[The Wasp] 28nm ASIC Miner Open Hardware Development Project

[tntdgcr]

Right Now we have 51 full paid members! So we are growing membership will open back up sometime in the near future 

count me in , someone already shared me to Darin , just waiting

[Bicknellski]

Right Now we have 51 full paid members! So we are growing membership will open back up sometime in the near future 

count me in , someone already shared me to Darin , just waiting

Did you need help tntdgcr? Drop gamersglory a PM.

[Bicknellski]

Big meeting tomorrow... as we are going to received a number of important project updates on the Wasp and the Mining Pool as well as a pre-meeting to go over the the plans for a large production run for Wasps that will take place in January. All the members are keen on having modular miners on shelves before any sales start so we will be focused on the logistics challenges so that when Wasps and Hives are in stock we can ship direct in days thus given the community what is wants miners off the shelf.

Note to members we are moving off Zoho for most things administrative to our own forum over the next week or two so that we can communicate more directly with the WPC members. Please check your emails for the latest information on that move. We will phase out Zoho for all communications by January 2014 although we will retain some of the unique functions it has for project management over 2014 until we can integrate everything into our WPC servers.

We will post an update for everyone here before Monday.

And if anyone missed it at this time we are not accepting new members. Membership will reopen in Q1 2014 at some point in conjunction with a payment gateway for membership on our Website.

[bitpop]

This guy needs you https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=379935.0

[Bicknellski]

This guy needs you https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=379935.0

Thanks he contacted us bitpop most appreciated.

[Bicknellski]

Update:

The time frame for the following items would be from now up to first or second week of January 2014.

The WPC Prototype Wasps

• We have in hand enough BitFury chips to produce 8+ prototype waps.
• We will have in hand enough BitMain chips to produce 8+ prototype wasp.
• We should have a first Hive prototype that is able to house wasps but as early prototype that will evolve.
• Target is to build a minimum of 20 total prototype boards in BitFury and BitMain configurations.
• If we have an odd assortment of chips we will also look at mixing and matching chips on the same Wasp.
• Video of the prototypes hashing will be made available to everyone.
• The gerbers and bom for the Wasp will be released only when we are confident that we have functional units.
• WPC will likely produce a small sample prototype run for testing and proof of concept purposes beyond the 20 initial boards.

The WPC Mining Pool

• We will have a functional mining pool up and running before the new year or possibly within the first week of January.
• Full testing of the mining pool will start after Christmas.
• Tentatively 20 Th/s to 300 Th/s range for this pool is estimated by the end of January 2014.

The WPC Website

• Site is ready except we want to have Wasp and Hive prototype pictures before we launch the site
• Site will add more and more functionality after it is live.
• Site will be a work in progress and feedback from WPC members and the community will undoubtedly be taken into account as we edit and modify the site.

The WPC Forums

• We already have a public facing forum for the community but will open that up after we post some basic information.
• News & Announcements - "Official News & announcements of the WPC"
• Publications - "Publications of The Wasp Project Collective"
• Apply for Membership - "Learn about the options available for membership in the the WPC"
• Hardware Support - "Hardware support forum for our products"
• Software Support - "Software support forum for our products"

[MANofthePEOPLE]

Fun thread and project!

Will this be plug and play or you need to put the thing together yourself? Might be in for the minion if I just need to plug it into the wall. Never gonna get it up and running otherwise 

Also, any ball park numbers what the price will be?

[bitpop]

Very nice

[Bicknellski]

Fun thread and project!

Will this be plug and play or you need to put the thing together yourself? Might be in for the minion if I just need to plug it into the wall. Never gonna get it up and running otherwise  

Also, any ball park numbers what the price will be?

Code:

The Hive and Wasp System

Wasps and their hives are USB-connected peripherals to eCoin mining computers. 
Those computers might be as small as a RaspberryPi, or as large as a fully rack-mounted 
industrial server PC. Each Wasp is a potentially stand-alone mining assembly, with its own 
local work generation, hasher configuration monitoring, and Stratum-II reporting. As a 
peripheral, a Wasp can communicate over its USB 2.0 compatible, Full Speed (12Mb/s) 
link to a program such as bfgminer, running on either a dedicated linux-board 
(R-Pi, BBB, etc) or a consumer PC with one of linux or Windows or Mac OS-X.

Some features of a Hive and Wasp system:

Wasps can be put into service as stand-alone hashing peripherals, in which case the 
stand-alone-Hive is a simple board to apply power and provide a connector for the USB cable.

Wasps can be stacked - they have mounting holes for things like brass standoffs, and up to 
four Wasps can be attached to a stacker-Hive, which would provide both power and USB hub 
for consolidating the 4 USB connections into a single USB peripheral.

Hives usually, however, are full industrial rack-mountable containers for Wasps and their power 
supplies. These containers allow multiple varieties of Wasp to live and work together 
(unlike the real-life wasps!), providing scalable, redundant power for up to 8 Wasps, with full 
hot-plug capabilities, graceful, programmable degradation in the case of power supply failures,
and full industrial strength monitoring and control of Wasps, down to individual or small groups 
(4) of hashing chips.

Current Hives are designed for air cooling; water- and oil-cooled assemblies are proposed, 
which will increase density somewhat.

Wasps are currently designed as USB peripherals to a 'mining computer', but the hardware 
is designed to allow in-place upgrading to fully stand-alone headless blades, using a 10/100Mb
Ethernet link built into each Wasp. Firmware space for this mode of operation is also already 
present on the current design.

Ballpark... as we stated before all we have currently are just internal prototype base calculations for us to produce 20 Wasps prototypes and nothing yet for the hives. As soon as the Gerbers and BOM are released anyone will be able to get a quotation on these units so rather that post a number that will ultimately be superseded in a few weeks we will just wait for those to be released after we have working prototypes. That is expected in Late December or Early January 2014 and will be BitFury Wasps and BitMain Wasps varieties and a beta version of our Hive. Sorry we can't be of more help yet on pricing but we really do not want to put out anything that isn't 100% accurate.

[Bicknellski]

Note we are building a team to handle the PR / Marketing for all of the WPC because we all agree that multiple contact points are much better than a single point failure. The website will be going up soon to have most of our communication and updates there and post here only on a weekly basis.

Remember we have the IRC Channel is located on the freenode IRC network.

#WPC-Public (public)

If you don't have an IRC client, click here to visit the channel with your web browser.
http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#WPC-Public

Downloads

Windows or Linux:  http://xchat.org/
Colloguy for Mac:  http://colloquy.info/
All: http://hexchat.github.io/downloads.html

[Bicknellski]

Quick Note:

We are likely to get hold of Edit: The 2 x A1 chips are shipping and will be in the hands of our EE by next week. We will try and update progress on the A1 Wasp as well as the BitMain and BitFury Wasp prototype versions as we have actual demonstrable progress. All major announcements with regards to the release date of the Software, Firmware and the Hardware being created by the Wasp Project Collective will take place on our website only after we have tangible product to demonstrate like the working emulator or prototype Wasps actually working on the test bench. Once the website is up we will post news here for all but at this point only basic information on where we are in development will be made here. When the A1 chips are in Seattle we will drop another note here for all those following this project. Also note we will update the winner of the LOGO contest here as soon as most members have voted on our forums.

[bigbeninlondon]

The WPC Mining Pool

• We will have a functional mining pool up and running before the new year or possibly within the first week of January.
• Full testing of the mining pool will start after Christmas.
• Tentatively 20 Th/s to 300 Th/s range for this pool is estimated by the end of January 2014.

Will this mining pool be open to all?  Do you have a fee structure in place?  How will rewards be calculated?  Any other info?

[bitpop]

Please put cexio out of business

[Bicknellski]

The WPC Mining Pool

• We will have a functional mining pool up and running before the new year or possibly within the first week of January.
• Full testing of the mining pool will start after Christmas.
• Tentatively 20 Th/s to 300 Th/s range for this pool is estimated by the end of January 2014.

Will this mining pool be open to all?  Do you have a fee structure in place?  How will rewards be calculated?  Any other info?

We just had a meeting today about the pool.

Yes. When we have it up and running and fully tested it will be open to all but we will release information on when it opens as soon as we have fully implemented everything. Right now we are working on the servers, software back end but the front end is pretty much complete.

Fees will be posted on the pool when it opens and other information of rewards etc will be posted. We are also going to work on referral programs for those who bring in more hash power.

We are holding all details close to the vest at this point and when we actually have a working pool we will let everyone know via our website and the pool website obviously. Then we will announce it here.

Note I will keep people updated as we progress but not post timelines as such because we simply want to have products and services up and ready for customers then we will do a full on marketing and promotion. I hope that is ok with everyone we just want to avoid the trend to over promise and under perform. We would rather people come and experience our products and services and then weigh in on how we can improve them rather than pre-sell things or hype it to no real purpose.

We are fully funding all our products and services in house through our 52 members. We do want to work with others though and partner on production or working together with others to provide services but we will fund everything and test everything as best we can before anything is released.

[Bicknellski]

Please put cexio out of business

Do we have the model that can do that? I suppose many of us in the collective have already talked about a better or more equitable model for cloud mining but then again that is an entirely new project for the WPC. Right now we are focused on:

1. Wasp and Hive Modular Miner Prototypes
2. WPC Mining Pool
3. WPC Website / Media
4. Internal Administration & Communication for projects and infrastructure for the WPC

I think that is a good topic for discussion here with the community here bitbop.

What is exactly about Cex.io makes you want them to lose market share and go out of business?
What do you think you would like to see as a competitor to Cex.io?

WPC will have the Wasp & Hive modular miner designs which could be used as the basis for the rapid implementation of a "cloud" mining operation that a mining center business or private individuals or other groups outside the WPC could build and we could support with technical / design assistance given our large base of Software / Firmware and Hardware Engineers number in the teens now. There are plenty of opportunities and we are always looking to work with the community to support new efforts.

What would you propose?

[gamersglory]

Please put cexio out of business

I know more then one of our members wants us to get into a CEX.io like cloud hashing service. Me being one   Right now though we are focused on getting are prototypes done and we will share it with all of you and getting partners on board to build end user units. BTW If you build Miners we want you! PM or E-mail me and I will get you the info you need when it is ready. We really want to know how much interest there is out there for our little upgradeable miner.   

[Bicknellski]

Next Meeting:

Saturday 11th January 2014



Location Time:

Seattle, USA 1030 PDT Saturday
London, UK 1830 GMT Saturday
Central Europe 1930 CET Saturday
Jakarta, ID 0130 WIB Sunday

Agenda:

Wasp & Hive Prototype Update
Mining Pool Update
Website Update
Project Group Administrator Update

Members Reporting:

Lead EE - Wasp & Hive
Project Manager - Website
Project Manager. - Mining Pool
Project Manager - Wasp & Hive
Project Manager - Provisioning server to sell and install the WPC licenses
Team Leader - PR & Marketing, CRM
Site Leader - RMA Center USA (Return Merchandise Authorization Center)

[Bicknellski]

Update Mining Pool:

Looks like the pool team are finally getting things moving server wise that means the tinkering can begin. We will have more details to post next week on the mining pool.

Chips, chips and more chips

In a recent round of discussion with various members, we will have even more chips than we originally intended on the prototype side.
A1's, BitFury and BitMain all should be well "overstocked" in the coming weeks as some of our members are having their orders being filled and more samples are sent out.

WPC Logo

Still a day or two left on first round of voting we are keen to announce the winner of the contest but still need more members to chime in on the designs.
Voting is pretty tight and at least 3 designs are now in the running and I suspect we might have to do a run-off vote to break a tie.

[grabber]

Looking forward to get this done! Nice job still!

[Bicknellski]

As are we, we are so hyped to see a working prototype we can taste it.

As we get close we are focused on developing our network so we can work with and support anyone interested in fabrication and sales of these Open Hardware units. We are readying our RMA facilities should any in the US need repairs or maintenance we can support you there stateside. We are hopeful that most of the production of our units will be done through 3rd party fabricators following our designs, using our software and firmware that are licensed and can provide users with an unparalleled support of these units. But even if we see 3rd party production we are keen on offering, at customer cost of course, RMA services and we are also working hard to put together multiple hosting service sites for units worldwide.