Actually no, the biggest problem with stuffing mining into non-internet-connected devices (like lightbulbs) is that the cost of the controller and power for the chip will exceed the cost of the chip, and both together (plus the power cost of operating it) will exceed the value of mined currency. Especially if it's, say, an LED bulb good for 20 years but your mining chip's efficiency would be obsoleted within about 2.

Connectivity becomes less of an issue with "internet of things" devices because they are already networked. The issue then becomes power dissipation. The most efficient mining chip on the market right now would still kill a decent battery inside a few hours at stock settings, so now you've lost portability of anything with mining installed.

Which means you're limited to internet-connected always-on devices anyway. Integrating mining into your TV, DVD player, smart washing machine and voice-controlled toaster won't be free, and you know there'll be a gimmick markup. But let's look at it this way. Say you have 10W chips built into 10 different devices. Now you have 100W of mining going on in your house at all times. However, that also comes with 10 main regulators and IO circuits. A single 100W miner has one regulator and one IO circuit. It basically becomes buying 10 stickminers (each with associated overhead) versus one consolidated miner. The up-front cost efficiency of the overhead required to run a single chip, plus all the markup you'll get from the chip developer, the integrator, the manufacturer, the distributor and the Best Buy across town will add a few orders of magnitude to the actual cost of the "upgrade" you're buying.

After that comes the issue of pools. Which becomes an even larger issue when you consider every device is probably made by a different manufacturer, with his own software, and most chumps foolish enough to buy into the system would have to make ten different customer service calls to figure out how to use 'em properly.

The same argument has been brought up in the Samsung is Making Chips thread and CK basically had the same thing to say about it.

Some other people here are pushing the idea for real.

If your terminal opens and immediately closes it's because something threw an error. You need to find out what that error is.

I don't believe there is BFG support for the 2Pac.

If zetacoin isn't SHA256 you can't mine it with the 2Pac.

You should probably also talk to the person you bought the stick from. That guy took your money so he owes you a bit of service.

As someone pretty familiar with the economics of single-chip miners - yes, exactly. The cost of integrating one chip into something would profit the chip vendor, and the integrator (if he could sell it), but never the customer. The customer would only pay extra for that much mining if he's an idiot unaware of the economics of the situation, or just doesn't care about the economics of the situation.

Been saying that for years, and if anything, the economics keep getting worse with time.

Wait so people will pay $200 for a 150GH miner that cost about $10 to integrate? Sign me up.

Like I said, the chip maker will profit and the TV maker will profit and the TV buyer will lose out.

The closer a miner costs to actual hardware cost, the more viable it's going to be. So miners with one power system, one controls sytem and two hundred chips will always be more cost-effective than miners with one power system, one controls sytem and one chip.

If you want to decentralize with household miners as a service, you need to utilize the waste heat of the miners as a service. Otherwise people are approximately paying for nothing. Stuffing mining chips in arbitrary electronics becomes a waste, but using mining chips for hot air or hot water - things people will be paying to generate heat for anyway - might be viable.



Working on it.

Good luck selling a billion TVs. Are there even a billion households in the world with electricity, internet and TV signal available?

I would not pay a dime extra for a fancy new TV just because it can mine me a nickel a year or whatever. The parts cost of that integration would probably outweigh the revenue generated, by a long shot, even without power draw, but you know the TV manufacturer would put the cost onto the customer. Profitable for the chip manufacturer, probably profitable for the TV manufacturer, not profitable for the TV purchaser.

Been saying it for years, and nothing's changed my mind yet, that dropping single mining chips into whatever the heck electronics is a bad idea.

Nobody will know why it doesn't work without a lot more information. Did you grab one of the gekko-specific cgminer builds linked to in the first post? Is your USB port totally weak (for reference, 150MHz will ask for about 1.2A)? What cgminer output are you seeing?

Or the other thing, where it died out two years ago.

You've got a good power source, sure, but if the hub is cheap with weak internal power lines you'll see exactly that behavior.

What's the hub?

Make sure you're typing it in right. That's dash oh two, not dash zero two.

Right now 16nm is the best I have access to, but that won't always be the case.

If you know me at all, you know I don't really care about other coins.

Did you do the slub thing?


That fixed some serious lockup issues I was having with the Pis on the Terminus testing table.

Wasn't Bitmain's bulk discount like 1% for orders of 500? Or have they updated that policy now we're in a slump?

Bitfury kinda has a current-gen rack unit but good luck tracking one down to buy.

My opinion, the S4 is the best KW+ miner yet made. Those are good machines.

I emailed him about a week ago with some questions about updated pricing and timelines, but have not heard back yet.

Which admittedly is no surprise. Historically I only got responses to about every third inquiry.


EDIT - that new datasheet looks to have a bit fancier graphics and some added efficiency curves (but with no axes for core voltage or operating frequency, so about half useless) but all the rest of the content is, far as I can tell, identical to the datasheet from 2016.

I'll definitely take a look at that. The last BF16 datasheet I have is dated sometime September 2016, and requests for updated info were pretty much ignored or forgotten.

Not sure if it's exactly what you're looking for, but if you scroll up the page just a bit there's quite a bit of discussion on cron jobs and startup scripts.

Full control of operating frequency and core voltage are, my opinion, baseline mandatory features for any miner.

I've got an H-card setup sitting on my archive shelf somewhere, with Pi attached. If I have time today (and remember it) I'll see about IMGing the SD card and post a download link in case that helps.

I think it would be nice if anyone built a sub-KW miner ever again, since not everyone has 1600W PSUs laying around.