[Project Assistance] Have Access To Free Electricity, but...

[1slickvdc]

BLOCK_C - Even if I was doing it near my head, I live off-campus in a little studio that's individually metered and capable of over 100A of 120 and 40A of 240. It's well laid out. Biggest difficulty if I did it nearby would be the girlfriend. She can sleep through a lot, mind you... slept through a guy unloading an entire clip a block away (yikes, ye drunk bastards), but I think something as loud as what the S7 is predicted to be might not be well off next to the bed.

However, if a "get S7, mine till the revenue slows down appreciably and re-sell the hardware" strategy works, might consider that one for at home, seeing as how this Bitmain gear seems to hold its value quite well. That's a whole 'nother story though.

notlist3d - That's kind of the idea I was going after with displaying data, along with VirosaGITS clarification on having to do any sensor based data the hard way, through sensors/ADC's, and some sort of software. Being I'm still at Associate's level, it's obviously not anything too crazy, but some more stuff like maybe calculating and displaying efficiency (GH/W, using a fixed rate W number since there's too much involved in metering that and feeding it in constantly), the power supply voltage and temps as well as the miner itself, stuff like that. Get it all piped into a Raspberry Pi or something similar to be able to chew on the stuff I feed it as well as display stuff it can get from someone's API.

At least those are my thoughts at the moment.

[VirosaGITS]

That sound good. For mining next to your head, the problem is really just your electricity cost that you laid out. It make any investment at all prohibitive. Even the super efficient USB key or the latest chip would be pretty costly.

In term of noise an underclocked S1 and probably S3 would work, but you would not be making much buck and you'd have to use those time plug thing that will turn it off during peak hour and with my personal experience with watt meters like the kill-a-watt, they just blow up since "they aren't actually designed to work continually" so i'm guessing cheap timer would burn out as well. In truth beside a super underclocked S3 or underclocked S5 i don't think there are options for you.

I'm sure you could find something more industrial but iirc your base 0.075 is still pretty expensive.

However if at any point in the year you need to pay for heating, then we can talk this over, as ASIC make for the perfect heating machine since you would need to pay for generating heat anyways.

[1slickvdc]

My .075 isn't bad (used to be .145 flat rate 24/7, just switched), since that includes the distribution charge as well, so that's an all in per-KWh charge. I have a partially dead S3 here at home already and I switched fans on it to reduce noise, the active bank only runs around 50 degrees unless the ambient temp is up around 27-30, which it does sometimes. The weather's cooling off now, so it'll be much much lower now.

I get "free heat", but the blower that moves that air is hooked to my meter, and it's old and beat up, so not sure the power consumption on that thing. Couple hundred maybe. I noticed a thread on undervolting the hell out of an S5, if I could squeeze some efficiency out of that, might not be bad at home.

[VirosaGITS]

Check the top right of your S5 PCB(edit: if you get one*) and tell me if its 1.91v.

I would say 0.075 is fairly expensive, its not because you used to have 0.15 that 0.075 is good for mining, sadly, it depend on your competition's electricity price.

Basically you're competing with people that get electricity at 0.02-0.04. A ton of the hashrate is in China and a lot of the rest is hosted in the north regions with free cooling. But if you ever run a miner at home you can have that fan thing turn off to not take electricity, since the heat generated from the miner would cut on your heating bill.

[1slickvdc]

It's an S3, and I think this is one of those S1's converted into 3. Very different looking board, like a dual-board stacked configuration. One says "S3_CtrlBoard_Power_V1.1" and the networking board says just "Bitmaintech V1.2" and a 2013 date stamp. Yeah, China's kicking America's ass in everything except ... well ... censorship. Same with the north in terms of mining. I live in a state where from October to May it's less than 10C outside, and I can just camp a miner next to my window and keep the place heated. Worked during our quick cold spell last week. I'm not looking to rake in a sh*tload here, just want to pay the power bill and buy a 6-pack while pumping the blockchain trying to ROI.

Missed your edit: is that 1.91 something to be avoided on the S5's?

[VirosaGITS]

It's an S3, and I think this is one of those S1's converted into 3. Very different looking board, like a dual-board stacked configuration. One says "S3_CtrlBoard_Power_V1.1" and the networking board says just "Bitmaintech V1.2" and a 2013 date stamp. Yeah, China's kicking America's ass in everything except ... well ... censorship. Same with the north in terms of mining. I live in a state where from October to May it's less than 10C outside, and I can just camp a miner next to my window and keep the place heated. Worked during our quick cold spell last week. I'm not looking to rake in a sh*tload here, just want to pay the power bill and buy a 6-pack while pumping the blockchain.

Missed your edit: is that 1.91 something to be avoided on the S5's?

Alight, basically, i just meant if you think about getting an S5 for undervolting, make sure its a v1.91 but basically as you might have read on the thread, its a bit of a pain since you need to feed it lower Voltage with a downstep or a adjustable PSU.

If you set up a miner with downsteps and stuff to raise efficiency you could also add efficiency comparison. Could make for a cool electrical project. Just not sure how much in board electronics you are but if getting some buck converter from amazon fit in your curriculum then this could be a cool project for you.

[1slickvdc]

That's a very valid and epic point. Get a couple S5's and see if I can make one notably more efficient, seeing as how saving energy and green power is a big issue around here.

That bloody 360 second timer is annoying. Server, I'm trying to have a conversation here, and not on the Sprint network!

[VirosaGITS]

That's a very valid and epic point. Get a couple S5's and see if I can make one notably more efficient, seeing as how saving energy and green power is a big issue around here.

That bloody 360 second timer is annoying. Server, I'm trying to have a conversation here, and not on the Sprint network!

Oh yeah, sorry, anti newbie spam features xD

I'm not sure exactly how to go about feeding the data to a Pi and then displaying it on a monitor, but basically if you could feed it two set of data from two concurrent S5, one that run undervolted and one that run stock and use hardware which more enter the realm of "Engineering" and less "Web development" then you could have something of interest.

Another idea would be to change the fan, showing the difference in noise, cooling, anything. There's also 3D printed mods for it that could be interesting to at least look into.

There's a lot of things you could do, just gotta see what's the most proper thing to get a good grade since i'm assuming it would be. But if not, just whatever fit best your engineering stuff curriculum.

[1slickvdc]

Oh this isn't a graded project. Told that professor I wanted to set up a mining rig to pay my electric bill and buy me a 6-pack. He said if I can turn it into a project of some sort, it's all fair game.

Seriously though, I think that should be the deal, two S5's set up in such a way as to compare a modified one to a stock one, performance, power usage, noise levels, etc. The amount of web development in there wouldn't necessarily detract anything from the fact that things have been customized and added and research done. In all reality, the attendance/acceptance numbers for the department appear to be down, and I think anything to attract attention to those on the fence or who haven't quite decided exactly where to go (there's about 3,500 of those last time I checked) might decide engineering. Department needs em, "industry" needs 'em. I don't blame em for bribing me to come up with a project to attract people.

I can also completely understand the noob/spam thing. Just not sure when the timer goes down to something reasonable.

[VirosaGITS]

Oh this isn't a graded project. Told that professor I wanted to set up a mining rig to pay my electric bill and buy me a 6-pack. He said if I can turn it into a project of some sort, it's all fair game.

Seriously though, I think that should be the deal, two S5's set up in such a way as to compare a modified one to a stock one, performance, power usage, noise levels, etc. The amount of web development in there wouldn't necessarily detract anything from the fact that things have been customized and added and research done. In all reality, the attendance/acceptance numbers for the department appear to be down, and I think anything to attract attention to those on the fence or who haven't quite decided exactly where to go (there's about 3,500 of those last time I checked) might decide engineering. Department needs em, "industry" needs 'em. I don't blame em for bribing me to come up with a project to attract people.

I can also completely understand the noob/spam thing. Just not sure when the timer goes down to something reasonable.

I am not sure if its specific to member rank, but your next member rank will be at 30 activity "Jr Member". So basically after 6 weeks since the potential activity is +14 per 2 weeks i believe.

-

Sound good, if you "marketize" your project into showing how you can "earn more money" even though its specific to Bitcoin earning, you could get more attract to the project and also raise the awareness of Bitcoin. Sound great to me, 2 bird one stone. Or 3 bird if you count your personal gain in the story.

The easiest way to do this would be to get 2 1.91v S5 which may be an hassle, and then the easiest way to downvolt one would be to use a 11v or 10v PSU, since using a step down is more work... but could be cool if you use more engineering-y hardware.

Maybe slap some external sensors with LEDs for the cool factor among today's kids or something.

And hopefully your stuff won't be stolen/sabotaged.

[1slickvdc]

I am not sure if its specific to member rank, but your next member rank will be at 30 activity "Jr Member". So basically after 6 weeks since the potential activity is +14 per 2 weeks i believe.

-

Sound good, if you "marketize" your project into showing how you can "earn more money" even though its specific to Bitcoin earning, you could get more attract to the project and also raise the awareness of Bitcoin. Sound great to me, 2 bird one stone. Or 3 bird if you count your personal gain in the story.

The easiest way to do this would be to get 2 1.91v S5 which may be an hassle, and then the easiest way to downvolt one would be to use a 11v or 10v PSU, since using a step down is more work... but could be cool if you use more engineering-y hardware.

Maybe slap some external sensors with LEDs for the cool factor among today's kids or something.

And hopefully your stuff won't be stolen/sabotaged.

Very much on the right track here, I like where we're going now. That was the generalization given to me by the professor, since he's not very well acquainted with Bitcoin (well, frankly, I've only been in it for three weeks now... bought a U3... thought it was cool, bought three more, running off 12V supplies than run nearly 24/7 anyway, and it kept going), so he left the particulars up to me, but yes, in all reality it's a PR stunt. Attract students to the possible future of the financial industry and how it's affected by technology (we can only hope, block size debate notwithstanding).

The room is dead secure, there's also a HAM station in there that never gets used and has never been jacked. Have my license, but never been on the air. Campus security/PD is also on top of things around there too. Besides, at a half a million people, there wouldn't be anywhere to practically unload a stolen miner around here anyway.

[sloopy]

Oh this isn't a graded project. Told that professor I wanted to set up a mining rig to pay my electric bill and buy me a 6-pack. He said if I can turn it into a project of some sort, it's all fair game.

Seriously though, I think that should be the deal, two S5's set up in such a way as to compare a modified one to a stock one, performance, power usage, noise levels, etc. The amount of web development in there wouldn't necessarily detract anything from the fact that things have been customized and added and research done. In all reality, the attendance/acceptance numbers for the department appear to be down, and I think anything to attract attention to those on the fence or who haven't quite decided exactly where to go (there's about 3,500 of those last time I checked) might decide engineering. Department needs em, "industry" needs 'em. I don't blame em for bribing me to come up with a project to attract people.

I can also completely understand the noob/spam thing. Just not sure when the timer goes down to something reasonable.

I'm confident whatever is there will be great. Exposure in general is good and making the case for a home miner is always great with all disclaimers stating you will lose every penny so don't spend what you cannot afford to lose. I know you are asking for build advice not legal or anything else, but throwing that out there to always protect yourself.
Look for opportunities when you do this. Talk to people in areas you may not already and take on an educated peer in the project who can be useful and teach you things. Because why not.

Show solo mining vs pool mining. Expand on the future of decentralization which is the opposite of what is needed.

Assuming you have any safety consideration including power and ventilation and IF "money is no object" and you're a gambler, get the S7.
-- another PC disclaimer:
It sounds like You can probably make more buying and holding.
...At Least I am told that quite often.

With what I see happening I think you are going to see the community underclock the S7 with variable voltage power supply or some equivalent. The string design has some folks doing some work. Get a power supply, or actually  get a couple. You can really show efficiency in a real world environment where it defines the landscape. You could even get a little political about efficiency in general, and how we are robbed of it every day. Off topic

I think:
Introduction to: A Bitcoin Miner: Attempt 1 --The S7
Main Body #1: Setup, Operation, and Maintenance --The S7
Main Body #2: Meet a Miner - Efficiency and Difficulty
3 Centralization
Running a node
Live Web Display with wifi camera  

I think what you are doing shows initiative, but be safe, and... I'm saying this figuratively, but get insurance on yourself in this situation relative to the school. Do not let someone do something stupid and you get burned with some 30k bill. Same for you too, check the wiring yourself or have a qualified person do it if you are not. Make sure you do not catch someone else's engineering project on fire, or them you. Make sure on the noise, even underclocked with great fans an S5, S7, will be noisy. If it isn't an issue, great, but don't think it won't be loud.

More than anything record it, take notes, and take tons of pictures and video.
You might make a youtube channel people can follow.

Easy for me to say all of that huh?
Good luck, I hope they see the initiative.

Explain the blockchain to everyone.

[1slickvdc]

I'm confident whatever is there will be great. Exposure in general is good and making the case for a home miner is always great with all disclaimers stating you will lose every penny so don't spend what you cannot afford to lose. I know you are asking for build advice not legal or anything else, but throwing that out there to always protect yourself.
Look for opportunities when you do this. Talk to people in areas you may not already and take on an educated peer in the project who can be useful and teach you things. Because why not.

Show solo mining versus pool mining. Expand on the future of decentralization which is the opposite of what is needed.

Assuming you have any safety consideration including power and ventilation and IF "money is no object" and you're a gambler, get the S7.
-- another PC disclaimer:
It sounds like You can probably make more buying and holding.
...At Least I am told that quite often.

With what I see happening I think you are going to see the community underclock the S7 with variable voltage power supply or some equivalent. The string design has some folks doing some work. Get a power supply, or actually  get a couple. You can really show efficiency in a real world environment where it defines the landscape. You could even get a little political about effieicney in general, and how we are robbed of it every day. Off topic

I think:
Introduction to: A Bitcoin Miner: Attempt 1 --The S7
Main Body #1: Setup, Operation, and Maintenance --The S7
Main Body #2: Meet a Miner - Efficiency and Difficulty
3 Centralization
Running a node
Live Web Display with wifi camera 

I think what you are doing shows initiative, but be safe, and... I'm saying this figuratively, but get insurance on yourself in this situation relative to the school. Do not let someone do something stupid and you get burned with some 30k bill. Same for you too, check the wiring yourself or have a qualified person do it if you are not. Make sure you do not catch someone else's engineering project on fire, or them you. Make sure on the noise, even underclocked with great fans an S5, S7, will be noisy. If it isn't an issue, great, but don't think it won't be loud.

More than anything record it, take notes, and take tons of pictures and video.
You might make a youtube channel people can follow.

Easy for me to say all of that huh?
Good luck, I hope they see the initiative.

Explain the blockchain to everyone.

If I knew enough about most of the technology behind BTC, like the technical details of how the blockchain works, etc. I've read stuff a million times, but it seems there's way more to be had and I don't know quite what it is. In terms of the concerns, sound isn't one, so that's taken care of. I plan on documenting it, mainly for sharing with the people reasons. I can see the lines you put up there with topics and what sounds like a written report would go well in my, well, "technical reporting" course. Holy crap this project is going to be quite useful.

[1slickvdc]

Just waiting on the go ahead from facilities and tech (network needed and I want a port so I can keep an eye from home).

In the mean time, anyone got a link to a good explanation on the blockchain and how it all works from the inside?

[notlist3d]

Just waiting on the go ahead from facilities and tech (network needed and I want a port so I can keep an eye from home).

In the mean time, anyone got a link to a good explanation on the blockchain and how it all works from the inside?

Here is a very short video about explaining it - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1177497.0

You can go much more in depth if needed.  But that is a decent video for showing someone new who needs a quick anwser of what it is.

[VirosaGITS]

Just waiting on the go ahead from facilities and tech (network needed and I want a port so I can keep an eye from home).

In the mean time, anyone got a link to a good explanation on the blockchain and how it all works from the inside?

Have you got any replies this week? I am wondering what you final setup will look like after all the ideas we bounced at the wall. Please keep me posted, i'd be up for more idea bouncing if you ever meet some technicalities that need resolved~

[1slickvdc]

Have you got any replies this week? I am wondering what you final setup will look like after all the ideas we bounced at the wall. Please keep me posted, i'd be up for more idea bouncing if you ever meet some technicalities that need resolved~

Red tape. Never fast. I will most definitely keep all of you updated as things progress though. What I've gotten down so far from the dept head is to have a write up on the blockchain, some sort of screen showing blockchain activity, miner activity, operating characteristics (voltage, GH/s) and some other stuff in that same direction. I've got to go in next Wednesday for their weekly department meeting thing and present it to the rest of the faculty to get the final go-ahead. So that means a write up on the blockchain and its relevance to modern society and the future of the financial / security industries. Nothing too fancy, just a way to make things relevant.

[VirosaGITS]

Have you got any replies this week? I am wondering what you final setup will look like after all the ideas we bounced at the wall. Please keep me posted, i'd be up for more idea bouncing if you ever meet some technicalities that need resolved~

Red tape. Never fast. I will most definitely keep all of you updated as things progress though. What I've gotten down so far from the dept head is to have a write up on the blockchain, some sort of screen showing blockchain activity, miner activity, operating characteristics (voltage, GH/s) and some other stuff in that same direction. I've got to go in next Wednesday for their weekly department meeting thing and present it to the rest of the faculty to get the final go-ahead. So that means a write up on the blockchain and its relevance to modern society and the future of the financial / security industries. Nothing too fancy, just a way to make things relevant.

Maybe you could display this fancy block explorer live;
http://chainflyer.bitflyer.jp/

You can change the language to English by clicking on the Cog. Explain that each gem that fall is a transaction that just went through, live. Etc, there's many blockchain explorer. Not sure if you have to display it live but you could, maybe even on a small LCD screen showing live blockchain transactions..

Basically the aforementioned website is the same info displayed as https://blockchain.info/ but more "eye candy" i suppose?

[1slickvdc]

Maybe you could display this fancy block explorer live;
http://chainflyer.bitflyer.jp/

You can change the language to English by clicking on the Cog. Explain that each gem that fall is a transaction that just went through, live. Etc, there's many blockchain explorer. Not sure if you have to display it live but you could, maybe even on a small LCD screen showing live blockchain transactions..

Basically the aforementioned website is the same info displayed as https://blockchain.info/ but more "eye candy" i suppose?

Oh it's so pretty! lol no that's actually really neat, gives a nice graphical approach. If I have room for two displays in that window I can probably have a display with that on it, and one below it with the descriptions of the technology and numbers from the miner that's next to it all.

[1slickvdc]

So the first S5 showed up today and I'm running numbers. One thing that gets me is the power supply I'm using (HP DPS800GBA) is running hot at 12.65V. How the hell do I bring that down? Is there a pot somewhere easily accessible for fine tune?