BLOKFORGE- Official Canaan Distributor

[theoneandy86]

I can understand fighting for the cart, but after you finally get it you shouldnt have to have it suddenly removed again while filling out payment details. That just doesnt make sense. I feel like I had much less opportunity because I dont have some sort of strong fiber optic cable connection. I just wasted my time refreshing the carts and payment for 2 hours without getting anywhere. Would have gotten 6, then tried 3, then tried just 1. If future sales are the same then im not sure what to make of this particular distributor.

[Steamtyme]

I can understand fighting for the cart, but after you finally get it you shouldnt have to have it suddenly removed again while filling out payment details. That just doesnt make sense. I feel like I had much less opportunity because I dont have some sort of strong fiber optic cable connection. I just wasted my time refreshing the carts and payment for 2 hours without getting anywhere. Would have gotten 6, then tried 3, then tried just 1. If future sales are the same then im not sure what to make of this particular distributor.

I only started buying new miners back in August; but have found it's often the same. You have so many people trying to buy a small amount.

Just visualize those insane black Friday videos we've all seen.

Like they said before if you email them and let them know the issue you had they try their best to make it up to you or help you out with a cancelled order

I can confirm that Blokforge does support their customers - they came through for me on a couple of transactions.  Based on the purchases I have done and their response to those of us in the forum, I will look there first for new miner related products in the future.  Hopefully when the 841s come out they will be priced competitively to the S9s, the 821s or whatever else maybe on the market and will be available from Blokforge.

I got one of the pricey 821s (with help from Blokforge)  snip

[NCDiesel]

Here's the thing people. Stop complaining; 

Unlike every other company out they go out of there way to list any extra units that become available for forum members. They even carve out a small slice for us from the main order.

It does suck when you try and can't get through or you happen to get there to late. I'm sure they will try and fix it, but really if you get to the end and it says out of stock, take a minute breathe, and then act like you just got there and there were none available.

If people keep shitting on their efforts where is the incentive for them to come here and give us a shot at units, and even a slight discount sometimes.

Yes, we are whining a bit, but it could all be avoided with a page that reads that they are having difficulties and aren't  able to fulfill sales like they had hoped(bug is you can get it in your cart but it immediately become invalid).   A little  transparency and honesty goes a long way.   We understand there being no availability, and not getting it in your cart to begin with. We just don't understand why it gets pulled from your cart - probably given to someone who was lucky enough to not experience the problem.

By the way I replicated this on three different machines running three different operating systems using a different browser on each machine(IOS/Windows/Linux using Safari/Firefox/Chrome). So I feel certain this is a shopping cart bug and not an browser/cookie/security settings issue. 

4876 people trying to simultaneously buy less than 200 units.  cart just has problems on the last few, its millliseconds between stock removal and addition for the last few.  It is not that it is getting pulled from your cart, the front end caching is not caught up with the backend and it was not available to begin with.  If you can replicate a way to have 4000 people checkout at the same time on three different browsers, send us a resume.  But for the few that emailed us saying they had problems and didnt tell us to eat a d**k we took care of them.

I wasn't complaining so much as I was pushing back a little bit against somebody who simply said we should be quiet and not say anything. I certainly could do without a miner and can wait for another batch.   And all of us do appreciate you putting a nice batch of miners - at a nice price I might add - up for sale for us.

My guess is quantities are getting committed to carts, not stock IDs. I am software engineer for a large national retailer and I work on the backend systems that support the web site.   When the website wants to commit a quantity, we return them a stock ID which is dynamically generated at the time. That stock ID is associated with the quantity for as long is the cart/session ID from the website is valid.  If they haven't tender a sale with that stock ID by the session expiration, the quantity is return to the inventory column. Works for us, so might work for you?  I am also somewhat familiar with woocommerce - familiar enough that I do understand your limitations and my suggestion  would require a customization to woocommerce on your part.  So it may not be feasible.

Thanks again and sorry if any frustration on my part came through in my posts.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

<snip>
4876 people trying to simultaneously buy less than 200 units.  cart just has problems on the last few, its millliseconds between stock removal and addition for the last few.  It is not that it is getting pulled from your cart, the front end caching is not caught up with the backend and it was not available to begin with.  If you can replicate a way to have 4000 people checkout at the same time on three different browsers, send us a resume.  But for the few that emailed us saying they had problems and didnt tell us to eat a d**k we took care of them.

Actually there are several companies that can do order systems front and back-end stress-testing on any scale you need.

On larger scales the likes of Amazon and CC companies et al, yes that is done in-house. A friend of mine with Phd in CS used to head AMEX's on-line services QA lab in Miami where they routinely simulated 10's of thousands of simultaneous customer sessions using every imaginable browser & OS configurations to verify the on-line sessions worked before taking changes live.

[Blokforge]

Here's the thing people. Stop complaining; 

Unlike every other company out they go out of there way to list any extra units that become available for forum members. They even carve out a small slice for us from the main order.

It does suck when you try and can't get through or you happen to get there to late. I'm sure they will try and fix it, but really if you get to the end and it says out of stock, take a minute breathe, and then act like you just got there and there were none available.

If people keep shitting on their efforts where is the incentive for them to come here and give us a shot at units, and even a slight discount sometimes.

Yes, we are whining a bit, but it could all be avoided with a page that reads that they are having difficulties and aren't  able to fulfill sales like they had hoped(bug is you can get it in your cart but it immediately become invalid).   A little  transparency and honesty goes a long way.   We understand there being no availability, and not getting it in your cart to begin with. We just don't understand why it gets pulled from your cart - probably given to someone who was lucky enough to not experience the problem.

By the way I replicated this on three different machines running three different operating systems using a different browser on each machine(IOS/Windows/Linux using Safari/Firefox/Chrome). So I feel certain this is a shopping cart bug and not an browser/cookie/security settings issue. 

4876 people trying to simultaneously buy less than 200 units.  cart just has problems on the last few, its millliseconds between stock removal and addition for the last few.  It is not that it is getting pulled from your cart, the front end caching is not caught up with the backend and it was not available to begin with.  If you can replicate a way to have 4000 people checkout at the same time on three different browsers, send us a resume.  But for the few that emailed us saying they had problems and didnt tell us to eat a d**k we took care of them.

I wasn't complaining so much as I was pushing back a little bit against somebody who simply said we should be quiet and not say anything. I certainly could do without a miner and can wait for another batch.   And all of us do appreciate you putting a nice batch of miners - at a nice price I might add - up for sale for us.

My guess is quantities are getting committed to carts, not stock IDs. I am software engineer for a large national retailer and I work on the backend systems that support the web site.   When the website wants to commit a quantity, we return them a stock ID which is dynamically generated at the time. That stock ID is associated with the quantity for as long is the cart/session ID from the website is valid.  If they haven't tender a sale with that stock ID by the session expiration, the quantity is return to the inventory column. Works for us, so might work for you?  I am also somewhat familiar with woocommerce - familiar enough that I do understand your limitations and my suggestion  would require a customization to woocommerce on your part.  So it may not be feasible.

Thanks again and sorry if any frustration on my part came through in my posts.

We do not take any comments personal, I know the frustration.

The main problem is the handoff between the cart and the actual payment processing system, the sytem needs to hold inventory at different time intervals depending on what payment method is chosen as you know a bitcoin payment cannot be confirmed within 10-15 minutes, and we cannot risk letting inventory go from someone that has a processing payment.  We also cannot let items sit in peoples carts for 200 minutes while they just go watch a movie while people are trying to buy.

To answer the other comment here  after our first sale, we changed servers, and altered the site to handle the load, and thousands of sessions at once, we do not feel that is the issue at more as i am sure people saw, its the backend syncing with the front end when there are only 1 or 2 units left, and carts trying to hand to backend, than to payment processing sytem, than back and forth again.  Bitmain has billions of dollars and still has the issue, just only the last few orders see it, till they just pull the plug on the sale, lock inventory and clear carts "out of storage".  Nevertheless we are working on it.

[fccs]

I see blokforge has the avalon controllers in stock to buy for the 821 firmware now.  Just a heads up everyone who was waiting besides myself!

[titans00983]

I see blokforge has the avalon controllers in stock to buy for the 821 firmware now.  Just a heads up everyone who was waiting besides myself!

do you think this officially means that the 741 and 821 will need separate controllers? last i spoke with blokforge they werent sure if the 741 and 821 would be able to daisy chain together on the same controller--and that they would have to test it first on their end before they knew---hoping to be able to save a few bucks and use the same controller i have for my 741s now!

[caxibrema]

do you think this officially means that the 741 and 821 will need separate controllers? last i spoke with blokforge they werent sure if the 741 and 821 would be able to daisy chain together on the same controller--and that they would have to test it first on their end before they knew---hoping to be able to save a few bucks and use the same controller i have for my 741s now!

Someone posted on this thread already before it will be supported. You have to make sure you don't flash the firmware for example which would corrupt one of the miners.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

This also applies to mixing A721 and 741's on 1 RiPi. To be specific, the A7/A8 on one controller caveat is to not flash the MM firmware (inside the miner on daughterboard) with both A7/A8 on 1 controller as it is applied to all miners at the same time. Only other thing to remember is that if you play withe voltage offset option, again, it will apply to all miners.

Sooo, just get a RiPi-3 from Amazon or whoever for $30-40, a nice case for it and flash the SD card with the latest controller firmware (which is really software....) from Canaan .

[fccs]

I ordered a separate one so I won't have to worry.  Not worth saving $100 to risk a $2000+ machine.  I'd say run all 741's on 1 controller, and all 821's on another controller.  Don't mix and match and won't have any worry.

[HerbPean]

Please advice us with you have both single UAC and Controller available. I need one controller and 2 UAC. (So i saved 50$ on shipping)

Question already asked, Can i re-use an old Pie first model with the 821 software or a Pie 3 is necessary ?

thanks

Joined the wait list.

[HagssFIN]

Question already asked, Can i re-use an old Pie first model with the 821 software or a Pie 3 is necessary ?

Yes, there are three versions of the A821 OpenWrt software.

One version for the Raspberry Pi 1.
One version for the Raspberry Pi 2.
And one version for the Raspberry Pi 3.

https://canaan.io/downloads/software/avalon821/openwrt/latest/

[HerbPean]

Question already asked, Can i re-use an old Pie first model with the 821 software or a Pie 3 is necessary ?

Yes, there are three versions of the A821 OpenWrt software.

One version for the Raspberry Pi 1.
One version for the Raspberry Pi 2.
And one version for the Raspberry Pi 3.

https://canaan.io/downloads/software/avalon821/openwrt/latest/

Thanks !

[titans00983]

Just a heads up!

Noticed the site today restocked the 821s

Both the February and March batch. Looks like there are 8 left of the feb batch and 6 left of the March batch.

Just wanted to let you all know --might be a few of you still trying to score! Only wire transfer or crypto payments though. Not sure if they're still allowing CC to US customers for purchases under 3k...

[solarismedic]

Hi there,

What's the advantage over the S9?  The Avalon 821 is slower, around the same power consumption/TH, and is quiet a bit more expensive than the S9 even when you factor in a 2-3 week earlier ship date.

Can someone fill me in?  Thanks!

[fccs]

Hi there,

What's the advantage over the S9?  The Avalon 821 is slower, around the same power consumption/TH, and is quiet a bit more expensive than the S9 even when you factor in a 2-3 week earlier ship date.

Can someone fill me in?  Thanks!

Literally just reliability.  S9 is better in every way except quality control and reliability.  Boards go bad much more often and sooner than the avalon miners.  That's at least, why I use avalons over bitmain miners.

[solarismedic]

Makes sense.  thanks for the reply

ps, they look nicer also.  seems more compact.

[fccs]

Makes sense.  thanks for the reply

ps, they look nicer also.  seems more compact.

I think easier to manage as well but that could just be the cleaner design.  It's a toss up.  S9 gets better $$ for sure.. but if a board goes down on it within 2-6months and you have to send it back to china and be piss out of the miner for repair for 1-2months you have to figure if that is worth it over spending a little bit more, but then running for a year + and no issues for a avalon miner in general.  It's USUALLY, key word "USUALLY", better to buy products when it comes to mining IMO based off longterm reliability and roi.  My 741's might have been doing half the hash rate of a s9 the past few months, but in that time frame my friends s9's has had 2/10 fail to the point of needing repairs and I believe some chips or a board or something fried to lower the TH/S on a couple others now.  Besides the loss of profit, it was a miserable headache to get the work done on them, he wound up ebaying them as is and ordering new ones.  My avalons on the other hand, have been running flawlessly since and we both got them at same time (knock on wood).

[lrowland21093]

FWIW the Canaan miners are also much quieter.  I run six 741s and they are quieter than the two S9s they replaced.

[Bob-Bit]

Hi there,

What's the advantage over the S9?  The Avalon 821 is slower, around the same power consumption/TH, and is quiet a bit more expensive than the S9 even when you factor in a 2-3 week earlier ship date.

Can someone fill me in?  Thanks!

Also for me, I can fit 2 1200 watt units on each circuit in my shop but 2 S9's would use too much power to be on the same circuit. That could  be a major consideration for some people. Also (with the 741's anyways) they are quieter, put off less heat, are extremely reliable, and hash above what they are rated at (My 741 hashes at 7.7, but is rated for 7.3). Pure speed isn't always the only thing that is important.