Topic: Avalon ASIC Batch #2 Income Sharing; arrived and hashing - page 3. (Read 23457 times)

I don't know what was wrong with the original TP-Link.  The blue LED flashes about 1 second, then goes dark.  I think the catch all phrase is that it was "bricked."  I suspect that I can connect the serial port and de-brick it.  I don't see how it passed QC the way it was when I received it from the other customer. 

I should probably give Avalon a chance to retrieve it and run a post mortem.  I may just offer it for sale at $10 on eBay, as is, modified, non-functional.

Avalon made some mods to the TP-Link 703n.  And now I have repeated them on the replacement unit. 

There is a 0R that links the PCB antenna to the rest of the circuit, and there is a oversized pad conveniently placed where you can attach a wire for an external antenna.  One of the mods is to remove that 0R link and to attach the external wire, ground pad and signal pad, that goes to the antenna coupling.

The other mod is to couple the +5V from the downstream USB back to the board.  This is also anticipated on the board.  So basically, if you are good at handling small parts, you can move the same 0R from one place to another.  The part is about the size of two .. and I switched over to the piece of wire after about 15 minutes of failure with the original part.

OR resistor -- I had never heard of that until I googled it. So it was a bad resistor that had to be replaced?

I accept this as a veto.  My original machine is steadily hashing away.  The last power down was when I moved it to the cool basement, 8d 21h 3m 4s.

The repair went well.  The customer machine was down approximately 3 hours.  I rented bench space at the local computer repair business that my friends own.  Had a nice chat, they got to see an Avalon.  It's nice to have a dial-a-temp soldering iron.  I used a copper strand instead of a 0R resister.  Those guys are about the size of a pixel on your screen. 

The nuts for the Avalons are something I have never seen before.  They are machined from round stock, with a slot cut in the top.  This slot mates with a San Francisco Bay shaped cutout in the side panel, and the ears keep the slot aligned.  The bolt goes through the Golden Gate area.  Fortunately, I learned long ago to make a shop jig when I am doing anything.

We had a double or nothing sort of pay plan.  He paid USD mileage for the 170 mile travel, but I get to hash with his machine until Friday and keep the coins.  No repair, no pay; late repair, minimal pay;  all bitcoin, no fiat exchange.

Although I'm a total believer in ProfMac having autonomy (and indeed my last post on this thread was to that effect), I guess I must say this is pushing me a bit past my comfort zone.  A 2.5% increase in return in exchange for unknown risk does not seem worth it, unless ProfMac is able to make stronger warranties than he has in the post.  (Perhaps instead ProfMac should ask for 5% of the mining profit of the machine he repaired -- for himself, not for us?)

I have a second Avalon in my shop for repair.  It is hashing at this moment, and the statistics are online.

It is in a warm room, temp1 is 26°C and the --avalon-auto frequency is 353 MHz, and temp 3 is 49°C.
My original machine is in a cool basement.  temp1 is 22°C, --avalon-auto frequency is 347, and temp 3 is 49°C.

The repair is not perfected.  I still have to do some careful soldering, and some extensive dis-assembly of his Avalon.  The fact that it started working after my temporary patch now gives me confidence that my diagnosis is correct, and the repair is feasible.

The owner may want to sell his Avalon at auction due to the current difficulty level.  His Avalon, as is with some parts dangling outside the case, may be hashing slightly better (82/80) than my original.  I will let it run overnight and see what the data say tomorrow.

I may want to suggest that he may get more at auction if he sells my original Avalon with a 2 week online history and no modifications, instead of his marginally better machine but with a short hashing history and a field repair.

If he goes for the proposal, I will swap ownership of the units.  I may or may not finish the repair if I do the swap.  The repair may or may not damage the machine.

If anyone is not comfortable with the swap, please respond with something very similar to "I veto the swap" and I will not propose it to the owner.  I need to repair his unit tomorrow, Wed, morning if I am not going to make the swap-out.

Weekly is fine -- let's not burden ProfMac with too much overhead beyond the care and feeding of the machine.

I am fine with the weekly payout schedule

Give me a program or script that will work with Ubuntu 12.04.  It must be written clearly enough that a somewhat experienced programmer can read it and be sure it is safe.  Everyone will have to agree to let me run it.  If it fails in any manner, none of you will have any recourse for lost funds.  It should probably use the standard API calls. 

As a reminder, I am willing to make a payout whenever there are mature funds.  I think it will increase the clutter and difficulty when you want to check the books, but that is your call.  If just 1 person calls for this, I will make it so.

Also, I am willing to produce a distribution any time someone asks for one and there are mature funds.  If you have some need coming up, I will make a distribution on demand, no questions asked.  The funds from 7:33 CDT today (Chicago/Dallas) still need about 1-2 hours to be mature, so at this time, block + 15 hours, I can't distribute them.

Another option, in principle, is for me to forgo my own payout until everyone else is an average week ahead, and continue to pay weekly.  Of course, I would want some compensation for this.  For example, I currently pay myself balance*(31/100) - miner_fee.  We could change the fraction to [( (31+k) / (100+k)) - miner_fee] where everyone's share is diluted 100 / (100+k).  I note that the value of k is currently 0.  If there is unanimous agreement on some value of k, I am willing to do prepay everyone a week.

Im in favor of a daily dividend even if it skips the odd day, as long as it can be automated and doesn't require any extra work for you (or manual clean up payments)

I can't do a daily dividend.  There have been some periods of almost 48 hours between payments from eligius.  See the green line from July 17 through July 19.

I did think about putting your account numbers directly into the eligius payout.  It is not possible to be exactly sure of the payout amount, however, and so I would be doing cleanup payments, changing the miner settings, and it would lose the clarity of looking at http://eligius.st/~wizkid057/newstats/userstats.php/18bLcVkviErQi75zB8X39jZXxHNpSZggdC to see what's up.  I think that would reduce everyone's comfort level.

I like Tuesdays, let's see what everyone else thinks. I also like the idea of a daily dividend if it's not too much extra work for you (automated?)

I was thinking every Tuesday about 12:30 PM, the weekly anniversary of when the device was powered up.
I can do it as often as 120 blocks after eligius pays out, but that will lead to a lot of clutter.
I can also do it "on demand" or whenever someone asks for it, in addition to at least every Tuesday.

At the moment, I don't have a preference.

ProfMac, can you pls confirm what the distribution schedule will be for dividends?

thx!

I am pretty good at thinking outside the box, but even so it took me days to envision this.

The table is a really cheap "get 'er done" model using pine.  I thought about making a more upscale table and selling them to the community.  I have an unemployed friend with a woodworking shop who likes to be very independent...

With another change, I can use water cooling to  pre-heat the water returning to the firebox, and just dump all the heat into a gravity fed circulating water home heating system.  The pipes in the computer room directly above the furnace are never much warmer than body temperature, even when it is -20°F outside.  This might make it simpler, to let me connect the Avalons after the firebox instead of before.

Cool! I like the heat removal solution.

I did a Google on my real name and address, and there are lots and lots of links.  I have not ever been very secretive.  That means that using Google+ is a clear roadmap to my house, with photos and GPS locations.  There is even an address I used in New Orleans that I swear I never, ever put on the internet or even in employment records.  I have no idea how anyone got that.

I found an anonymous photo posting service.  You can upload photos without registering, but then you don't have a way to delete them.

I found an online exif viewer.  It gives a location where the waiting photograph was taken.


I have a nice photo of the delivery man but it has GPS data in it.  I have a nice photo of the unopened box, and it has address info on it.

The photos in the basement do not have GPS data, I guess there is too much stucco and earth.  

opening
dimension
padding
blemish
utility table
firebox
placed
air filter
thermometer

Display the picture with Preview, remove the visual identifiable sections with select & cmd-x, take a screenshot with cmd-shift-4. Bye bye EXIF data. Still possible steganography data inside, but not likely.

The meta data stored in a digital photo is called EXIF data. It can contain information about the camera and the photo including the date and time, resolution, shutter speed, etc. It can also contain the GPS coordinates of where the photo was taken if enabled in the camera.

You can check the data hidden in your photos with an EXIF viewer, which is available as a plugin for firefox and chrome. If you find your images contain too much information you can edit or remove the EXIF data with a program like EXIFcleaner.

Interesting topic. Seems like there are two sources of address information -- metadata by your camera, and noise pattern by your camera. The latter is somewhat of a theoretical concern at this scale.

If you PM me a link to your pics, I could take a photo of your pictures with my non-GPS enabled camera, and post. That would mitigate the first issue, and partly the second (by mixing the noise of our two cameras).

I'm convinced I get a better hash rate in a cool room.  I almost sat out on the patio with that Avalon last night, it was supposed to be about 59 °F overnight.  I have to admit, having it is making me a lot more security aware.  It's raining now, so I'm glad I didn't.  Perhaps tonight.  The basement did cool off a degree or two, however.  It dropped back to 70 °F, where it started 4 days ago.