 7 simultaneous difficulty adjustments.) _{which i think sounds about right, maybe a bit on the high side.}


tl;dr 40% of sales is in midsized units, 55% is in industry-standard hardware for scale deployment, and 5% comes from selling novelty miners like USB devices.


thus, there are two good options for SFARDS:
1) build a single device, that uses 400-800W, and can be easily stacked and deployed in large quantities as well as individual sales.
2) build two devices: one that uses 400-800W for smaller miners, and another that is >2500W and rackmounting for the serious investor.

At maximum speed, the most current of these stationary bicycles generates only around 250 watts, or about enough to power 1/2 an S5 while you're sweating away.

I think like 0.1 kw (aerobic activity), but i'm not sure. You can also recycle the energy made by others human activities, like dancing, but that would require an apposite floor

Many pools nowadays have heaters connected to them.  These are basically just boxes with 1.5-3" PVC inlets/outlets that heat water coming out of the pool filter before putting it back in the pool.  The pool water would provide excellent cooling for the miner, and the miner would help keep your pool warmer.

http://www.borghesegardens.com/Haywardpump.jpg

Since it would be located outside, bonus points for wi-fi, solar panels, wind turbine (http://www.frogdesign.com/work/frog-revolver.html), and a built in bitcoin node.

A potential issue would be that the pool pump isn't pushing water 24/7 through the heater.  For this reason it might need a tank inside of it, with a small pump and blower fan that kick on when the pool isn't providing the flow to push cool water through it.

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actually, pool circulation generally runs 24/7. its the heating functions that can be turned on or off.

fact is that if the water isnt circulating, or the pool is warm enough, you will have to turn off the unit or dump the heat elsewhere when mining.

Not any pool I've ever owned.  My current one for example only runs 8 hours per day (http://www.wikihow.com/Know-How-Many-Hours-to-Run-a-Pool-Filter), during off-peak hours.  Ideal mining time.

huh - i need to check my buddy's pool - pretty sure his is 24/7 circulation.

i love using the older gridseed 5 chip series and I hope that the new sfard chipset can have am upgrade board for the older gridseed 5 chip series.. like me and others, we have a collections of parts for the older gridseed and it would be cheaper to keep my current gridseeds and just replace the circuit board to a sfard chipset..   its not that hard to change over and i would save money.... and for the contest ..  how about a marketing catchphrase!!       

               " Mine with this!!!!!!!!!! " or to a new be customer " do you mined? "   ..   


 


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Another most “controversial” design entry 

Solar mining... from space!   We have a satellite orbiting the sun for electricity.   It mines from space!   Sending it's hashing through freaking lasers.  Space and lasers!




Doge: DCX2BrWdLEAkbG39hnNy7QPDMdp3g9XvAm
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https://i.imgur.com/RqRKIb4.png?1


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The ideal miner would be not bigger than a NAS, will be silent, will connect directly to power outlet and router and the settings will be done remotely. I wrote something like this on FB too.
Another idea would be ... a bigger router, that can also mine.

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DHpZY9vT6LxNGvDoTe8g242MxuxSjKanN4
1KBKTnYoyQ3hc4mBmF4iytwn7AotiMEDRJ

I have to say as someone who lives on a farm this is a interesting idea.  It's pretty crazy though cattle are EXPENSIVE.  You could buy a solar panel for less then most good cattle.  And yes.. yes that is crazy but it's true.  Add in land for them, again a HUGE cost.    It's a neat idea but you could do a solar farm for less.  And the costs keep coming get pricing for a fence for X acers.  Food for cattle.... It seems like it goes on and on on costs.  Unless your family was in it and you get lucky and inherent as many do the start up cost will keep most out of the cattle business.

I do like the idea though.  Neat idea, just cost is way to expensive even before including special equipment needed to do the power system.

Doge: DCX2BrWdLEAkbG39hnNy7QPDMdp3g9XvAm
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I think would be fun if we had a miner that we could eat after we use for mine bitcoin .This idea sounds crazy maybe  but why not?
more or less the shape of the picture like this :D

https://i.imgur.com/GE8k2.jpg

so when you are upset or annoyed or fed up or booring because of spending and revenue from mining results are not comparable you can eat your miner directly  ;D

yummy , happy mining and happy caking!  ;D

ltc : LeyCYiP51FF81HsVMWf19dtcJtxX1jnrds
doge : D9t9nwaeoWfCqiPxqAeU6Nxzp8KpsyiUau

Speaking IMHO, The best miner is like a good horse. Fast, energy efficient, good looking and stable;) short words SFARDS. BEST means more than good, BEST means that are wiling to hug your warm miner(horse) during cold winter nights with gratefulness for all that free heat and free monies. Best miner is your buddy:)
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The best miner, IMHO...

Would be based on existing form factors, allowing the user to upgrade his/her
existing equipment without having to buy additional heatsinks, fans, and cases.

The company would decrease their time to market by not having to design and
assemble complete units, only replacement boards for existing models.

I would like SFARDS PCB's for the following models:

Zeus Blizzard
Zeus Hurricane
GAW Falcon
Gridseed all models

There is a huge market here. Reduced time to market, reduced engineering
costs and reduced shipping fees mean higher profits for such company and
it's customers.

 - UnklAdM

http://coinbase.com/UnklAdM (http://coinbase.com/UnklAdM)

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Fish tank heater?  Would need wifi, but would be a cool little device nonetheless.

http://livebooklet.com/userFiles/a/1/3/4/8/1/7/8HzLS3aCMmqvHjAep2PsPE/wiu2eEUk.jpg

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I would love this idea.  I have a small tank.  If my fish would swim around a miner that would be amazing.  Instead of star trek characters i would have to start naming them after bitcoin items :)

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Solar panel around the miner and also wifi so we can place it in front of sun to save some electricity cost or if it is not possible a package of solar panel with the miner which can afford miner power consumption  ;D ;D

nowadays it it very expensive and usable for small miner like U3. You will waste a lot of energy at days with full sunlight and stop miner often during cloudy. Huge battery may help, but solution never ROI.

I like people who think about power saving. That's how I chose the components for my PC.

My ideal miner is user friendly & good at playing Minecraft & Manic Miner. I like components which have low power consumption & are powerful.

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my ideal miner would have 90 ROI, great efficiency and great reliability. at current BTC prices the antminer s5 with power supply is 242 day ROI. thats ridiculous. its just too damn long.

Add a faucet rotator into the miner, so that you can gain dust from faucets while mining.  If anything it will improve ROI figures.

For a faucet rotator u would require monitor, keyboard and time to do captcha's. Far best would be running a node, because u don't need an harware and you can get economic incentives from bitnodes (https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/nodes/incentive/)

LTC: LaHCcnn5N5Qs7xcnD1ZH3CdCjAm1bZvxNJ

Miner should have a Air conditioner in itself so it will keep the room cool while mining haha  ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

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Nice idea or we can go other way by setting to donate to fullnode.co (http://fullnode.co) to get few nodes up. Especially if you are mining just as a hobby.

My LTC addy: LT2N1oqmrGy1Cd5bDSDZxFHizLzamjtueN

miner with chip that requires only 0.111 watts / GigaHash
multi connection - wifi, ethernet/LAN, USB and standalone.
additional features or mod-able
slim design to make it nice looks

just it and then will be the most efficient miner ever.


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this is big idea with big cost amount i think haha
its very possible to do what you said ,
the consequence is that you have to convince NASA to lend their satellites,
also you have to spend a lot of money,
and maybe with solar power through satellite from space could produce big hashrate,
big hashrate possibly mining all existing bitcoin .
it means bitcoin mined and catched by one person.
it means game over  :D


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Don't overclock too much or you cook the fish  ;D

right now, 90day ROI is not likely. 150days is a more realistic target. anything >200days is risky.

Miners are big and ugly and hard to color coordinate into homes and apartments.  They need to be made with adjustable outer plates that come in different colors so that they can be blended to match existing home decor.  Make outer plates that can easily be swapped out with a few screws or magnetic so that I can easily change the look of the miner to match my wallpaper or paint.

One of the biggest problems is the ugliness of the current miners (I mean we know they are beautiful, but wives despise the black box that just sits and takes up room), so make it able to change colors and/or provide other benefits.  Make one that can be an ottoman to put your feet up.  I can change the color to match my living room and no one would even know its a miner.

Starting at a Chip Level, I want chips that can run at the highest thermal limit possible. This allows me to run more temperature differential across the surface, increasing heat transfer and increasing the number of chips for a given area.

Because of that, I think the Miners should be modular Liquid cooled 2 Slot PCI-E Cards (similar to BFL Monarch) with the highest power density possible. If desired, a liquid cooled case could be offered with a full size radiator embedded.

This allows the greatest flexibility because a home miner can install the card in an old tower along with GPUS, etc. or they can install a bunch of cards in a purpose built 2/4U rack miner. I am thinking power densities equivalent to spoondoolies in a purpose built case. Power Densities might be able to go higher because of liquid cooling.

Normally I would go with air cooling for simplicity and cost sake. However, I believe that if a liquid solution can be done well, it will be able to increase your available power density and thus decrease commercial cost. Also, by liquid cooling you decrease noise pollution in a home and can funnel the heat where it needs to go. This also then allows you to keep miners outside in a NEMA 3R/4X rack with an external radiator. You can also then use that heat to do other things like cogen, etc. With high DTs in the thermal process, you can recapture part of this value. This heat should not be negligible. You could heat a fish tank if you want :)

I believe you will be able to reduce the cost of the miner over the long term because you are using a standard PCI-E format. All Power Supplies, motherboards, CPUs are readily available as is the OS for running the miner (linux, pimp, windows, etc). Users would be able to configure their own interface, and the like as well as all backend monitoring.

This would also expand into third party developers buying cards and packaging in the most efficient design they know how to build. This would allow you, SFARDS, to just focus on chip development and heat exchanger design, which should be your core business. This would allow more rapid deployment because all you would supply is the cards. All other parts of the equipment could be reused. It would give you a platform to grow and expand.

Maybe a good design would be a 2 in 1: a "small" nuclear power generator, like the ones from the submarines, connected to the best miner outta there.
You'll install it in a cold remote place, you'll deliver power thru the power lines, you'll have to have internet thru the power lines too and you'll earn from hashing and from the extra power.
The people around you will not mind you create heat and, if you make a big mining facility, you'll be able to also provide (for another extra income) centralized heating to the town / village you'll locate this.

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SFARD's is the merger of Gridseed and WiiBox. Gridseed produced the famous orb dual miner from last year (BTC and Scrypt).

As a previous owner of those Gridseed miners, I do have a number of technical observations, which should make the new miner more attractive to home users, who are most likely to accept a long ROI for these units e.g. SFARD's gets higher price per unit up front.

1st) the mining software for (dual mining) needs to be perfectly reliable for at least 7 days continuous dual mining. The Gridseed dualmining software would crash after 10-16 hours of usage. This meant, people abandoned dual mining mode and mined scrypt only. A guarantee on the dual mining software, to run for 7 days without needing to be reset would be a strong selling point.

2nd) producing Windows 7&8 pre-compiled versions of the mining software will be a strong selling point to newbie miners, who are least likely to use Linux and will want the miners to be plug and play on their desktop PC's.

3) Ensuring enough units are supplied to the European resellers like minereu.com and technobit.eu, it was almost impossible to get Gridseed dual miners in Europe. In fact: units were being resold on eBay for twice the price they were selling for in the USA. This was a lost revenue source for Gridseed's dual miners, but should SFARD's get the supply to the European market correct, it will be extra sales for very minimal work.

4) Ensuring the voltage resistors on the PCB are of a bigger size. Most of forums will be awash with resistor modifications, either to increase hash output or decrease electricity consumption. These resistors mods, will reduce SFARD's warranty liabilities for the after sale period.  Making them easier to do through using bigger voltage resistors for modders will be reducing wastage from replacing units under warranty. Modding invalidates warrantees. In fact: on ebay and forums people were selling modded Gridseeds and resistor swapping services.

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Put an insurance on delivery time.

It could be optional, but when activated it have to cover all the losses due to an eventual delaying, and we all know that that's the biggest risk. I think that such an insurance would skyrockets the sells.

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I don't know because everyone nominate peliter coolers, as far as I know they are costly and they have a very little efficiency.

I think that a better choice for recycle the heat energy would be using a stirling (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine) motor, after conversion u can use the mechanical energy i.e. to run a big fan

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/29/msi_stirling_cooling/

http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/02/29/msi_eco_2.jpg

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i think your idea is too general , make it more specific like what should you do to make the energy more efficient.
what should you do to make the miner running fast like a good horse as you said.

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I would like to see a modular miner where it can start at say 500GH and then you can buy cards and just keep adding cards and increasing the hashrate.

First off, I can't wait to get my hands on whatever design you end up going with.  This isn't incredibly inventive, just a collection of things I wish I could have had in previous miners.  Just FYI I transitioned from HD7950S->Jalapeno->Chili->Jupiter->S1->S2->S3->S5 so I have some experience.  Not as much as some of the veterans around here, but enough to have some recommendations.

I would love to see a sturdy, stackable miner with near-silent fans, and mounting options for wheels on the bottom.  The wheels would allow me to run it most of the time in my office/guest room, but be able to easily move it to the living room if someone is staying the guest room.  The silent fans would allow me to run it in the living room without my GF killing me!  I would love the design to have a compartment for 2 X 750W or 850W PSUs so I can use existing PSUs, to minimize cords, make it simple to move, and maintain a minimalist appearance.  The design would need to be sturdy enough that I could have 2 or 3 of them stacked to reduce clutter.  Ideally, it would end up looking like a compact space heater, in a similar form factor to an S2/S4.  During the winter, I would invest in another one or two to keep in the living room for heat.

I would like to see a miner optimized for a 15A breaker - approx. 1440W in North America if you are running at 80% load.  This would also allow me to use 2 of my existing 750/850W PSUs per miner, and in my office/guest bedroom I have 2 breakers.  Efficiency needs to be at least 0.245W/GH for SHA256 and 2W/MH for Scrypt.  I wouldn't dedicate any more than about 15% of total power to Scrypt mining. Ideally it would mine at approx. 5TH/S SHA256 and  110MH/S Scrypt for a price of $1200 USD each, which should allow ROI in about 90 days assuming a steadily increasing difficulty.

I would also like to be able to under/overclock the miner via software interface.  This would allow me to push it up about 10% while difficulty is lower, and underclock it to achieve better efficiency when difficulty rises.

On a board level, I would love to see 8 boards per miner, so each would consume about 153W, comfortably allowing a single PCIE connector per board.  This would work out to about 5-6 chips/board depending on efficiency. I would prefer air cooling, since it's cheaper and takes up less total space than water cooling.  As others suggested, it would be great to make individual boards replaceable, so they can be upgraded when the time comes.  Wifi is key, to eliminate the need for ethernet cables running to it, and maintain the minimalist space heater design - I know a few people already mentioned that.

Good luck!  If your final numbers end up close to these, I'll definitely be one of your first customers.


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anybody get paid for "critics award" per day from comments ??  :)

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For me, I see three possible markets. The average users, like most of us. Professionals or a farm for cloud mining

For the average user of an ASIC, it should be compact, do not exceed a certain level of db. An all in one would be best. Raspberry Pi integrated with all necessary connectors accessible on the side of the case, the ASIC would be connected to the near Pi with an already configured SD card, just enough to put a power outlet on the housing and connected to the start miner. Wireless Doggle on Pi would not have to use RJ45 cable. In terms of cooling I think to the fans would be nice but do not go too high in the db, left the choice to the user with an alternative watercooling can prove to be a good idea. This ASIC is designed for apartments or persons not having a special room to put his equipment for example.
Another example I have in mind for a while would be to copy the computer industry and allow up his miner in the manner of a PC, proposed while mounted cases with an opportunity to upgrade. And detached parts: the boxes, the mother of a map while RaspberryPi kind in larger, with CPU, RAM, PCI or PCI Express slots, USB ports, a Hdmi port, the internal memory with a special OS mining. The cooling would with fans in the case. So we would insert PCI or PCI Express cards on which are 28 nm chips. So you could put multiple cards per box, possibility to add risers over USB, or buy evening access to the radiator type PCI card, radiator or in the case of water cooling equipment to cool the system. This system would allow for an ASIC that can be easily updated, if a problem arises with a card ASIC is therefore not entirely dead durability over time. Personalization gives more and can afford to undermine the melt into the background, with designs cases.

After we could sell accessories that may have utility other than the principal activity of the ASIC or enabling to save energy, for example heat storage in a box and release it in a terrarium. My example is not very useful ... I grant you Imagined a small solar panel module or mini wind that could connect to undermine it would save energy and we could even store energy too. Let the community developed the kind of media center software installable on the OS of the ASIC to find a second use. From there one can find a lot of ideas but I think I do not have in enormously :D

For professionals all in one system to be put into pre server rack level connectivity to Ethernet, power and USB port. added LEDs to see if the ASIC is running if he has a problem and an LED networks. In the machine, a card with integrated memory which is the OS, processors, RAM etc. mini-cards with the chips. Simple and effective for professionals with always a way to upgrade its equipment and to the duration in time with a sale of used spare parts.

Open a farm might be a good idea too, would require a well-ventilated area where the sun but can not directly enter the rooms where are exposed ASIC for not directly heat the room. Power level could see a solar panel system (you start with 5 panels for example. For the beginning a little solar energy the rest taken to the Central and then adds some panels), and one can even imagine wind turbines in a datacenter or in the mountains where the wind blows in continuous. and fresh mountain air will not be bad for cooling. Having ASIC boxes that stack to save space can not be a bad idea as the idea of making ASIC that upgrad perhaps profitable again, indeed farms often have equipment failures then would limit breakage.

& For all ASIC, various setting modes are available on the case (see below photo). or to the operating system must be easy to use software. Pre-installed and ready for use when plugged. A web interface seems to me the simplest with ssh access for the more experienced. Some ideas for the OS, idea of an API it gives the value of the currency undermined with graph. Simple pool setting with some easily configurable options: Distribution of hashrate several pools. Possible use of 10% or 50% of the miner. Changing the supply mode for ASIC: power saving, low, normal, boost and max power. A smart OS that understands what it mine and switch on the most cost pool added in the options. A diagnostic system of complete ASIC: heat level, state of PCI cards or chips, level of energy consumption ...

h t t p : / / heberger-image.fr/images/21661_exemple.png.html

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...Or you can just make a steampunk-looking wood and brass miner  ;)

http://www.datamancer.net/steampunklaptop/datamancerlaptop-open.jpg

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What about a stick miner that is pre-configurable and self running?  Meaning, a stickminer that you can just plug into a PC and it will mine using built in software to an address that you already programmed into it.  All it needs is a computer with an internet connection.  Perfect for people who want to hide them in their work computers, or perhaps behind a library computer without having to install any software.

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Yes that would kill any fish in a tank. But it could be a good idea if you need hot water, also if you put it in a river you can have a very cheap and extremely effective cooling system  :)

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I hope it's not too late yet, ... my ideal miner would be of course the that has the power source built in, that has a display with % of accepted shares, that comes with a power cord, usb to upgrade the firmware in the easy GUI menu or OTA upgrade, ethernet port with PoE. Of course it will come with the new sfards chips in a small factory so could be a size of a 20x20x5cm and can have some broadwell processor in it. So the miner will be a router, which can be powered with PoE, when is not mining. If the user would want to mine, he will just plug in the power cord beside ethernet. Of course the PoE can provide a power up to 25W so it is good enough to be a media player also, this would require some emmc flash, lets say 8gb and ddr ram, lets say 1gb. on the device there will be installed android OS, which user can use for the home media player, with PoE powering only, or as a miner with power cord connected. of course the media player type of miner would require HDMI output. because the broadcomm processors have also bluetooth and wifi connections available, the device can also be a home audio bridge. for this option we would need AV out connected to amplifier or sound system, device can without any visual output, enable bluetooth or wifi signal, on which is then connected iOS or Android device. the iOS or Android device can then play music through wireless network to the "miner" which then ouputs the music to sound system.

I have already posted the idea on the FB ;)

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Dear all,

Thank you for all participation! Our contest is over now. We will calculate all results and publish within a week. Thanks again! ;)

Great!! Thanks for this cool feedback & competition combo :)

dont forget to count "critics award" per day from comments ....  ;)

goodluck

Thanks for putting this on. Was fun to read the way out and not so way out ideas.

@SFARDS
A bit costly but can you put one of these in your miners?

https://chainbot.com/chainbot (https://chainbot.com/chainbot)

A lot of what people want is in there.

How is this going? Eager for the winners to be announced!

Well week's gone now...

well, I feel like my post might be a serious contender for "The most market appealing design award: 100 LTC", if not quite the "Most Creative".

Hopefully SFARDS was serious about the rewards :) I didn't post a payment address at the time because it seems unnecessary, and would prefer to be contacted by PM to share that sort of info.

Thank you for this awesome promotions!

Waiting for the new miners to be announced now...

Thanks for the dogecoins ;) !