GekkoScience BM1384 Project Development Discussion

[sidehack]

Heck I'd be fine if everyone posted their reviews in here, but it'd probably be better to have a reviews-only thread for the Compac since this one will keep going on past it with Amita and TypeZero talk for the next couple months.

We might should start a unified thread for all reviews or something to keep information centralized and not obnoxious.

Since I'm planning on sending out 8 units for review, not 3.

[1714216297]

1714216297

[1714216297]

1714216297

[1714216297]

1714216297

[sidehack]

Also, AJRGale, for us the only difference between "planning" and "doing" is the availability of resources to go from "we have a working prototype" to "we have the money to mass-produce". I'm gonna build the TypeZero. I may not get chips from Bitmain or enough money to run a production batch, but I'm gonna get it all the way to working prototype anyway because it's worth doing. The stick miner is a test/dev milestone turned into an actual product because enough people want it. The Amita is a test/dev milestone that'll be a product if enough people want it. But the only reason this project thread exists is because I made up my mind to build the TypeZero and I'm doing it.

The idea of this USB miner isn't just to have fun, but to have a powerful and flexible tool for n00bs to learn the basics with and not have to sink big money on big machines and PSU hardware. And even then there aren't a lot of miners that allow you to play with under- and over-clocking and volt-modding from the get-go. Being the most efficient miner available, and the most powerful stick miner yet made, is only a side-effect from Bitmain having a pretty good chip.

[Bicknellski]

Heck I'd be fine if everyone posted their reviews in here, but it'd probably be better to have a reviews-only thread for the Compac since this one will keep going on past it with Amita and TypeZero talk for the next couple months.

We might should start a unified thread for all reviews or something to keep information centralized and not obnoxious.

Since I'm planning on sending out 8 units for review, not 3.

Thumbs up to anything to centralize information is good. People will be beating a path to your door not like you need to spread it out over 10's of threads like Bitmain or Avalon trying to pump sales from paid shills like what goes on now. Have one thread for reviews. Guides become the default support thread which is not right as they should be in the SUPPORT section not hardware. One for support and this one all you need I guess right?

[Meech]

Also, AJRGale, for us the only difference between "planning" and "doing" is the availability of resources to go from "we have a working prototype" to "we have the money to mass-produce". I'm gonna build the TypeZero. I may not get chips from Bitmain or enough money to run a production batch, but I'm gonna get it all the way to working prototype anyway because it's worth doing. The stick miner is a test/dev milestone turned into an actual product because enough people want it. The Amita is a test/dev milestone that'll be a product if enough people want it. But the only reason this project thread exists is because I made up my mind to build the TypeZero and I'm doing it.

The idea of this USB miner isn't just to have fun, but to have a powerful and flexible tool for n00bs to learn the basics with and not have to sink big money on big machines and PSU hardware. And even then there aren't a lot of miners that allow you to play with under- and over-clocking and volt-modding from the get-go. Being the most efficient miner available, and the most powerful stick miner yet made, is only a side-effect from Bitmain having a pretty good chip.

And don't forget about the flashy led thingys we all like to look at.  Is that still in the plan? 

[Rabinovitch]

I'm keeping an eye on your research. Good luck! 

[philipma1957]

Bicks idea of having the unified review in the support section has a lot of merit.

My unofficial guide spondoolies sp20 thread is pretty much now a support thread.



https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=872014.0


Since I sold off all the sp20's I had I don't post as much in it, but I check on it. It has a life of its own right now and is up to 56 pages. 

   I self modded it and deleted 1 post more for cleanup then bad content.
Although the last 2 pages now  look like I may have to step in and attempt to clean up the postings.

[sidehack]

Meech, yes it'll have a flashy LED on it. There's a solid LED at power-on and a flash when it returns a share.

[Meech]

 ::)yeah...Shiny Flashy Thingy! 

[Searing]

::)yeah...Shiny Flashy Thingy! 

But...But I ALSO NEED the 2nd addictive quality of miners besides the neato LCD lights.. I need my WHIRLY FAN NOISES.......

LIKE THIS




Pretty ...Pretty lights ...whirly noises....so tranquil.....(and home mining will soon be as rare as unicorn poop)

sniffle.......

[sidehack]

I like to think that our lights are the sexiest stick miner lights, but then again I'm biased. Novak also suggested building a fan onto the Amita but I'm not sure if that's... cost-effective? Yeah let's go with that.

Sucks to say, but after about eleven years of sleeping next to a desktop, and after a year and a half sleeping next to miners, I now have trouble bedding down without the presence of excessive case fan noise. It's getting too warm to keep the Dragon going much longer and I'm not sure what to replace it with.

[Searing]

I like to think that our lights are the sexiest stick miner lights, but then again I'm biased. Novak also suggested building a fan onto the Amita but I'm not sure if that's... cost-effective? Yeah let's go with that.

Sucks to say, but after about eleven years of sleeping next to a desktop, and after a year and a half sleeping next to miners, I now have trouble bedding down without the presence of excessive case fan noise. It's getting too warm to keep the Dragon going much longer and I'm not sure what to replace it with.

heh I'm dumb ....should have thought of this long before....I actually have a 'air cleaner' counter top unit I use in the bedroom as a 'white noise machine' ....now i have a goal i can replace it with a usb miner and some whirly noises and make 'dust amounts of btc coin' .of perhaps GASP 1c usd ....a week....zowie......but hey......I'm using the electric for the 'white noise machine' anyway..this idea .has to be probably usb or small miner and little heat...I work nights (thus the habit of the white noise machine) and have a window a/c in the bedroom..so ....can't dump too much heat or I'd have the Jupiter 550gh knc miner (now retired 2 months to doorstop status at 725w) there instead...


hmmm......soon their will be enough equipment used out there you could build an ASIC Sauna (tm) ....unfortunately you'd need to be in Iceland in a glacier next to a stream running your little hydro generator for free electric for this to work

But back to me......now I have a goal....a 'white noise machine' that is an asic miner with whirly fans...good to have goals....(not too much heat thou .... got to sleep with a/c off once in awhile)


and yippie skippie I can even get my asic white noise machine 'tweaked' to the proper sound level via this (which I got and used once with my orig miners...always good to salvage dumb geek purchases from the past!)










http://www.amazon.com/BAFX-Products-TM-Decibel-Battery/dp/B00ECCZWWI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1430284245&sr=8-1&keywords=db+meter



ah I love it when a 'geeky' solution comes together...yet another way to spend money on stupid stuff



Not sure gekkoscience here likes me plugging their product for this use thou?     I mean really a white noise machine usb miner from them w/usb fans as a sleep aid?

[elrippo]

Hy there,
i cant wait to get these boards 

@ sidehack:
1.) Can you estimate a CW when you will be open for orders for the first PCB´s and at what prices this is going to be sold?
2.) Can you tell us if this is going to be mounted on a S1/S3 Chassis, so i can purchase some old S1

Kepp on going guys 

[cavaliersrus]

i cant wait to buy a few of these and test them out once sidehack gets them finalized

[sidehack]

Hy there,
i cant wait to get these boards 

@ sidehack:
1.) Can you estimate a CW when you will be open for orders for the first PCB´s and at what prices this is going to be sold?
2.) Can you tell us if this is going to be mounted on a S1/S3 Chassis, so i can purchase some old S1

Kepp on going guys 

Please RTFT before asking questions which have already been answered.

[elrippo]

@ sidehack

I got your message, i just wanted to stay updated, probably like everybody else does 

We're bidding the PCB etch, and I need to get back to heatsink people, so I should have a final BOM and price estimate (assuming my current design works properly) fairly soon. We're finalizing lists for who we'd like to send prototypes for to be evaluated, and I'll probably be sending out some messages tonight to verify with folks. There might be delays on the Compac protoPCBs but they should ought arrive with plenty of time to test things and still be reasonable.

Fairly soon means, 2 days, 2 weeks, June 2015?

Well, don't expect a batch to be shipping before June. It's minimum 3 weeks from now before we even start talking seriously about taking in preorder money. That gives time for proto PCBs to arrive, for us to in-house test, to get some to outside testers and them to report. That's assuming the proto PCBs work. If the design is solid and the supply chain is laid out, we'd probably take two weeks to gather money for a batch and then place orders for materials which would be three to four weeks out. After that, assembly and testing and shipping probably aroudn the end of June (at the earliest). There's plenty of time to gather hubs and such.

Minimum 3 weeks is like in the beginning of CW 22/2015?

So Novak and I have been rolling around an idea for a miner since about December. We were inspired by ASICMiner's BE300 sample chip test results and thought we had a pretty solid idea for a machine built around them.

Unfortunately, AM's BE300 doesn't really exist outside of those test chips, and it's quite probable it never will.

Bitmain's BM1384 (the chip inside the S5), however, is a fair substitute. Its bottom-end power efficiency compares to the BE300's midrange, the core voltages are a bit more manageable and the chained comms setup appears to be easier to work with. We ended up buying some sample BM1384 from Bitmain and the chips arrived on Monday, so now we can start playing with them. The datasheet is incredibly sparse regarding any kind of protocols, but fortunately the signalling appears to be identical from the BM1380 (S1/S2/U1/U2) and BM1382 (S3,S4,U3) so it shouldn't be too hard to figure out.

I did a bit of prodding on an S5 yesterday and got the comms topology and level-shifting pretty well figured out. Some prodding on a U2 has given us info on USB interfacing to the chip chain. Novak's tearing into U3 cgminer drivers to iron out data specifics and I'm going to work on the regulators and digital IO requirements.

The next step, which I'll be working on this afternoon, is to design a simple BM1384 breakout board that consolidates power lines and puts signals on a simple header. With a two-chip board on independent planes we can test one-chip comms, parallel node comms and string comms to get a basic understanding of topology changes.

It occurred to us that a simplification of this breakout board could be an effective USB stick miner which might be capable of 10GH around 3W of draw. We may design a PCB for this if there's enough interest.

The primary goal is to build a simple board which would be USB-connected to a controller, and capable of adjusting both core voltages and clock speeds using cgminer flags. We're looking at a single board capable of 300GH at 150W, downclockable to around 150GH 50W. At mid- or low-range settings it could be run off a brick with a quiet 120mm fan and heatsink and be a decen Jalapeno-formfactor home desk miner. The board will be designed specifically so that four of them would mount to an S1 chassis. Couple that with a 4-port USB hub and a Pi or something as the controller, and you have an "S1 Upgrade Kit" which will aim for 1.3TH at 600W clockable down to 600GH about 160W. These are board-level power estimates. This board is codenamed "TypeZero". We're trying to iron out a design that would incorporate the overall efficiency (both in power and cost) of string topology and the flexibility of standard VRM topology. Basically we're trying to take the best parts of several decent designs and make one thing that should be modular, flexible, reliable, affordable and efficient. Lofty goals to be sure, but hey why not aim for the top?

A secondary goal would be to design another board which could mount to a Prisma chassis. Modifying our design to a similar power density as a Prisma (1KW board-level) we could see a 2.4GH miner downclockable to about 1.1TH at 300W. There are other prerequisites to meet before considering moving forward on this, however.

We're a pretty low-fund operation these days, but we have some big jobs coming in which might be able to provide capital for a batch. In the worst case, we might try and open a preorder (grumble grumble) once we have a tested working prototype and solid final design. Manufacturing feasibility is going to depend heavily on the chip cost from Bitmain. With the "upgrade kit" savings of not having to manufacture heatsink chassis and controllers (and then pay to ship it all everywhere), the bulk of BOM expense is going to be ASIC costs, most likely. We've always liked doing things for home miners, and trying to keep prices fair, so we'll do our best to get these things made in a way that doesn't suck for everyone.

If it takes forever for anything to happen and Bitmain's already out of BM1384 and selling the BM1386 or whatever, it shouldn't take much to modify the design for the new chip. Assuming they don't make major changes to the comm protocols, which they haven't done yet so that's encouraging.

So, questions? Comments? Sandwiches? We're not really getting paid to design all this stuff so "keep up the good work" sandwich donations are more than welcome (1BURGERAXHH6Yi6LRybRJK7ybEm5m5HwTr).

Are you still tending to use cgminer? Are you still sticking to the S1/3 chassis for mounting your boards?
I really do not mean to give you a hard time, but honestly, i can't wait to get my hands on these boards!!! 
Keep it going, and in the meantime enjoy some angusburgers   

[sidehack]

To address a potential point of confusion, you're currently discussing two different products. What we're currently working on is what became stage 1, turning a single-chip test into a single-chip USB stick miner. That's what I have prototypes on the way for and what I'll have a better price estimate (though I've said we're shooting for $20 about five times and people keep asking) for soon.

The thing mounting to an S1 chassis is stage 3. That I won't even have prototyped until probably around the end of May.

Yes, we're looking at writing a cgminer driver for the TypeZero boards (the not-stick-miners) which will include command-line flags for clock speed and core voltage. That goal has not changed, and very likely will not. The goal stated in the first post is still exactly the goal and all of its details are still relevant. Barring technical impossibilities, the design goal will not change.

[elrippo]

To address a potential point of confusion, you're currently discussing two different products. What we're currently working on is what became stage 1, turning a single-chip test into a single-chip USB stick miner. That's what I have prototypes on the way for and what I'll have a better price estimate (though I've said we're shooting for $20 about five times and people keep asking) for soon.

The thing mounting to an S1 chassis is stage 3. That I won't even have prototyped until probably around the end of May.

Yes, we're looking at writing a cgminer driver for the TypeZero boards (the not-stick-miners) which will include command-line flags for clock speed and core voltage. That goal has not changed, and very likely will not. The goal stated in the first post is still exactly the goal and all of its details are still relevant. Barring technical impossibilities, the design goal will not change.

Ok, thank you very much for your info. Happy to read you are in plan and stick to your original plan!
I would by 6 USB Sticks for testing and make a preorder for Stage 3 

[Chris_Sabian]

To address a potential point of confusion, you're currently discussing two different products. What we're currently working on is what became stage 1, turning a single-chip test into a single-chip USB stick miner. That's what I have prototypes on the way for and what I'll have a better price estimate (though I've said we're shooting for $20 about five times and people keep asking) for soon.

The thing mounting to an S1 chassis is stage 3. That I won't even have prototyped until probably around the end of May.

Yes, we're looking at writing a cgminer driver for the TypeZero boards (the not-stick-miners) which will include command-line flags for clock speed and core voltage. That goal has not changed, and very likely will not. The goal stated in the first post is still exactly the goal and all of its details are still relevant. Barring technical impossibilities, the design goal will not change.

I will probably buy one or two to play around with.  I'll just put in out CK's solo pool and try my luck with the lottery.

[AJRGale]

Also, AJRGale, for us the only difference between "planning" and "doing" is the availability of resources to go from "we have a working prototype" to "we have the money to mass-produce". I'm gonna build the TypeZero. I may not get chips from Bitmain or enough money to run a production batch, but I'm gonna get it all the way to working prototype anyway because it's worth doing. The stick miner is a test/dev milestone turned into an actual product because enough people want it. The Amita is a test/dev milestone that'll be a product if enough people want it. But the only reason this project thread exists is because I made up my mind to build the TypeZero and I'm doing it.

The idea of this USB miner isn't just to have fun, but to have a powerful and flexible tool for n00bs to learn the basics with and not have to sink big money on big machines and PSU hardware. And even then there aren't a lot of miners that allow you to play with under- and over-clocking and volt-modding from the get-go. Being the most efficient miner available, and the most powerful stick miner yet made, is only a side-effect from Bitmain having a pretty good chip.

Yep, i understand and agree.

I like to think that our lights are the sexiest stick miner lights, but then again I'm biased. Novak also suggested building a fan onto the Amita but I'm not sure if that's... cost-effective? Yeah let's go with that.

Sucks to say, but after about eleven years of sleeping next to a desktop, and after a year and a half sleeping next to miners, I now have trouble bedding down without the presence of excessive case fan noise. It's getting too warm to keep the Dragon going much longer and I'm not sure what to replace it with.

now now, no build to a cost, build it to spec, no corner cutting, im ok with adding another 5-10 for a fan in-build. as much as certain people are  expecting to pay 50c per GHs, i wish i could throw them back in the old days where it was $1k/Ghs and 50c per bitcoin... enough ranting.

none the less, saving up to by 10 of them, at the cost of 20, thanks postage...

and for the fans to sleep to, throw a desk fan on, it works for me, and when it gets hot in summer, aim it at yourself

[quakefiend420]

::)yeah...Shiny Flashy Thingy! 

But...But I ALSO NEED the 2nd addictive quality of miners besides the neato LCD lights.. I need my WHIRLY FAN NOISES.......

LIKE THIS


http://samkear.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/USB-ASIC-Mining-Rig.jpg

Pretty ...Pretty lights ...whirly noises....so tranquil.....(and home mining will soon be as rare as unicorn poop)

sniffle.......

And suddenly, it's mid 2014 again.  LOL