Buy the Bitfury basic kit from MegaBigPower. it only comes with a single 25GH/s card ($1300) and you can add 25GH/s cards to it (max of 16 cards) whenever you can afford it. I know it is more expensive than your budget, but it's scalable in $500 increments (the cost of each card) up to 400 GH/s.

My bad, yes, I meant crowdfunding.. Kickstarter isn't only for donating. I backed a project called Revolights on Kickstarter. They were some really neat LED rims for bicycle wheels that replaced front and rear nighttime lights. Anyway, I paid like 80% of the estimated market price.. waited 6 months for R&D, prototyping & production. I got one of the first production units at a discount and a t-shirt in exchange. BTW, Kickstarter also has policies in effect for accountability of projects: http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/accountability-on-kickstarter As far as your comment that "taking pre-orders is basically crowdfunding", you are correct, however Kickstarter provides a framework, pushes things along and provides legal avenues if things go wrong. Where simply participating in a pre-order, you are essentially throwing your money at them and hoping for the best, with no recourse if they don't deliver. Personally, I don't mind the concept of "pre-orders", but I want some level of assurance that the product will be delivered within a sane timeframe unlike other "pre-orders" that have taken place within the community. (yes, I'm looking at you BFL...)

I do, it's called getting investors. bank loans, crowdsourcing, etc. Draw up a business plan and present it. With the history cryptocurrency device manufacturers have had (BFL, BitFury, KNC, etc) you should be able to easily show that there is a demand. If all else fails, go to Kickstarter.

Alpha-t,

Please do us all a massive favor and:

1- Produce a batch of devices

THEN

2- Sell them.

Please, none of this pre-order garbage which has hurt the cryptocoin community so much in the past.
I'ts cool if you produce a working prototype and say you are "in production", but don't throw around pricing numbers or $/Mh figures until you have inventory on hand and are ready to ship. Things can change at the last minute which can have all kinds of un-intended consequences  (i.e. power consumption, price)

I will happily be the first person in line literally throwing money at you if you have a product that will ship immediately within a reasonable price point. Many others on this board will too.
Just say no to pre-orders!

- Thanks

Find Zadig in the cgminer repository. Download it and run to overwrite driver. Both Jalas need to be plugged in.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=231322.5;wap2

Holy crap! LTC was at $5.8... I went outside for a smoke and now its over $6.5!  

I bought one of these: http://www.controlbyweb.com/webrelay-quad/



And it works great. I think I paid $140 for it, and it works great for my LTC miners. After configuring it, I just hook up the normally open pins on each relay to the reset pins on each miner's motherboard. If a miner isn't responding, I go to the dynamic DNS hostname I set up, it's port forwarded on my router, and pow, I've got a web based gui with buttons to restart my miners. 

Now, I won't be in a situation again where I go on a two-week vacation and one of the miners locks up on day two. 

Well, you have a point, but here's a few thoughts of mine:

1. I (at least) got into mining as a hobby, as I like the IT and technology aspect of it. I'm not really into it as a money-maker.
2. I know people who fly remote control helicopters & planes. Those guys can drop $5K easily on a new aircraft. Me dropping <$3K on a miner isn't much different.
3. Even if difficulty goes vertical, and TH/s are added to the network, i'll still be generating coins, just not nearly as fast as I used to.
4. BTC/LTC price can do anything at this point. Most countries haven't adoped a pro/con stance for/against BTC yet. What happens if/when it becomes widespread and prices jump?
5. If #4 becomes reality, wouldn't you rather be sitting on coins you mined rather than having to start mining anew?

Just a few thoughts... maybe my predictions are optimistic, but crypto coins are really a new tech that hasn't truly seen acceptance yet. Granted, I havent been mining since 2011 or anything, but I think we're still on the ground floor and the only way is up at this point. Sitting on your hands and waiting isn't going to help.

atomicchaos:

A few questions about your setup...

1. Are you running a "best efficiency" pool like multipool, or are you manually switching all your miners to the best alt coin?
2. To check on, or make changes to the miners, do you have to remote (VNC, RDP, etc.) into each one? or do you use some other centralized way?
3. How often do you exchange mined coins to Bitcoin? Daily? Weekly? And how much time do you spend doing it?
4. Are you keeping track of HW expenditures vs. income? What is your estimation for ROI?

If your'e looking a for secure independent wallet, i'd look into the Trezor http://www.bitcointrezor.com/ They are doing pre-orders for 1 BTC with a November delivery target and no shipping cost. If you are gun-shy about pre-orders {Thanks BFL!} one of the developers of Trezor is the founder of Slush's pool and has been involved in Bitcoin since the early days. I think having the wallet completely seperate from the PC is a must for wallet security.

As stated above, it's not just the hashing board for 1300. I'm buying a starter kit + 3 hashing boards. Even including the Pi and M-boards "extra" cost, it still comes out to $28/GH/s. And I can add 25GH/s whenever I want (or can afford) to for only $500. With KMC, you'll have to buy an entire 100GH/s module to increase hashrate.

Do'h!    Oh well, i've already got it setup, so I'll just use that. Thanks!  And Dave, any input on the CC question?

Two Questions:

Q: Have you got the CC payment system ironed out yet?

Q: Someone was wondering how to restart the Pi in case it freezes. I bought this little guy:

http://www.controlbyweb.com/webrelay-quad/



I think I paid $140 for it, and it works great for my LTC miners. After configuring it, I just hook up the normally open pins on each relay to the reset pins on each miner's motherboard. If a miner isn't responding, I go to the dynamic DNS hostname I set up, it's port forwarded on my router, and pow, I've got a web based gui with buttons to restart my miners.  

Now, I won't be in a situation again where I go on a two-week vacation and one of the miners locks up on day two.  

So, If I connected one of these relays (normally closed) in series to the power supply of the Rpi, will it restart the Rpi and continue to mine? It is my understanding that the Rpi does not have restart pins like a motherboard does.

I'm in the same boat. Just about to pull the trigger on a Bitfury setup with 4 cards (100GH/s=$2800). So, this is my thought process:


1 April it was 6.6M
1 May it was 10M (+3.4)
1 June it was 12.1M (+2.1)
1 July it was 21.3M (+9.2)
1 August it was 31.2M (+9.9)

The last month has had an average of 9.5M increase.
Today is the 9th of August, not yet the middle of the month, and difficulty is 37.3 (+6.1)
So if this continues, we'll probably see an increase of 15-18M from 1 August to 1 Sept, leaving the difficulty at 46.2 to 49.2
If I was a betting man, due to the amount of ASIC's hitting the market in September through the rest of the year, i'd bet it's safe to probably double that number (i'll go with 15, so than means 30M) for every month after September. So, assuming 1BTC=USD $100:

1 September: 61M to  1 October: 91M. Average is 76M. @ 100GH/s with $0.30 power (100W)= $1951 after power costs. ($22)
1 October: 91M to 1 November: 121M. Average is  106M. @ 100GH/s with $0.30 power (100W)= $1392 after power costs.
1 November 121M to 1 December 151M. Average is 136M. @ 100GH/s with $0.30 power (100W)= $1080 after power costs.
1 December 151M to 1 January 181M. Average is 166M. @ 100GH/s with $0.30 power (100W)= $881 after power costs.
1 January 181M to 1 February 211M. Average is 196M. @ 100GH/s with $0.30 power (100W)= $743 after power costs.
1 February 211M to 1 March 241M. Average is 226M. @ 100GH/s with $0.30 power (100W)= $641 after power costs.

So, I think realistically... If you spent $2800 for 100GH/s, recieved it 1 November and hashed until the end of the March 2014, you'd have ROI and a $545 profit.
Now i'm able to afford a new H-Card ($500=25GH/s) and have it installed and hashing at the end of March. So my realized gain since the beginning of November is $45.

At this point, I think the ASIC arms race will cause difficulty to plateau a bit, having chased all the GPU miners off and probably the guys who bought a single Jalapeno or have just a few Block eruptors. Only the people who have 50GH/s or more will stay in the game. so instead of the monthly 30M increases, let's call it 20M increases.

So now with 125GH/s and 20M increases per month:

1 March 241M to 1 April 261M. Average is 251M. @ 125GH/s with $0.30 power (125W)= $717 after power costs.
1 April 261M to 1 May 281M. Average is  271. @ 125GH/s with $0.30 power (125W)= $663 after power costs.

At this point, you've made $1380. Time to buy a few new H-cards, don't you think? Buy two H-Cards (50GH/s=$1K) Hashing power is now 175GH/s and power costs are $38. Your profit since you started mining  is now $380.

1 May 281M to 1 Jun 301M. Average is 291M. @ 175GH/s with $.030 power (175W)= $863 after power costs
1 Jun 301M to 1 Jul 321M. Average is 311M. @ 175GH/s with $.030 power (175W)= $805 after power costs
1 Jul 321M to 1 Aug 341M. Average is 331M. @ 175GH/s with $.030 power (175W)= $753 after power costs.

Now it's August 2014 and your profit since you started mining is $2801

Okay, i'm not goig to keep going on, but you see the picture. You are going to have to keep buying hashing power to stay profitable above ROI. I know that difficulty will not be as linear as that, but it is my conservative guess on starting with a 100GH/s/$2800 investment. I'f i'm being too conservative, then i't just a faster ROI and more profit. But others are saying the difficulty will be as high as 500M by the end of 2013. Who knows? Time will tell. But I DO know you won't make anything if you don't at least try.
 

Holee crap.  Dead horse. beaten. repeatedly. It never ceases to amaze me when folks jump behind the keyboard and type a bunch of opinionated shit without reading one iota of fact first.

All,

Just doing some market research before diving in...
How much would you pay for a dedicated 700W power supply with PCI-e 6+2 connectors to power three 7950/7970 cards?
I've found a good method for modding server PSU's to run three extra cards.
It seems quite a few miners buy extra $150-$200 750W power supplies to run extra cards.
This way, you could run a cheapo PSU to power the board,CPU & RAM, then one of these for three cards. Want to run six cards? Add another one!
The units would be modified server units with 2 feet of wire terminating in PCI-e power connectors, automatically turn on when plugged in, and fan(s) quieted.
I think they would wotk great for any application (Not just GPU miners) that needs solid 12VDC, like shelves of USB hubs or BFL miners.. just add PCI-e to barrel adapters.
I would like some feedback to see what the demand and possible price point of this product would be. Thanks!

EDIT: added specs:

Input:  100-240 VAC /10.1A, 50-60 Hz
Output: +12VDC/57.3A 700W Max.

I believe it's this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=64450.0

Thanks! Yes, I did. I bought 3 meters of 1" square steel tubing with the appropriate corner pieces, cut them to the right length, then assembled.
I built the base out of plexiglas because I had a big scrap piece laying around, and I didn't have enough wood.
After cutting all the pieces, I painted it all with semiflat black spray paint.
I didn't have any motherboard risers, so I made some with screws & some aluminum tubing stock I had leftover from another project.
To get the screws in the plexiglass I drilled a pilot hole for the screw, then before screwing it in; heated it up with a torch. The hot screw melts the plex a little when going in and creates threads.

Well, I feel underwhelmed as folks here are showing off ASICS...  

Anyway, Here’s my rig:
 
4 x MSI R7950 Twin Frozr III cards
 
Seasonic 1000W Platinum PSU
 
ASROCK 970 Extreme4 ATX Motherboard
 
1 x PCI-e x1 to x1 powered riser
 
3 x PCI-e x16 to x16 unpowered risers
 
4GB DDR3 RAM
 
120GB 2.5” HDD
 
AMD AM3+ Temash single-core CPU
 
Tubular square steel open chassis
 
Plexiglas baseplate
 
Windows 7 x64 Professional
 
CGMiner, VNC & Afterburner
 
 
 
Mines BTC @ 2.1GH/s pulling 850-900 watts from the wall
 
Total cost: about $1800-$1850

One of these days, (probably after ROI) i'll swap the PSU out for a 1200W unit and add another card. I should have bought a 1200 from the start.

Bump for Jama. I ordered two of them, and they came quickly, and exactly as seen in the pictures. They work just fine.