Can some sort of miner be run with the phone line's power, not making it "busy"?

[TiagoTiago]

(I'm sorry if this is a stupid question, i only got a superficial knowledge on most things involved.)


Is there some sort of mining rig that can run out of the power from a phoneline (either directly hooked or thru some sort of adapter/transformer/wallwart thingy etc), without the phone company considering the line to be "busy" while the device is plugged and sucking energy (in other words, not preventing the phone from ringing if called nor preventing outgoing calls)?


Obviously this wouldn't be very competitive, probably even less powerful than GPUs, but since the electricity coming thru the phone line is unmetered, if it doesn't interfere with regular usage of the phone line for making and receiving calls then that's pretty much free eletricity, and free electricity + mining rig = free money (though in this case it might be just a trickle of money, still free though). But since it is quite weak, the best way to go with this would be to join a pool, obviously.


ps: I live in Brazil, most specificly São Paulo. I'm not sure if that makes much a difference, but i have the impression the landline standards and protocols might be a bit different in different parts of the world; keep that in mind.


ps2: oh, and another requirement is there must be no significant noise added into the phone line, there is a ADSL service being offered in these parts and i wouldn't want them to trace the noise to my house...

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[mokahless]

First I ever heard of this. So in Brazil, you guys all have a sort of "POE" (power over ethernet) but for your phones? So you don't have to plug any of your phones into outlets?
You guys must have pretty thick phone cables.

[Photon939]

There is usually a small amount of electricity provided by the phone line itself, but it is very low current and highly illegal to tap for non-phone purposes. You'd be lucky if you could draw more than 1-2 watts before the voltage sagged to unusable levels or blows a fuse somewhere.

[TiagoTiago]

First I ever heard of this. So in Brazil, you guys all have a sort of "POE" (power over ethernet) but for your phones? So you don't have to plug any of your phones into outlets?
You guys must have pretty thick phone cables.

It is my understanding the landlines have a small bit of power even when the phone is on the hook (some phones even take advantage of that to do things like backlight on the keys, show the time, allow management of a simple contacts book etc while plugged but with the phone on the hook). It is certainly not as powerful and reliable as regular powerlines, but there is some energy in there. The characteristics of the electricity change when you connect a call, when the phone is ringing etc; these variations and pulses need to be taken in consideration.

Ah, and if i'm not mistaken there is even some house alarm systems that monitor the landline and trigger the alarm if the line ever goes dead; since it is supposed to have some energy in it pretty much the whole time, if it goes dead it means someone cut the line.

[TiagoTiago]

There is usually a small amount of electricity provided by the phone line itself, but it is very low current and highly illegal to tap for non-phone purposes. You'd be lucky if you could draw more than 1-2 watts before the voltage sagged to unusable levels or blows a fuse somewhere.

And there is no 1Watt miner out there?

And why exactly is it illegal? What is the harm if they are sending that electricity anyway?

[vapourminer]

read this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringer_equivalence_number

drawing power = increasing the REN.

or, another way, the device you add (miner) will have a REN. probably a pretty high one.

load the line up too much and phones stop working. or they cut you off as they only have so much power to feed into the line.

And there is no 1Watt miner out there?

there probably will be soon. but are you seriously worried about 1 or 2 watts on your electric bill??

[Photon939]

There is usually a small amount of electricity provided by the phone line itself, but it is very low current and highly illegal to tap for non-phone purposes. You'd be lucky if you could draw more than 1-2 watts before the voltage sagged to unusable levels or blows a fuse somewhere.

And there is no 1Watt miner out there?

And why exactly is it illegal? What is the harm if they are sending that electricity anyway?

It's illegal because if your device were to malfunction or draw excessive current, it could affect other nearby lines. This could potentially interfere with someone's ability to dial 911 in an emergency. This is also the reason that cell phone jammers are illegal.

I'm not currently aware of any miners that will work on less than 2 watts of power.

[TiagoTiago]

And there is no 1Watt miner out there?

there probably will be soon. but are you seriously worried about 1 or 2 watts on your electric bill??

1 watts on the electric bill is always more expensive than 1 watt on the phone line...

[vapourminer]

And there is no 1Watt miner out there?

there probably will be soon. but are you seriously worried about 1 or 2 watts on your electric bill??

1 watts on the electric bill is always more expensive than 1 watt on the phone line...

if it took me (say) 2 minutes hook something up for a free watt worth of power, I would feel like I had wasted 2 mins of my life Ill just use my house electric.

[mokahless]

Even a raspberry pi is twice the power requirement. I mean, you can mine on its CPU but...

[niko]

There is usually a small amount of electricity provided by the phone line itself, but it is very low current and highly illegal to tap for non-phone purposes. You'd be lucky if you could draw more than 1-2 watts before the voltage sagged to unusable levels or blows a fuse somewhere.

And there is no 1Watt miner out there?

And why exactly is it illegal? What is the harm if they are sending that electricity anyway?

They are not sending it anyway; it only flows if you are drawing it.

[Crystallas]

10w solar panel + 18650 battery stack = cheap and not being intrusive to the com grid. Still wont give you a ROI, but at least you're stealing the sun's energy and not someone else's LOL

[TECSHARE]

Phone companies monitor these power levels. If you do it too much eventually some one will be at your door wanting to inspect your setup to look for shorts.

[Phil21]

A long time ago I did the math to figure out how many phone lines I'd have to order (assuming I'd get max draw on each which is a large assumption) to power a small Cisco router at a remote location.  I think it was around 70, iirc

This is a fun thing to think about and do napkin math on, but it's not practical and surely illegal.  It's stealing power, just like if you'd plug into the unmetered side of your house demarc.  This is actually probably a lot worse, since you're drawing power from a system where the power exists for a very specific reason.  Most likely you won't be fused on your individual line, so if you do draw more than a few watts you'll be taking out a neighborhood.   Heck, given you're in a developing country it might not be fused anywhere

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tip_and_ring

-Phil

[nbtcminer]

Eletrical Alert:

Even if you did manage to "get" power over a phone line; you'd quickly discover that phone lines aren't rated the handle the power draw that the device might require and if it did some how succeed in drawing the power you would likely end up with a fire wherever the phone line runs through.

[GenTarkin]

Sandman.com has sold this stuff for years:

http://www.sandman.com/telco.html

I don't see any ASICS though.

lol telco powered glow in the dark vibrator...thats awesome!

I remember , I hated to work on phone systems while they were live, if I was doin wire tracing or whatnot. The voltage raises by 2x when someone picks up the line, enough to give ya a good electrical feedback when you touch the wires... whereas there non off the hook voltage isnt really high enough to feel it. I think its like 20 "idle" and 40v when phone off the hook.

[zif33rs]

^   Thats friggin hilarious...I lol'ed.  I'm betting its he's best seller.

[Phil21]

Man, good link.  Ha.

It's actually 90v (AC current, voltage varies but is generally 90v in the US iirc) when it rings.  I found that out stripping wire with my teeth to connect a new jack for my uber-fast 19.2k modem.  Who had the time to run down to grab wirestrippers when there was so much connecting at high speeds to do?!