Topic: [BOUNTY] PCB designer & More, for project ToFu ( For dead V2 blades ) - page 2. (Read 4804 times)

Mozi, you dont have to buy chips mate, i have thousands of AM chips stacked up already from dead blades. I found a guy on ebay a while back with 30 dead blades alone that he sold me for $400. not to mention the few dozen blades of my own that have died beyond repair and other people who just keep giving me dead blades because they have given up on them. I've fixed and made a lot of good blades, but still have thousands of chips left. so just message me your address where you want them sent and i will send them out.

Do you already have the I/O specs for the AM chips? or do you need them?

On the USB hub current,,,

Alot of us have built/rewired hubs to use 5vrail off of ATX P/S up to 30a or so.
Just have to read a bit to learn how. The stock USB PCB in the hub cannot handle the current.
So we buy the cheapest ones and mod em. (run 14ga wires to all the 5v usb pins for each socket).

Or use the 49port hub built by asicminer as it will deal with a total 20 or so 1-2a devices.

Also we are severing the "red" 5v line from the computers hub connection in the USB signal cable to stop High amp current shorts or surges from backflowing to USB hubs/circuits in puter used for running the miners.

Not sure if all this matters for blades, they are setup different.

1. USB2.0 devices should not consume more than 500mA. It's unlikely that someone can power one single chip to its max (2000mA) with a USB powered solution. Correct me if I'm wrong.

2.I've not the profile but I would design a PCB for free if someone was willing to sell me just a few chips.
I'm a software programmer but I designed a PCB last year as a hobbyist : http://postimg.org/image/k9cdmciqt/

Thanks freddy, i am sending him a message now. Heres to hoping he is interested.

Here is a guy who designed his own PCB and seems he did it for kicks, very professional looking board.
Has a siliconrelic tag on the PCB
Contact him to see if he can help you design the dual chip PCB.
And since he owns siliconrelic I think you found a real name for your project.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.4256260

einzeln
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/einzeln-136807

Ah, well nifty. Carry on sir. Not sure what time I'll have to assist, but I could probably (eventually) assist with resources and/or assembly.

NOOOOOOOOOOOO ahhahah

I already have the I/O data sidehack, but you made a valid point.

I'm still fairly certain that i am just going to fund this and mark up the price to cover the cost of design. I dont have the time to do the design myself. Who knows. maybe i'll just abandon the project and let people keep paying thousands too much for their hardware.

I'm still wondering if anyone has the actual interface data and whatnot required to drive the chips. Board design can't happen until you know the actual logic and signalling required; makes no sense to start at step 2.

I think people wanna see results and or pay a lot of mony to make money. Kind of sucks if u ask me. I have seen something similar happening for brushless gimbals. They are spearheaded by someone and unless people see results no one wanna jump in. I just wish I had more money and or knoledge to drop into this game. It would be sweet if I can make a strong miner from home so we can shut people up on the ROI game.

Thanks grumpy, Still waiting on a PCB designer to step fourth, I have recently invested $500,000 usd in a hardware order for a group buy to get some hashing power in the hands of the masses before the march surge. but as soon as i recoup that if i have not found a PCB designer i am going to move forth with the 2 chip design for project ToFu  on my own dollar. Although with me having to foot the bill on a ton of it, I will not be able to offer it for the projected price nor will i be able to make the design open source. I was really hoping to get a little more community support to help everyone as a whole, and really did not want to come at this with a business approach but it appears that a business approach is the only option at this point. i should know more in a few weeks once all the 400 GH/s units i ordered are sold.

I am in. I know nothing about the hardware nor the software but I am a graphics designer / screen printer/ vinyl sticker guy. Let me know what you need I like the way you think.

DIY is the best way to go because now only the rich is playing in a game that was designed to be a level playing field. I've seen people populate boards with ease so I don't see why it would not be able to be done. Like i said before I know nothing about the hardware and the software but with the proper write up I think I can make it work.

Fasmax we have all repaired a blade or two in our day, the problem is the amount of components on the blade itself and the massive amount of things that can go wrong, the problem is the blade design, not the chips, a simple 2 chip usb design would be easy peasy with only a handful of components, and some of us just like to tinker and have the satisfaction of DIY just to say "i made this". One way or another, this is going to happen, i am going to give it a few more weeks to see if we can get an engineer to step up and design the PCB for a bounty, and if nobody steps up as part of a community project, i am going to cut a check to an engineer i know i texas and have him design them. The difference is, if this is a community project and all bounties are paid as part of a community contribution to someone who steps up to help make it happen, the price point of this kit will be about $10-$15. Where as if i have to start cutting checks myself, i need to recoup at least my initial investment and then this turns into just another "i made something let me charge you double what its worth so i can make money" kind of thing. which is the direct opposite of what i want this to be. This would be a great item at $15, but cutting checks myself, a $30 product is the same as buying a sapphire miner off ebay. There are thousands of us, almost a quarter million on this forum. There has to be a few engineers in here besides Mr. Teal and Chip Geek that will step up and make a little BTC in the process since we cannot get either of them to volunteer.

The truth is, if we cannot pull it together as a community, then there really is no point even though i am going to do it anyways. There are to many, as a matter of fact ALL companies selling hardware right now that are doing nothing more then RAPING us, the end consumer. Pre-order BS. "let us start a company and make you fund it, then build a ton of machines, hook them all up, drive up the difficulty while we make hundreds of bitcoin, then when we are done, finally deliver them to you." or even companies that have items in stock now. " let me order 1,000 units from hong kong for $500 each, then turn around and retail them to you for $7,000 for 200 GH/s today."

It is without a doubt that it is FAR PAST time that we start to pull together as a community and DO IT OURSEVLFS. I mean, come on, i just bought 25 rolls of avalon chips for $1.89 each direct from china, tell me it costs $5,000 to make a 200 GH/s machine. Black Arrows Minion..... around $45 do have made. and the truth of these matters is, these companies in Hong Kong dont give a crap about NDA's and non-compete. The company i ordered my avalon chips from told me directly when i contacted them " we cannot sell the avalon chip direct to consumers, but we can put whatever name on it you want and sell you as many as you want"

Moral of the story, lets stop getting in line to get raped, and make this happen, then lets move on to the next community designed miner, i have the connections to get anyone chips to build any miner for next to nothing. If we stop allowing them to rape us, they all die, and we all are back in control of the markets.

If you can not help as a developer, or our escrow or graphic designer, even if you cannot donate a single uBTC, refer everyone you can to this thread, be the voice of reason. do your part to make the members of this forum a real community. help everyone become US not a bunch of me's, and lets make this happen, it can only get better once we get past the first project. Imagine 1 TH/s for $800. Trust it can be done with a community behind it.

I am broke newb, and would love the "heathkit" aspect of it, hashing to the masses Some fun assembly to boot !

Will the design of the PCB be published and open-source, so anyone can hack away and suggest improvements?

Less costly, and also less awesome. And since AM is no longer producing the USB BE, there's not a lot of low-entry-point mining options anymore so a $10-$20 dual-chip miner would be pretty sweet for noobs to play with.

Has anyone tried to repair their blades?
Seems the easiest thing to do would be to just repair your blade.
If there is not enough information to repair your blade then there is not enough information to make a new design.
Maybe there is a common design weakness so if the problem were found a lot of blades could be repaired.
Repair seems like it might be less costly solution.
YMMV

Is the hardware spec for the chips actually published? I have a rough pinout from testing V2 blades, but nothing official especially regarding I/O pins and protocol.

Thank you for the support guys, even if you cannot contribute to the design itself, everyone can help with this, the more awareness we can get to this project the better the chance we have at finding all the people needed to make it happen. I have just gotten off a 5 hour phone call with a PCB designer who has never worked with bitcoin and gotten prices on what it would cost to have the board designed. If all else fails and we cannot make this happen as a community and get the price point in where we want it. then i will just foot the bill and start selling the kit at around $30 - $40 each, not to be the corporate American greed monger like all these other companies, but without community development there are a lot of bills to be paid, and i at least have to get my initial investment back. So anything you can do to help spread the word about the project would help greatly, i have priced out manufacturing a small board like this, and we could actually get the board itself made for roughly $1 each even with a small order of 10,000 units. which would put the kit in at around $5.00 and cost of additional components yet to be determined but probably around $10, which means if we get community development, we could essentially use our dead V2 blades to make a USB miner for about $15 per miner. So please, lets keep this cheap, fun, and a community project. spread the word, tell everyone, sooner or later we will get a designer, escrow person, and firmware developer to stand up and help for a bounty. even if we cannot find the firmware developer i can do that myself, the big hurdle is getting the PCB designed. 

Watching and reserved. I would have applied but my PCB/digital electronics skills are still limited and related more to the theoretical than the practical.