Okay, I don't really want to do the do it myself mode. I was wondering what type of security you would have. With this you're more vulnerable to attack. For example someone could switch your miners to a different payout address and you might not notice.
I understand your worries, but I honestly don't think it will be too big of a deal. I will make sure to change the default Login info on all Raspberry Pis that run the farm. The DIYers will only have access to their own Pi that only has their units on it. If they were to do something and somehow hijack the farms hash power, then I feel like I or someone else will be noticing that very quick. The options I'm choosing for pools have very good monitoring options, so I think everyone will like to check it every now and then. If they hijacked the equipment and changed passwords or something, I can simply unplug the power and reformat the sd cards and regain control of the farm pretty easy. So far there is only 1 DIYer.. so we will know who did what if something does happen. I don't imagine there being much interest in that type of hosting honestly. I am a bit worried about it for other reasons though. Like.. perhaps someone accidentally choosing dual mining and starting a fire or something. I will make sure to drill it into peoples heads not to do dual mode mining. There are a lot of things that come with it. Also I would probably be more worried about physical theft than intrusions by DIYers, but I am upgrading from a Motion Sensor camera to a 24x7 monitored security system which is included in the hosting fee. Whomever breaks in to steal our hashes... I hope they can run fast.  The price is pretty much finalized and I have updated the OP with it. I was able to get the costs down to $195 per unit including all PSUs/adapters/cables/hubs/pis/etc... You may see better prices around but most of the really cheap ones don't have accessories and you have to take the costs of those into account. Also, since our batches will be smaller I wasn't able to order from Gridseed directly. I designed a custom power solution that I am pretty sure will run 88 Gridseeds off of one 1000w ATX PSU!!! I sourced all cables as cheap as I could find them. I have already ordered all cables, components, adapters, pis, hubs, etc. for up to 500 units. Some components were ordered for all 1000 units, so we are pretty much ready to get going! Ordering will open up tomorrow afternoon, so please get in any last minute terms/conditions suggestions in now. |
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OMG 96 Gridseeds? so you invested like +15.000$$  I am running a Gridseed hosted mining service, so I will be running a lot of them and am trying to come up with the most efficient custom power solution. See the link in my signature. I could switch to a gold rated power supply, but they are expensive and this 1000w has a lot of amps on its 12v rail. To get super custom I could use the 5v coming off the SATA cable to power USB hubs I suppose. So many options.. EDIT: And I messed up with the CPU connectors.. I can only get 88 Gridseeds on there at the moment simply using splitters. |
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this is so cool!!!! I'm going to run all of my gridseeds - all 24 of them off one single pcie connection. and since my PSU has five more PCEI connections I can run 144! so cool!!! LOL http://i62.tinypic.com/fnss47.jpgA PCIe cable is only rated for 150 watts. I think 24 per is too many... That's like 240 watts.... Try using splitters to get 15 for 150 watts. Although that might be sketchy i dunno, thats why i stopped at 12. I was hoping someone would weigh in on the design i posted earlier. From there I guess you could get 15 but I'm gonna leave a little wiggle room for OCing. You could always buy a PSU with colored wires and separate all the 12v (yellow) and ground wires (black). Use the full power the the PSUs 12v rail and not waste the 12v wires in all the molex/sata/atx connector. I am maybe changing my mind and doing it this way as it will be cleaner and I can put exactly 15 barrel connectors per 3 yellow and blacks instead of maxing out at 12 with the splitters. Tie the 12v coming off PSU to a post and bring you barrel connectors off of that with 8 awg. |
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I have participated in both of the previous group buys that CoinHoarder has ran. CoinHoarder has spent many sleepless nights trying to keep our miners running at their best and I trust his ability to run another successful group buy. There have been some minor problems along the way but I do believe he has done his best to be upfront and honest with us (the participants) as issues arose. Thanks dude!
I'm in for probably 20 units this time around... just let me know payment info
Thanks for the kind words, I'll mark you down for 20 units. ------------------------------------ I updated the OP: - To allow for both automatic mining (you simply provide a Bitcoin address for payments) OR do it yourself mining (you receive log in information and do everything yourself). - Offer the option to sell the units and pay you with the proceeds of the sale as an extra option as opposed to getting units shipped back to you when unprofitable/you want to end the hosting arrangement. - Further reduced shipping costs to have miners sent back to you. - I reserve the right to overclock or underclock the Gridseed miners at my descretion for units hosted in Lazy Mining mode. I promise to take it easy on them.  Very Important: Someone lost 60 BTC this way in one of my previous Group Buys. The attacker quoted my OP and edited the Bitcoin payment address to his own. Please make sure you are looking at the OP of this thread when getting the payment address. Furthermore, I am taking precautions to prevent this from happening again and other man in the middle attacks, please validate the Bitcoin payment address by using the PGP Key in my signature. For more information on how to use PGP, please see this website: http://www.bitcoinnotbombs.com/beginners-guide-to-pgp/I am still getting the final costs per unit from resellers & I'm trying to calculate in the cost per unit for power supplys, usb hubs, cables, etc... I expect to have this ready by the end of the weekend and I will open up deposits for the group buy at that time. There isn't really a good solution as far as power cables for a farm of this size. I may end up making our own cables just so I can set everything up how I want to- using ATX power supplies. Please let me know if you have any more suggestions for the terms or other options you'd like to see. Thanks |
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Do you use those for stacking them?? They look so small compared to the gridseed unit's height that it doesn't seem like those are long enough. The OP is using 85.725mm standoffs and it seems like any smaller there wouldn't me much room for the units to breathe. Are you combining them to make them longer or something? |
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That sir is dedication. Good job! |
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Thanks for the video, I enjoyed it. |
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2. I think you have a good idea, and I would not have any problem setting up something like this. You have made me rethink my hosting options, I am thinking about offering an "automatic" service and a "diy" service to cater to both crowds. Automatic service I do everything for you, DIY service you pick your own pool, configure the miners. I can give access via ssh or whatever you prefer. I have seen a pi working with 50 Gridseeds.. you are right, the limitation is the amount of USB hubs you can chain together. The only thing about doing a diy service is I will have to bill you for the hosting fees and can't just take them out automatically. I don't really have a problem with this, just so you know. I think I would give someone up to 1-2 late on their hosting fee before taking of their units and mining the hosting fees.
Alright! I am in for a full controller block whatever that happens to be. I think the easiest way to handle payment would be just require upfront payment for a term of several months (3 is probably a good number, since after that who knows what difficulties and feasibility will be on scrypt). Also, while I am getting everything I asked for I might as well add a few other nice-to-haves, but I am "in" for the self-managed block either way. (1) a bulk shipping or at least a self pickup option for someone who has a lot of units at the end of the hosting term... at $20/unit returning 30 units would be over $600 which seems excessive. (2) just like with self-storage, at the end of the hosting term as an alternative to renewal or shipping back units, sell the units on ebay (possibly with the automatic hosting units), keeping a decent fee for yourself and remitting remainder (probably better than shipping back, especially if you have many units from multiple customers). (3) option to ship my pre-existing units to you to add to my self-managed hosted farm (I realize this would have to include a setup fee to deal with the controller, hub, power supplies, etc. that you are already incorporating in the price of the GB units). (4) option to power units sufficiently to mine BOTH BTC and Scrypt.. I have experimented with this and found that it is actually more profitable at times, especially with alt-coins recent drops relative to BTC .. I am working on a cgminer code that will autoselect BTC, Scrypt or both (don't hold your breath though, its really complicated) and would like to use this. It would significantly increase power required so obviously would be more $$. Thanks for you suggestions.. they are very good ones. Let me think it over a bit and I'll post an update this evening. I like all of your suggestions, but I'm not sure if option #4 will be feasible due to the extreme difference in power usage dual mining mode uses compared to Scrypt only. Since it uses more power, the hosting fee would need to be higher for dual mining units, so it kind of complicates things quite a bit. Also in dual mining mode the amount of units I will be able to host will go down, therefore hosting per unit will be more expensive. I'm open to ideas though. Thanks again for the quality feedback. |
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Great to see you working on another GB! I can also vouch that CH has handled the previous groups very well: good communication, good planning, good troubleshooting skills & always committed to making it work!
Thanks Great to see you working on another GB! I can also vouch that CH has handled the previous groups very well: good communication, good planning, good troubleshooting skills & always committed to making it work!
If he sleeps more than 4 hours, I'm not interested. I sleep with one eye open, I hope this qualifies to your standards!!!  |
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Two questions (or really one question, and one hopeful suggestion):
(1) If you are able to get a better price than $230, will you pass that along to the GB? It looks like prices are coming down close to $200 as of now anyway
(2) It would be really great if you offered an option for someone to buy a "full controller block" of these with the option to self-manage the hosted units. By "full controller block" what I mean is the number of units that are run off of a single controller (or rPi if that is what you are using). I am not sure what the limit is (I know, because I have 10 now, that the limit for the controller that gridseed includes is about 10 in practice, though they claim 20... the rPi could probably handle 30-40 but then you run into USB hub limitations I suspect). Whatever the number, each full controller block would have to be setup and managed individually anyway... if you instead allowed VPN access to that unit (to someone who is willing to buy that full controller block of units) it would alleviate some of your management as that person (me!) would not have to be included in the distributions, etc. It would be a more traditional hosting-only operation... for which I would still expect to pay the full hosting fee of course. I would be in for 20-40 units under this type of arrangement.
Hi, thanks for your interest. 1. Yes I will have a better price than $230. I am still getting quotes to see who can give me the best deal, but it will be around $200-$225. Gridseed is non-responsive.. I think they are only interested in dealing with 100s-1000s of units in one order, so I am going to be forced to deal with a reseller/group buy coordinator. I'm hoping that the resellers will see the big picture and that I will likely order 100s of units, therefore give me a better price although I'm only planning on ordering in 20 unit batches. The batch sizes could be increased no problem if we could secure a better deal that way, but I feel like there is a fine line in between savings per unit and making people wait for a large batch to fill up. They could be mining a week earlier than waiting, negating most of any price difference that would be had for a larger batch. Please keep in mind I am paying for Pis, stand offs to organize the farm, power supplies.. everything. These costs will need to be factored into my cost per unit, so it may be a little higher than what you see in other group buys in the forums, but it includes everything we can possibly need. 2. I think you have a good idea, and I would not have any problem setting up something like this. You have made me rethink my hosting options, I am thinking about offering an "automatic" service and a "diy" service to cater to both crowds. Automatic service I do everything for you, DIY service you pick your own pool, configure the miners. I can give access via ssh or whatever you prefer. I have seen a pi working with 50 Gridseeds.. you are right, the limitation is the amount of USB hubs you can chain together. The only thing about doing a diy service is I will have to bill you for the hosting fees and can't just take them out automatically. I don't really have a problem with this, just so you know. I think I would give someone up to 1-2 late on their hosting fee before taking of their units and mining the hosting fees. Some type of "contract" will need to be written and added to the OP to cover different situations that could come up with hosting diy Gridseeds, but I feel that's nothing that you and I can't come to agreement about. Let me think about it today and I will add a rough draft of the diy provisions to the OP later today. |
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I just now requested a refund just now for order #QORQEBOJA placed on 2013-08-07 using BTC via Mt. Gox for $8,348.00 total I will let you guys know how it goes.  You have more chance of getting money out of the now defunct Gox than Kenneth Slaughter of VMC. He's a scam artist. That's kind of the way I feel, but I will give them a chance before passing judgement. Just as I decided to give Ken a chance by ordering ASICs from him. I kind of felt like he was the red headed step child of Bitcoin ASIC land. A few people at the San Jose Bitcoin conference told me they had met him and he was weird. A lot of people have been giving him a hard time on the forums since forever. At that point I kind of felt bad for him and decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and some business... and I still feel like he has genuine intentions. I just think he is in way over his head at this point and I would like the money back. To break even he would need to deliver me like 10x-50x (who knows when they'll actually ship) the equipment he would have had to deliver in December for me to make the same amount of Bitcoins. It is simply unfeasible. A couple months ago (I think) Ken told me personally that they would ship more equipment to allow us to at least break even in USD. I don't feel like he was lying to me when he said that he would, but it is the fact that it is just totally unbelievable at this point because of the length of the delays and the ballooning network difficulty. I still feel he has good intentions and refuse to believe otherwise unless ActM/VMC turn out to be a complete scam. Delays with refunds are understandable IMO... there can be many unforeseen factors hindering refunds that he cannot release details on publicly due to the thin line he's walking as far as regulatory status. It sounds like they got Goxxed too. |
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I have a bunch of r9 290s and tri-x cards.
Leaving the cost of power out, are you saying the units are now $130 each and not $230?
would it take 3 to match an r9 290 in terms of hashing, but with the lower power use?
Thanks for pointing out the typo in my post earlier. I had meant to type $230, not $130. In Scrypt mode the Gridseeds supposedly use ~ 7 watts, so yes it is much more efficient than GPUs. I would only be able to cool a farm a fraction of the size than I could with ASICs by using GPUs. r9 290s from what I can tell (I'm still using 5xxx cards) can do about 800 Kh at 300 watts. The Gridseed can do about 333 Kh (I have seen screenshots of 377 Kh+) at supposedly 7 watts. Big difference. Hopefully this answers your question.. I'm unsure if you were just simply asking about the price or what. |
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You're going to have to interface memory with the parallella somehow to be able to mine Scrypt coins with this thing. That doesn't sound like an easy task...
Sounds like a lot of work for possibly very little hash rate. I can't see these things being more powerful than ASICs or GPUs.
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Good point, I didn't think about that. I guess if you don't publicly release the coin it isn't likely that you would be attacked. I don't think it's likely anyways because it sounds like your coin is just for fun, but predicting what people may or may not do is futile. Have fun! |
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I plan on making towers out of them using risers, similar to what you did in the OP but more simple. Similar to this:  Then throw a bunch of box fans on them and call it a day. If I can get the cables half as organized as the farm in the picture, I will be a happy man. The only problem I can see is making sure the stack is stable and won't tip over. I will need to secure the stack, possibly at multiple points... at the very least make a stable base for them. I'm not really sure how I will do that yet although I'm certain it's possible.. any ideas of how to do it neatly (don't suggest duck tape  )? |
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With no block reward there is no incentive to protect the network. Don't be surprised if someone jumps on your chain to troll you and steal your premine. (cue BitcoinExpress post in 4... 3.. 2... 1...) (I say that lovingly BCX, I find your banter amusing myself) And who will mine it?
Since no one will get the coins by mining I doubt someone will mine it!
Great minds think alike? |
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