Quote from: philipma1957 on July 29, 2023, 11:51:20 PM

Quote from: floridaman86 on July 29, 2023, 10:02:29 PM

Quote from: rapsacw on June 16, 2023, 11:36:51 AM

I'm developing a series of standalone miners built around BM1387 & BM1397 asics and an ESP32-C3. I've been working on these for over 1 year now and I think I've got enough knowledge now to make a version that can be mass produced, the question I have now: is anyone interested in such a miner?
The configuration I'm thinking of has the following properties:
- Standalone, only a usb charger with 5V/3A needed and a wireless connection.
- Single BM1397 asic.
- Hash rate of 200GHs upto 250GHs (and more probably).
- Power consumption out of the wall 8-15W (depending on efficiency of the charger and hash rate).
- My own miner software (open source, in beta stage, fully working but lousy UI) based on Arduino libraries that allows manual on the fly voltage and frequency settings.
- totally not worth running on a non-solo pool, but a cheap lottery ticket where you enter the drawing for free every 10 minutes for as long as you live(*)..

I've designed my hardware around parts that are for sale on aliexpress, but for mass production I will have to redesign parts of it using components for sale at mouser.com , and I will need to find a company willing to produce them (a problem as the asics are not sold by any big electronics reseller), and also sell them. Currently I'm thinking of seeedstudio.com, but I haven't contacted them yet to see if they are both willing and capable (sourcing the bm1397's and soldering them on the backside of the pcb).
There is also a open source version with bm1387 asics (that I could also redesign to use mouser parts) that you can built yourself (advanced electronic soldering capabilities/tools required).
I have 6 prototypes running, live stats https://solo.ckpool.org/users/1KgwWwBh7qGtcWJ9ZRNTUbVCR1L2qYkzcy, 3 bm1387 versions (2 with 2 asics, one with 4 asics), and three single bm1397 versions (workernames containing 'test').
I started out designing the miners for personal use and therefor used parts from aliexpress but I'm so satisfied with them (they will run as long as the internet connection is up, and will reconnect in 99.9% of the cases when it is not, the 0.01% is caused by a quirk in the esp software) that *I think* others might be interested in them also.
But it will require another hardware redesign which is not needed for my personal use miners.
So, should I invest the time (and money) in this for you? Or is this a niche product? I have no idea what the retail price will be in the end, but the pcb hardware and assembly should not be much more than $50, add to that a margin the the sales & production, an included cooling solution (say $5 for the heatsink and another $2 for a fan, $x for 2 small 3D printed clips to mount everything) and that should be it.
Comment in this topic if interested, or if you think this is stupid, you won't hurt my feelings as I have already got what I set out to achieve.

(*) I'm not sure if any (solo) pool will support low hash rate miners in the future. Pool operators have to pay for their hardware and connection, and a low hash rate miner costs them as much as a complete mining farm. Maybe CK can answer that.

ps: new forum user with (unknown to me) restrictions, my old user name got lost in 2016)

edit:
I've redesigned the miner to use standard parts, but sadly i'll have to make another one as one of the buck converters from mouser.com is apparently a fake Sad

Anyway, I did some stress testing to see what it can handle and got this https://github.com/rapsacw/aSiNine-ESP-miner/blob/main/ui.png

I think there is interest in low power miners, especially if they're quiet, but 200GH is way too low. You won't mine anything with such little power.
to gain any real interest, you will need to get the hash power in the range of 3-5 TH. And keep the noise below 50db.
If you can accomplish that, you can probably sell the miner in the range of $750-$1,000. and be competitive with Futurebit

If you could build a 220 watt machine that does 10th you would get buyers. You could also charge a premium.

absolutely, why is anyone even discussing anything with less than 1TH at this point. Its a waste time and energy. What could you possibly mine, maybe 10 sats a day? The popular USB miner out there that currently does something like 300GH is a complete ripoff. People need to realize that, and stop promoting it

But there are many home miners, like myself, who are open to the idea of a lower hash rate... 3, 5, 10TH machines. Especially if they are on the quieter side, and do not pull massive amounts of power.