Gizmo Miner. 5v-9v Power Efficient. Bitcoin miner. FOSS or 🖕

[GizmoMiner]

Gizmo Miner. 5v-9v Power Efficient. Solar Focused. Bitcoin miner.

Github

GizmoMiner Discord is Archived . The open-source mining hardware conversation continues on OSMU discord

Discord

January 13, 2023, 01:23:19 AM

Have been watching as a guest on this forum for a very long time. Over a decade. Bitcointalk has been great resource for information and many times of entertainment. Always thought is was cool, how you never had to register to get information. My personality is very introverted.

Took a lot to actually create an account and put myself out there. I remember a time in Bitoins past. It was not really safe to say “hi I mine bitcoin” for fear of being kidnapped for your seed phrase.  Silk road was a thing in them days. Bitcoin had a stigma of criminality.  At the time a lot of  people did not want that stigma Bitcoin came with in their professional lives. Think that has always been my reasons for staying closeted bitcoin enthusiast. People fear what they do not understand. At that time very few actually understood it.  Never really got out of that fear intel recently. I was just a huge nerd that loved the concept of Bitcoin. Loved just playing around with computers and gadgets.

Seeing how it has become more mainstream and lost a lot of that stigmas. People wear Bitcoin t-shirts now.  It was a huge risk at one time to wear a Bitcoin t-shirt out in public.  One of my life’s biggest regrets is. Not getting more involved in bitcoin community in the early days. Bitcoin has been a huge part of my life and would like to finally be an active member of it’s community .  A word to others like myself. I know you are out there. Watching passively . Get evolved. It is never to late. Come out of the Bitcoin closet. It is safe now.

We have all watch the evolution of Bitcoin and thousands of altcoins. After all this time. Finding myself back to the start.  As in the start of Bitcoin we tinkered. We tried new things.

Seems like Bitcoin is shifting from seeking the fastest miners to the most power efficient.  CK Pool really allows anyone the ability to solve solo blocks with modest hardware. That is huge in my opinion. The future of Bitcoin is somewhere in that direction. Low power usage more solo directional mining.

It is on this forum every day. More people asking about how to go smaller. Go more energy effective. Not even caring so much about hashrate.

After all these years. What has got me off the sidelines and active in this community, is a project that keeps coming up on the forums.  Bitaxe https://github.com/skot/bitaxe !!!  Would really enjoy contributing  to the Bitcoin community through developing these tiny energy effective open source bitcoin miners. Bitaxe reminded me of the excitement of my early day’s of Bitcoin. The earlier days of rushing to Bestbuy to buy as many GPU’s as possible or per-ordering  ASIC miners that only half would actually show up in the mailbox.  People who have been on this forum for awhile .Remember a time when projects like bitaxe was a dime a dozen. 2011-2013 most notable. Felt like a new mining company popped up every day. Most never ended up having any kind of success. A huge amount never even got built. A lot of talk about building. The ones that did are considered collectibles now.

Everyone back in the day was trying to build their own asics. As time past these project dwindled down to nothing. What was the point really with Bitcoin diff so high.  Bitaxe really got me going again. I do have larger Bitcoin miners but what is the point anymore. They can literally break you with electricity cost. As many of you have. My miners are turned off.  My excitement for mining has not. As with most of you . Bitcoin mining has been a rewarding hobby and a big part of who you are as a person.


The plan is to produce USB and low power consuming asic miners to be added to solo pools like CK Pool.

All our designs will remain open source and free for anyone to use. For contributors that would rather make donations over building from scratch? We will send you first batch working prototypes depending on your donation amount. Yes. These are donations. You are not buying anything.  You are supporting a Grassroots initiative. Just so happens this Grassroots initiative says thank you by sending it’s donors working prototypes to test

If you have any advice to make this project better . Would love to hear it . Hoping people already working on this type of thing. Would lend info if they can. All my findings and knowledge gained will go straight to this community to be used however you see fit.


Skot has done  amazing  work on  Bitaxe and seems like a logical place for Gizmo miner to start as a practice prototype. Then craft the USB miner by the trial and error from working with the  Bitaxe . Crossing fingers! Hoping to be able to gain invaluable insight from members like Skot, sidehack , developeralgo and n0nce . Plenty of other members looking into the same concepts and sharing knowledge. Once we get this thing going. Have no problem sending out prototypes for your trouble.

Glad to finally meet you all,


Updated:11/30/2023

Goals:
Give away FOSS knowledge and hardware to counteract the centralization of Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining.

[GizmoMiner]

waited a decade to post something like this meme. Used to be every single thing like this post. Would have this meme  . We are all getting old now and no one really uses these funny images anymore.

[kano]

Um, new account asking for money with a long term before getting anything back.

Sorry, but that's a high risk that no one should take.

It's also common here on bitcoin talk and has always been fake.

[Skot]

I am happy that you were so inspired by the bitaxe project!! I really hope that by keeping this Bitcoin mining hardware (and firmware) open source we can start a chain reaction of development (again) in this space!

I’m also pretty jealous that you are going to be working on this full time. That’s going to be awesome! If I could find a way to make that work, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

As for PCB printers, what models are you looking at? I used the Voltera several years ago and decided it wasn’t quite there for prototyping with fine pitch SMD parts (everything these days).

LFG!!

[mindrust]

Solar and btc mining don’t mix well anymore. That’s because bitcoin is now at a state of being an energy consuming godzilla.

You can’t satisfy this beast with solar energy anymore. It has become so big, only the most efficient ASICS can please it, and these ASICS still consume lots of powa.

People still run their old miners on solar but that don’t mean they are mining “anything”

[Skot]

Solar and btc mining don’t mix well anymore. That’s because bitcoin is now at a state of being an energy consuming godzilla.

You can’t satisfy this beast with solar energy anymore. It has become so big, only the most efficient ASICS can please it, and these ASICS still consume lots of powa.

I disagree. Solar is a great way to power bitcoin mining ASICs. Especially smaller rigs, like we're talking about here.

[GizmoMiner]

I am happy that you were so inspired by the bitaxe project!! I really hope that by keeping this Bitcoin mining hardware (and firmware) open source we can start a chain reaction of development (again) in this space!

I’m also pretty jealous that you are going to be working on this full time. That’s going to be awesome! If I could find a way to make that work, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

As for PCB printers, what models are you looking at? I used the Voltera several years ago and decided it wasn’t quite there for prototyping with fine pitch SMD parts (everything these days).

LFG!!

Thank you for your warm welcome. Means a lot. Was so nervous people would be less than encouraging.

Very excited to dig in and dedicate myself to this Grassroots initiative. Lot’s to learn. Focusing on your Github. The information is clear and easy to understand.  Now it is time for myself to put in some work and start contributing to the knowledge pool. Have a couple ideas that are being put together. Got the Github page up. Right now.. Studying none stop. The information on these chips is so obscure. Obscure by design my guess is.  

Funny you mentioned the Voltera. This is the exact pcb printer watching. VOLTERA V-ONE PCB PRINTER (1000329)
https://www.ebay.com/itm/195204066700 .Seems to be reasonably priced.

This the model you have worked with? Any good? Recommendation for printers that would functions for rapid prototyping?

Already started pulling ASIC chips from my  “S9, S17 and S19” hashboards today. Gathering some of the smaller parts for the next stages of prototypes.

[Skot]

Thank you for your warm welcome. Means a lot. Was so nervous people would be less than encouraging.

Very excited to dig in and dedicate myself to this Grassroots initiative. Lot’s to learn. Focusing on your Github. The information is clear and easy to understand.  Now it is time for myself to put in some work and start contributing to the knowledge pool. Have a couple ideas that are being put together. Got the Github page up. Right now.. Studying none stop. The information on these chips is so obscure. Obscure by design my guess is.  

Funny you mentioned the Voltera. This is the exact pcb printer watching. VOLTERA V-ONE PCB PRINTER (1000329)
https://www.ebay.com/itm/195204066700 .Seems to be reasonably priced.

This the model you have worked with? Any good? Recommendation for printers that would functions for rapid prototyping?

Already started pulling ASIC chips from my  “S9, S17 and S19” hashboards today. Gathering some of the smaller parts for the next stages of prototypes.

The Voltera V-One specs are;

Code:

Minimum 8 mil (0.2mm) trace width and trace spacing - however, we recommend 10 mil for new users.
Minimum 0.65mm pin pitch for SMT IC packages (0.5 mm for solder paste).
Minimum 0603 passive size (0402 for solder paste).

All of the Bitmain ASICs that I have seen are 0.48mm pin pitch. So that's going to be tough. You are also limited to only double sided boards. You can do plated holes and vias with those rivets, but they are huge and a PITA to install. I had access to a very fancy LPKF PCB mill at an old job, and it was usually more trouble than it was worth -- and that had automatic tool changes for different drills.

I think you could bang out some quick prototypes with the Voltera, but once you want to do anything remotely complicated you'll need 4 layer professional boards. JLCPCB, Seeed and other shops in China are soooo cheap for getting PCBs and stencils. Shipping takes a while, but if you setup a full pipeline of boards coming in, you'll have plenty to keep you busy.

For small run protos I do like to assemble the boards myself. I think you'd have more benefit from investing in a laser cutter to make stencils, a stencil printer and a reflow oven. maybe even get a pick-n-place machine! (check out the LumenPnP)

Maybe this is because I'm a hardware guy, but I feel like the real time consuming part is the software and firmware!

[GizmoMiner]

Thank you for your warm welcome. Means a lot. Was so nervous people would be less than encouraging.

Very excited to dig in and dedicate myself to this Grassroots initiative. Lot’s to learn. Focusing on your Github. The information is clear and easy to understand.  Now it is time for myself to put in some work and start contributing to the knowledge pool. Have a couple ideas that are being put together. Got the Github page up. Right now.. Studying none stop. The information on these chips is so obscure. Obscure by design my guess is.  

Funny you mentioned the Voltera. This is the exact pcb printer watching. VOLTERA V-ONE PCB PRINTER (1000329)
https://www.ebay.com/itm/195204066700 .Seems to be reasonably priced.

This the model you have worked with? Any good? Recommendation for printers that would functions for rapid prototyping?

Already started pulling ASIC chips from my  “S9, S17 and S19” hashboards today. Gathering some of the smaller parts for the next stages of prototypes.

The Voltera V-One specs are;

Code:

Minimum 8 mil (0.2mm) trace width and trace spacing - however, we recommend 10 mil for new users.
Minimum 0.65mm pin pitch for SMT IC packages (0.5 mm for solder paste).
Minimum 0603 passive size (0402 for solder paste).

All of the Bitmain ASICs that I have seen are 0.48mm pin pitch. So that's going to be tough. You are also limited to only double sided boards. You can do plated holes and vias with those rivets, but they are huge and a PITA to install. I had access to a very fancy LPKF PCB mill at an old job, and it was usually more trouble than it was worth -- and that had automatic tool changes for different drills.

I think you could bang out some quick prototypes with the Voltera, but once you want to do anything remotely complicated you'll need 4 layer professional boards. JLCPCB, Seeed and other shops in China are soooo cheap for getting PCBs and stencils. Shipping takes a while, but if you setup a full pipeline of boards coming in, you'll have plenty to keep you busy.

For small run protos I do like to assemble the boards myself. I think you'd have more benefit from investing in a laser cutter to make stencils, a stencil printer and a reflow oven. maybe even get a pick-n-place machine! (check out the LumenPnP)

Maybe this is because I'm a hardware guy, but I feel like the real time consuming part is the software and firmware!

Your insight is priceless. Thank you for that. Going to be looking into compiling a new list that includes laser cutter ,stencil printer ,reflow oven and LumenPnP. That  LumenPnP so beyond cool. Watched 30+ videos last night of the Lumenpnp. Speechless on how amazing it is. Your experience in what we need full time. Others like you. If I was to solve a bitcoin block today. That would be my first order of business.

I am acquiring a lot of new skill sets. These same skill-sets you already are well versed. What this grassroots imitative really needs is you working on this  9-5 monday-friday.

This is something as a community we need to figure out how to make possible. Many people have walked away from Bitcoin with great wealth. They contributed nothing to the development or bettering the space in general.

 They took and gave nothing.  We need to figure out a way that people like you. Who do the work and are passionate about bitcoin centered development. People who offer the work up free of charge and open source can work on this stuff full time.

Made a development discord . We can all work on these things in real time

[Skot]

Going to be looking into compiling a new list that includes laser cutter ,stencil printer ,reflow oven and LumenPnP.

I can't comment on the laser cutter, since I don't have one.

I recently upgraded my reflow oven from an actual toaster oven to this one; https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803854956169.html and I like it so far. UI is kinda crap, but it does reflow nicely once you figure it out.
I have this stencil printer and it seems to work well if you order framed stencils; https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804119257469.html

LumenPnP looks really cool. I really like his videos and appreciate the enthusiasm. I wish it could do 0402. Maybe soon?

[GizmoMiner]

Going to be looking into compiling a new list that includes laser cutter ,stencil printer ,reflow oven and LumenPnP.

I can't comment on the laser cutter, since I don't have one.

I recently upgraded my reflow oven from an actual toaster oven to this one; https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803854956169.html and I like it so far. UI is kinda crap, but it does reflow nicely once you figure it out.
I have this stencil printer and it seems to work well if you order framed stencils; https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804119257469.html

LumenPnP looks really cool. I really like his videos and appreciate the enthusiasm. I wish it could do 0402. Maybe soon?

LumenPnP team look very ambitious. The reflow oven and stencil printer look amazing. I am going to start out smaller with some basic equipment most likely and then scale up.  Going to write LumenPnP team and ask about 0402.. Would be great to get a couple of their team members bitten by the bitcoin mining bug 

[GizmoMiner]

Glad to be back! I got sick, got better, and now I'm ready to make a difference. Make this life mean something. Inspire the next generation of Bitcoin miners and torchbearers of Bitcoin.