[CLOSED] NanoFury NF1 USB stick - Group Buy + Product Assembly

[nemercry]

So that means the pcb and its components are pretty stable, right ?

Pretty much. All of the important pieces of the design are stable. In the last revision I added also an LED (as people like blinky stuff ) but this it is purely for prettiness - it doesn't affect the core functionality in any way.

Sounds awesome, im currently waiting for some money from a GB. After that i will order all my miners from marto. Cant wait to see them

[1715441880]

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[Molex1701]

Actually I don't like them blinking.  I'm in small place and the AM miners got annoying.  I soldered off the led.

[vs3]

Actually I don't like them blinking.  I'm in small place and the AM miners got annoying.  I soldered off the led.

hahahahaha
Okay, I think that's a very good "feature request": --led-disable

we'll keep it in mind.

[thomas_s]

Actually I don't like them blinking.  I'm in small place and the AM miners got annoying.  I soldered off the led.

The only thing I liked about the led was that it made it really easy to tell if the miners were offline, I'd get up in the morning go downstairs and see a light on and know to restart that strip.

No need to have to check on the computer or ui.

A disable feature would be cool (also multicolor lights not just one color for every one of them)

[nemercry]

Actually I don't like them blinking.  I'm in small place and the AM miners got annoying.  I soldered off the led.

The only thing I liked about the led was that it made it really easy to tell if the miners were offline, I'd get up in the morning go downstairs and see a light on and know to restart that strip.

No need to have to check on the computer or ui.

A disable feature would be cool (also multicolor lights not just one color for every one of them)

Let's keep it cheap and simple

[nemercry]

What is the preferable buying option now: through http://technobit.eu/index.php or this GB?.

We're running two separate business models and therefore there isn't necessarily a "better" place. There are also several factors which may affect your preference - see below.

Marto74 is taking a bigger risk by ordering a full reel of bitfury chips, and also estimating the demand and thus final price. On the other hand, because of those factors he'll be shipping a few weeks earlier than us.

We on the other hand are trying to get the lowest price by first knowing the demand precisely. That way we won't have to pre-order tons of components which may end up not being necessary. At the end of the day if our price ends up being higher than Marto74's we're going to order our devices via Marto74, and his price will be our price too. I'm pretty much trying to say that no matter where you end up ordering from you will pay no more than Marto74's price (which is around 0.54-0.55BTC based on the current exchange rate).

The other factor that you might want to take into consideration is shipping. In the second email we'll be asking the question "Shipping preference: (From EU), (From US), (no preference)". For some countries it might be better to ship from US and for some from EU. There are also often different customs procedures, duties and taxes/VAT based on the country of origin.

Do you know when marto74 will receive his pcbs for assembling those miners ? I've read 1/2 week of oktober in his thread, but i think this is for his s-hash model only.

[Molex1701]

Actually I don't like them blinking.  I'm in small place and the AM miners got annoying.  I soldered off the led.

The only thing I liked about the led was that it made it really easy to tell if the miners were offline, I'd get up in the morning go downstairs and see a light on and know to restart that strip.

No need to have to check on the computer or ui.

A disable feature would be cool (also multicolor lights not just one color for every one of them)

That's true.  If they go zombie or such.

[Molex1701]

Actually I don't like them blinking.  I'm in small place and the AM miners got annoying.  I soldered off the led.

hahahahaha
Okay, I think that's a very good "feature request": --led-disable

we'll keep it in mind.

That would be a nice feature, thanks.   

[philipma1957]

Was checking the payment address


https://blockchain.info/address/1AHvViTD5wohPywNYHi8NZ8uPhbY9dZXCY 


 so far you have under 25 coins about 21.6 which is 54 sticks. I have a suggestion try to show us more photos of it working.

 Here is my preorder score for asics.

1) BFL   2 jallys on order many orders cancelled no gear. waiting 7 months

2)https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=223746.0;all   order cancelled got a refund coins tied up 3-4 months

3) https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=238336.0    Knc gear 7.5 coins for 45gh hash waiting 3 months

4)https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=274055.0;all  1.55 btc for 10gh hash  will wait till dec?

5) https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=296301.0    17 coins tied up waiting a few days so far.



only thecanryinthemine and silentsonicboom have delivered any working gear to me.  I have ordered more then 400 sticks from them.

 My point is I am not doing well on anything but AM usb sticks. I have more then 25 btc in preorders and 500 usd with bfl. about 3.5k

0 delivery but to be fair theswede75 was super fast with the refund on that dead deal and my biggest preorder with 17 coins is about 2 days old and on schedule for under 2-3 weeks. 

Still no video not much info and you only have 54 sticks prepaid.

 https://blockchain.info/address/1AHvViTD5wohPywNYHi8NZ8uPhbY9dZXCY  only  21.6btc 

  I sent 17 btc to ssinc for his sticks. as he had a lot more info to show on his prebuy.

 I do want to order as I am a preorder junkie but please a little more info before i send my btc out into cyberspace.

[vs3]

Was checking the payment address


https://blockchain.info/address/1AHvViTD5wohPywNYHi8NZ8uPhbY9dZXCY 


 so far you have under 25 coins about 21.6 which is 54 sticks. I have a suggestion try to show us more photos of it working.

 Here is my preorder score for asics.

1) BFL   2 jallys on order many orders cancelled no gear. waiting 7 months

2)https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=223746.0;all   order cancelled got a refund coins tied up 3-4 months

3) https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=238336.0    Knc gear 7.5 coins for 45gh hash waiting 3 months

4)https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=274055.0;all  1.55 btc for 10gh hash  will wait till dec?

5) https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=296301.0    17 coins tied up waiting a few days so far.



only thecanryinthemine and silentsonicboom have delivered any working gear to me.  I have ordered more then 400 sticks from them.

 My point is I am not doing well on anything but AM usb sticks. I have more then 25 btc in preorders and 500 usd with bfl. about 3.5k

0 delivery but to be fair theswede75 was super fast with the refund on that dead deal and my biggest preorder with 17 coins is about 2 days old and on schedule for under 2-3 weeks. 

Still no video not much info and you only have 54 sticks prepaid.

 https://blockchain.info/address/1AHvViTD5wohPywNYHi8NZ8uPhbY9dZXCY  only  21.6btc 

  I sent 17 btc to ssinc for his sticks. as he had a lot more info to show on his prebuy.

 I do want to order as I am a preorder junkie but please a little more info before i send my btc out into cyberspace.

philipma1957 -

first - I understand your concerns very well. I have personally been burnt by BFL and several Avalon pre-orders. And it is for that reason that we added the following text in the opening post:

* We’ve seen what happened to Avalon and BFL preorders and we’re absolutely committed to not repeating their mistakes!
We will not spend a single cent of your money until we know that we can deliver what we promised! And if we can’t we’ll be refunding your money.
Currently there are two gotchas: 1) We are dependent on buzzdave (megabigpower.com) to deliver chips on time, and 2) we are dependent on him for reasonable chip pricing. Regarding #1 he has already stated that they have plenty of chips in stock, so currently our only concern is #2.

Second - I more than anyone want to add more pictures and video of our device. Our nicer-looking boards unfortunately won't be here until probably late next week (which will be too late for some). At this point I'm planning to add some more pictures from the engineering boards (and please excuse their not-so-pretty look).

This is likely going to happen either later tonight or tomorrow as I just got them yesterday and they're just bare boards as of this moment yet. That's how they look like as of this moment:


Out of the 3 or 4 that I'll be putting together some will be going to the various miner software developers (e.g. one will be going to Luke-Jr so that he can start integrating support into his bfgminer, etc).

Anyways - it's time for me to get back to work
Feel free to PM me if you have any questions.

[bitterdog]

only thecanryinthemine and silentsonicboom have delivered any working gear to me.  I have ordered more then 400 sticks from them.

 My point is I am not doing well on anything but AM usb sticks. I have more then 25 btc in preorders and 500 usd with bfl. about 3.5k

0 delivery but to be fair theswede75 was super fast with the refund on that dead deal and my biggest preorder with 17 coins is about 2 days old and on schedule for under 2-3 weeks.  

Still no video not much info and you only have 54 sticks prepaid.

 https://blockchain.info/address/1AHvViTD5wohPywNYHi8NZ8uPhbY9dZXCY  only  21.6btc  

  I sent 17 btc to ssinc for his sticks. as he had a lot more info to show on his prebuy.

 I do want to order as I am a preorder junkie but please a little more info before i send my btc out into cyberspace.

This was the last straw for me to not even consider these guys. Stack this on top of no video, no proof of work.. nothing.... don't waste your time
Might as well call it VaporFury1
If you are going to have a pre-order, SHOW US WHAT WE ARE ORDERING!

We got some boards today!



Aaaaaand it seems to be one of our better screw-ups

hint: look at the USB connector pins ....


/running for paint thinner now

[Taugeran]

only thecanryinthemine and silentsonicboom have delivered any working gear to me.  I have ordered more then 400 sticks from them.

 My point is I am not doing well on anything but AM usb sticks. I have more then 25 btc in preorders and 500 usd with bfl. about 3.5k

0 delivery but to be fair theswede75 was super fast with the refund on that dead deal and my biggest preorder with 17 coins is about 2 days old and on schedule for under 2-3 weeks.  

Still no video not much info and you only have 54 sticks prepaid.

 https://blockchain.info/address/1AHvViTD5wohPywNYHi8NZ8uPhbY9dZXCY  only  21.6btc  

  I sent 17 btc to ssinc for his sticks. as he had a lot more info to show on his prebuy.

 I do want to order as I am a preorder junkie but please a little more info before i send my btc out into cyberspace.

This was the last straw for me to not even consider these guys. Stack this on top of no video, no proof of work.. nothing.... don't waste your time
Might as well call it VaporFury1
If you are going to have a pre-order, SHOW US WHAT WE ARE ORDERING!

We got some boards today!



Aaaaaand it seems to be one of our better screw-ups

hint: look at the USB connector pins ....


/running for paint thinner now

why so hateful?

[philipma1957]

only thecanryinthemine and silentsonicboom have delivered any working gear to me.  I have ordered more then 400 sticks from them.

 My point is I am not doing well on anything but AM usb sticks. I have more then 25 btc in preorders and 500 usd with bfl. about 3.5k

0 delivery but to be fair theswede75 was super fast with the refund on that dead deal and my biggest preorder with 17 coins is about 2 days old and on schedule for under 2-3 weeks.  

Still no video not much info and you only have 54 sticks prepaid.

 https://blockchain.info/address/1AHvViTD5wohPywNYHi8NZ8uPhbY9dZXCY  only  21.6btc  

  I sent 17 btc to ssinc for his sticks. as he had a lot more info to show on his prebuy.

 I do want to order as I am a preorder junkie but please a little more info before i send my btc out into cyberspace.

This was the last straw for me to not even consider these guys. Stack this on top of no video, no proof of work.. nothing.... don't waste your time
Might as well call it VaporFury1
If you are going to have a pre-order, SHOW US WHAT WE ARE ORDERING!

We got some boards today!



Aaaaaand it seems to be one of our better screw-ups

hint: look at the USB connector pins ....


/running for paint thinner now

why so hateful?

   He is probably like me 0 for 5 on preorders with a lot of coins floating in cyberspace.  Maybe he did not make a lot when this was gpu and not asics. So he is disgusted.  Myself I wanted to buy  but I have now been told my knc orders will be 7 to 14 days wait. Was hoping they would be on time and now that the delay is certain I am holding back.

[vs3]

Greetings everyone,

So here is my weekend update:

First the (sort of) bad news - despite me triple-checking the documentation I've managed to put the USB connector backwards. (pins are 4-3-2-1 instead of 1-2-3-4)
The immediate result was that I had to solder it backwards on the test boards, and that there will be yet another version of the board I guess that's just a bit more work for me (and no sleep again) but at least that's a very easy fix.

The good news - and before that please excuse the not-so-pretty looking boards - those are the engineering samples as the nice-and-pretty ones are not going to make it on time.

Out of the 4 borders I hand-soldered 2 had the bitfury chip misplaced by a bit (and had shorts and I'll be unsoldering and fixing them later) and 2 were fully completed. And because of the USB connector bug it's been soldered backwards.

Here are the two boards, and one of them hashing (the LED on) :
 

and for the geeks - on that one I was looking at the MOSI and MISO signals (data being sent to and from the chip) :



And for those with "Show Me The Money" question - below are two screen shots from the debugger as the boards passed all tests:


On the two pictures I was testing with 54 and 52 bits speed setting - which is the thing that controls the speed - the more the bits the faster it hashes (and more heat, and eventually hardware errors).

For that test I've adapted BitFury's code (taken from here) and replaced his RaspberryPI stuff with what I needed to run it with our controller and under Windows. Oh, yeah - did I say that this device was going to run under Windows (too)?

Some more technical details:
- Voltage was set to 0.808V. We can go as low as 0.800 (due to power regulator limitations) and as high as 5V for those inclined to experiment
- Temperature: After running for about 30 minutes on 54 bits and as it was taped on the desk the board got up to 75C. That was the most extreme condition - no ventilation, and all heat was directed to the side that was taped to the desk (and wood is not very much thermally conductive ). I'll be doing some more tests with no and a little bit of ventilation.
- GHashes - I haven't measured the exact GHash rate yet, but at 52 bits it's somewhere around 2.0-2.1GH/s and at 24 bits it's in the vicinity of 2.4-2.7GH/s.
- Power consumption will be the next thing to measure. I know for sure that it is below 2.5W as it was plugged into an old monitor which is very picky about devices drawing over 0.5Amps.

For those asking what's next - We gave up on the idea of writing our own miner (yeah, I guess we were a bit optimistic about that ) and we're currently doing the surgical cutting and pasting into legkodymov's cgminer clone (which was never meant to work under Windows and that's what we're currently fixing). My guesstimate is that this is going to take us probably another 10-20 hours of coding, or barring any nasty surprises in a few days the next pictures (and video!) will be of cgminer running our device.


Finally - I realize that for many of you guys this entire GB represents some kind of a risk, and as we're near the end patience is running thin and I want to assure everyone that we stand absolutely firmly behind our promise. We will either deliver what we promised or you'll have your money back. All 100% of it. I'll even pay the transaction fees.

I realize that many of you are considering the risks in this GB and speaking of risk - I doubt that anyone has taken more risk than the development team, who so far has invested their own money into ordering boards and materials (have I mentioned that we've been paying $70 extra for overnight shipping on everything?) and dedicated countless hours into this project. Looking in retrospect I see a lot of things that we could've done different (and faster) but we're a very small team and without the (sort of) unlimited resources of the big businesses.

Nonetheless - I'm very excited with our progress so far and I'm confident that we'll be able to deliver the nice NanoFury devices in your hands as promised!

And we do appreciate your trust in us and all the support and encouraging feedback from the forum!

[Taugeran]

Greetings everyone,

So here is my weekend update:

First the (sort of) bad news - despite me triple-checking the documentation I've managed to put the USB connector backwards. (pins are 4-3-2-1 instead of 1-2-3-4)
The immediate result was that I had to solder it backwards on the test boards, and that there will be yet another version of the board I guess that's just a bit more work for me (and no sleep again) but at least that's a very easy fix.

The good news - and before that please excuse the not-so-pretty looking boards - those are the engineering samples as the nice-and-pretty ones are not going to make it on time.

Out of the 4 borders I hand-soldered 2 had the bitfury chip misplaced by a bit (and had shorts and I'll be unsoldering and fixing them later) and 2 were fully completed. And because of the USB connector bug it's been soldered backwards.

Here are the two boards, and one of them hashing (the LED on) :
 

and for the geeks - on that one I was looking at the MOSI and MISO signals (data being sent to and from the chip) :



And for those with "Show Me The Money" question - below are two screen shots from the debugger as the boards passed all tests:


On the two pictures I was testing with 54 and 52 bits speed setting - which is the thing that controls the speed - the more the bits the faster it hashes (and more heat, and eventually hardware errors).

For that test I've adapted BitFury's code (taken from here) and replaced his RaspberryPI stuff with what I needed to run it with our controller and under Windows. Oh, yeah - did I say that this device was going to run under Windows (too)?

Some more technical details:
- Voltage was set to 0.808V. We can go as low as 0.800 (due to power regulator limitations) and as high as 5V for those inclined to experiment
- Temperature: After running for about 30 minutes on 54 bits and as it was taped on the desk the board got up to 75C. That was the most extreme condition - no ventilation, and all heat was directed to the side that was taped to the desk (and wood is not very much thermally conductive ). I'll be doing some more tests with no and a little bit of ventilation.
- GHashes - I haven't measured the exact GHash rate yet, but at 52 bits it's somewhere around 2.0-2.1GH/s and at 24 bits it's in the vicinity of 2.4-2.7GH/s.
- Power consumption will be the next thing to measure. I know for sure that it is below 2.5W as it was plugged into an old monitor which is very picky about devices drawing over 0.5Amps.

For those asking what's next - We gave up on the idea of writing our own miner (yeah, I guess we were a bit optimistic about that ) and we're currently doing the surgical cutting and pasting into legkodymov's cgminer clone (which was never meant to work under Windows and that's what we're currently fixing). My guesstimate is that this is going to take us probably another 10-20 hours of coding, or barring any nasty surprises in a few days the next pictures (and video!) will be of cgminer running our device.


Finally - I realize that for many of you guys this entire GB represents some kind of a risk, and as we're near the end patience is running thin and I want to assure everyone that we stand absolutely firmly behind our promise. We will either deliver what we promised or you'll have your money back. All 100% of it. I'll even pay the transaction fees.

I realize that many of you are considering the risks in this GB and speaking of risk - I doubt that anyone has taken more risk than the development team, who so far has invested their own money into ordering boards and materials (have I mentioned that we've been paying $70 extra for overnight shipping on everything?) and dedicated countless hours into this project. Looking in retrospect I see a lot of things that we could've done different (and faster) but we're a very small team and without the (sort of) unlimited resources of the big businesses.

Nonetheless - I'm very excited with our progress so far and I'm confident that we'll be able to deliver the nice NanoFury devices in your hands as promised!

And we do appreciate your trust in us and all the support and encouraging feedback from the forum!

first congrats!!!!! 

second, hooree sheet. a diehard windows VS2010 coder. props and love

[RicRock]

For those asking what's next - We gave up on the idea of writing our own miner (yeah, I guess we were a bit optimistic about that ) and we're currently doing the surgical cutting and pasting into legkodymov's cgminer clone (which was never meant to work under Windows and that's what we're currently fixing). My guesstimate is that this is going to take us probably another 10-20 hours of coding, or barring any nasty surprises in a few days the next pictures (and video!) will be of cgminer running our device.

Good news indeed.

Being a Bfgminer/Linux guy, I say don't worry about the windows stuff 

[vs3]

Some more technical info:

bits |Max C|Max A| solutions |
 48  |  70 | .51 |   149     |
 49  |     | .55 |   148     |
 50  |     | .57 |   138     |
 51  |     | .60 |   135     |
 52  |     | .67 |   142     |
 53  |     | .74 |   139     |
 54  |     | .81 |   156     |
 55  |     | .89 |   101     |
 56  |  84 |1.01 |    47     |

Each device behaves differently and those are the values from the worse of the two.

The maximum usable bits (max speed) is 54 bits in which case it draws 0.81A (when it heats up).

Also, I noticed that my old monitor was actually horrible and rather in an unexpected way - when the device started drawing a lot of current the 5V voltage dropped to 3.6V (that was at 1A). This also skews my measurements as the amps would've been lower at 5V. Even at 0.5A the voltage had dropped to 4.8V. Also - probably a side effect of the long cable or usb hub - the voltage wasn't properly stabilized or filtered and I could see a lot of USB noise coming through the power supply. All the LDOs did a good job actually and filtered everything.

I didn't measure temperature all the time, but it went gradually from hovering around 70C at slow speeds to about 82-84C at the highest.

I'll be repeating those with different (powered) hubs over the next days.

Conclusion: Likely the 50 or 51 bits speed (1.7-1.9GH) would be the optimal limit for the standard USB 2.0 and some may be able to go up to 52 bits (2-2.1GH) depending on how much power would they be able to draw from the port. The maximum usable speed (for the overclockers) would probably be 54 bits (or possibly 55 with some extra cooling and voltage tweaking) leading to 2.5-2.7GH/s and above.

[itod]

Nonetheless - I'm very excited with our progress so far and I'm confident that we'll be able to deliver the nice NanoFury devices in your hands as promised!

And we do appreciate your trust in us and all the support and encouraging feedback from the forum!

Congrats on the great work, vs3! It is so hard to get so much done in limited time, hope people will appreciate it.

[bigbeninlondon]

This was the last straw for me to not even consider these guys. Stack this on top of no video, no proof of work.. nothing.... don't waste your time
Might as well call it VaporFury1
If you are going to have a pre-order, SHOW US WHAT WE ARE ORDERING!

There's always got to be at least one.  Notice the username too.  Fitting.

[RicRock]

5 more ordered before the deadline