BM1384 Pod Miner plus trade-in/recycling - an interest and feasibility poll

[zOU]

If there is a small production, I will do a group buy for Canada 

Great job Sidehack as always

I'd say I'd do a group buy for Europe, but you may want to use bitshopper.de for the pods too ?

[hurricandave]

Little, 5 day update 

[Morguk]

If there is a small production, I will do a group buy for Canada 

Great job Sidehack as always

I'd say I'd do a group buy for Europe, but you may want to use bitshopper.de for the pods too ?

He'll add VAT and profit, I'd rather you do it

[notlist3d]

If there is a small production, I will do a group buy for Canada  

Great job Sidehack as always

I'd say I'd do a group buy for Europe, but you may want to use bitshopper.de for the pods too ?

He'll add VAT and profit, I'd rather you do it

bitshopper.de actually was pretty good when I tried to get one in the US.  I wanted to collect them all on compac's.  He went above and beyond to get me one for decent of the EU compacs.

I don't think you will avoid VAT if you live in EU, but I could be wrong.

[sidehack]

He'd probably wrangle if he was manufacturing, but that seems unlikely since I'll be making, if anything at all, a short batch with pull chips and I can really only do that because I'm doing all the assembly myself so I don't require reel packaging.

[Morguk]

If there is a small production, I will do a group buy for Canada  

Great job Sidehack as always

I'd say I'd do a group buy for Europe, but you may want to use bitshopper.de for the pods too ?

He'll add VAT and profit, I'd rather you do it

bitshopper.de actually was pretty good when I tried to get one in the US.  I wanted to collect them all on compac's.  He went above and beyond to get me one for decent of the EU compacs.

I don't think you will avoid VAT if you live in EU, but I could be wrong.

I don't doubt his customer service, I'd just rather a group buy as I know it would be cheaper, that's all.

[sidehack]

So, my test pod has been running at 350MHz for 5 days 2 seconds, averaging 151.45GH (calculated 154GH, so 98.3% expected) and 0.0016% errors. I believe it's set for average node of 800mV, which is a bit higher than it probably needs but that's how you get a 0.0016% error rate.

I've been distracted the last several days with various computer troubles (some motherboard reflowing, laptop rebuilding, RAID recovery, you know...) and haven't gotten around to building more pods. But it'll be priority tomorrow. Which means that, hopefully quite soon, I'll have some pod setups which I can demo and/or raffle off. I'll be sending off for an updated revision PCB which hopefully fixes the power issues but I won't have any of those to play with for a few weeks. I think I've figured out a way to clean up the wiring on the current pod design, which will allow me to interface to an S5 controller in a much more stable manner. This is good because until Novak gets his firmware and drivers ready - which he can't until I get him a test board - the only thing I have to run with is the S5 controller.

So no real news in the pod front yet, aside from that the hacked-up prototype (using someone else's power and someone else's controler, grumble grumble) have proven fairly stable. I guess there is some news in that we're building another batch of Compacs, but no news on the pod front yet.

[MacEntyre]

If there is a small production, I will do a group buy for Canada  

Great job Sidehack as always

I'd say I'd do a group buy for Europe, but you may want to use bitshopper.de for the pods too ?

He'll add VAT and profit, I'd rather you do it

bitshopper.de actually was pretty good when I tried to get one in the US.  I wanted to collect them all on compac's.  He went above and beyond to get me one for decent of the EU compacs.

I don't think you will avoid VAT if you live in EU, but I could be wrong.

I doubt don't his customer service, I'd just rather a group buy as I know it would be cheaper, that's all.

In fact I think about the pods as well. I like the design and of course the idea and would love to have at least a few of them in hand for private pleasure. Most probably there won't be an EU manufacturing like with the Compacs. Due to the low batch size and high fixed costs for assembly no one would like to afford it.
I could imagine to provide sidehack some chips and to get fully equipped PCBs back in return to assemble it with a fan etc. here in EU.
Definitely it would be cheaper for you to import it to EU by youself (as private individuals). But you would always risk to get it drawn by customs due to missing CE conformity proof and missing WEEE registration (customs requiremens which I already fulfil for the EU Compacs). Some of you may remember the problems with EU customs for Smartwatch Pebble buyers?

[MacEntyre]
bitshopper.de

[zOU]

never had a problem with my 2 pebbles bought from the US, or the 6 sticks I got from asicpuppy. (green > black)

[sidehack]

So I got a fresh pod built with a nice compactable buck off a New R-Box board (which are courtesy CrazyGuy, by the way) and better wiring. It's pretty tidy. Course I killed one of the ports on my S5 controller, but that's irrelevant. In any case, it's burger night so I gotta split but later (maybe tomorrow or Monday) I'll probably put up a picture and do some more testing. Right now it's running 200MHz and appears stable. I need to push it to 350MHz stable before I'll approve making more for A RAFFLE WOOHOO.

[Morguk]

Great news! Enjoy that burger!

[sidehack]

I was disappointed to see the 3-hour hashrate for Burger_testpod was less than 80GH, since I left the pod on 200MHz which should yield 88GH expected. According to the webconfig stats, over the last 8 hours 35 minutes it's averaged 87.73GH (99.7% expected) with 0.0013% errors. I see 1101 accepted shares and 115 rejected (probably stale), which is about a 90% effective submission rate and 90% of 88Gh is a shade under 80GH so I reckon that explains it. When I left, the whole thing (fan and controller and everything) was running off about 36W, which puts it at 0.41W/GH average. Not great, but pretty good. When it was at 100MHz I saw something like 14W for 0.32W/GH. Think how much better it'll be when the controller burns about 0.3W instead of however much the whole S5 brain eats up. Maybe I'll test that tomorrow, see how much the controller pulls by itself at various hashrates. And I'll probably switch pools to something with fewer rejects.

[cavaliersrus]

very cool hack i would be interested in this pod once you get it all figured out

[sidehack]

Well, the new test pod seems to not mind 350MHz at all. I'll probably take it home with me and see how it likes running in a bit higher ambient temperatures than we have in the shop today. The buck's staying cool, and after 12 minutes I'm only seeing 0.04% errors at 775mV average node and 350MHz. I mark the S5 controller and fan at 5W, and the board at a shade under 65W, which 350MHz for 8 chips should run about 154GH which puts this guy at a solid 0.42W/GH at the board alone (not counting fan and controller). Pretty decent. If it runs well at 350MHz I'll make a couple more. The only trouble's going to be I need to warm up the robot room because the cold has thrown off its calibration and also my solder paste appears to work best when it stays about 80F. So probably have to figure that out Wednesday. I know I'm way behind on those already, sorry. But the good news is the new test pod is super tidy. All signals are brought in through a 4-pin header and there are only 3 jumper wires on the board and they're all under 2cm in length. It looks really nice compared to the last one. And the buck chip is heatsinked better too.

[Morguk]

Very nice update! Hopefully we'll get to see a sneak peak of the new board sometime!

[sloopy]

The only trouble's going to be I need to warm up the robot room

You know a thing or 6 about warming up a room.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

<snip> I mark the S5 controller and fan at 5W, and the board at a shade under 65W, which 350MHz for 8 chips should run about 154GH which puts this guy at a solid 0.42W/GH at the board alone (not counting fan and controller). Pretty decent. <snip>

Pretty impressive considering my first 2 miners were BFL 10GH/s Jala's bought through TigerDirect. They pulled 65w each + the 20w needed to run the Host PC. Them 2 lil' bastards are what got me hooked on BTC
Sweet.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

The only trouble's going to be I need to warm up the robot room

You know a thing or 6 about warming up a room.

And he'll have ample hardware to do it once my lil pallet of presents arrive for him ta play with 

[AJRGale]

Well, the new test pod seems to not mind 350MHz at all. I'll probably take it home with me and see how it likes running in a bit higher ambient temperatures than we have in the shop today. The buck's staying cool, and after 12 minutes I'm only seeing 0.04% errors at 775mV average node and 350MHz. I mark the S5 controller and fan at 5W, and the board at a shade under 65W, which 350MHz for 8 chips should run about 154GH which puts this guy at a solid 0.42W/GH at the board alone (not counting fan and controller). Pretty decent. If it runs well at 350MHz I'll make a couple more. The only trouble's going to be I need to warm up the robot room because the cold has thrown off its calibration and also my solder paste appears to work best when it stays about 80F. So probably have to figure that out Wednesday. I know I'm way behind on those already, sorry. But the good news is the new test pod is super tidy. All signals are brought in through a 4-pin header and there are only 3 jumper wires on the board and they're all under 2cm in length. It looks really nice compared to the last one. And the buck chip is heatsinked better too.

you see I, I .. I got this problem, you see, all I see is words on words, but no pictures. how does one tell a story without Pictures?!

also, not to be a nazi about it, but can I has paragraphs? its my dyslexia that makes me read about 3 lines then starts following "rivers" along the text.. then I'm like all "Shit, what was I reading?"

[sidehack]

That was a paragraph. Or you want me to break everything into single lines like Phil does?

I thought about posting a picture. But then I decided not to because my camera was in one room, the pod was in another, I was in a third and I kinda wanted to go home instead. Maybe I'll do it tomorrow.

Pod's running pretty good now. I have it at the house. The buck chip is staying cool, I'm seeing 149GH (of 154 expected) and 0.04% errors after 4 hours. I'll crank it up to 400MHz here in a bit and see what it does. 400MHz is just a hair shy of an S1 worth of hash, off about one fourth the power of an S1 and in a lot less space.