This is so cool! I'm so glad to see others hacking on this stuff.
Everyone should have a little solo mining rig running in their house. Nice and quiet and easy on the power bill, but all together it does a great deal to secure the network.
I'm totally down to work on this power supply issue.
-Skot
Likewise!
What's great is that once we figure the power supply out, we can easily scale it to fit different needs:
- single-chip USB stick to just fill empty spots in your mining hub
- multi-chip USB stick with auxiliary power input
- 10-chip pod miner
- ...
This is quite cheap for what it is.
How much would it cost (I am a newb at this so could use the help) to make something equivalent to an antminer - pcb wise and then fit the housing / fans / power yourself?
A single BM1387 costs around 2-4€ and this PCB is 2€. However for a full-on Antminer replacement / alternative it doesn't make sense to go DIY. An S9 (same chips) goes for $500 and has 189 chips on it; so just for the chips you're barely overpaying over component-cost (when buying them as an end-customer in low volume). It's also a whole different league building such a thing with replaceable hashboards, different voltage domains, integrated cooling solution, etc.
Hopefully, after publishing schematics and board files for simple, low-chip-count ASICs, someone with design skills can come up with a nice case and cooling mount (e.g. 3D-printable).