H-card number 2 installed and hashing. We're getting ~ 30 GH/s at the moment, as the autotuning will be doing it's thing over the next few hours to pre-tune the card prior to a final bit of hand tuning. It looks like we might have a half-dead chip on this board, but I understand from other posts on the forum that this doesn't normally cause a big problem. The other chips just hash faster to make up for it - we'll see how it goes. I'll post some pictures/screen shots tomorrow.
~115 GH/s online and hashing
177 W at the wall (including RPis, router + miner)
Topic: [Closed] Bitfury miner group buy + hosting (with ESCROW) - page 6. (Read 37359 times)
Hi All, just a quick update. We started to get a slightly unreliable connection to eligius late this afternoon (DDoS?) and so have switched the miner to bitminter for the time being. The BFSB kit seems happy with this, but the bitfry burner is getting more rejects than it should, so this may not be the pool for us. We will monitor things and switch again if needed. Unfortunately monitoring things on bitminter is not as easy as eligius without logging into the account, so keep your eyes on the BTC address (1568Cr5PQFy3JVhQnvajQkbYyinM4AcCFH) for payments.
The second H-board (component 2) literally just arrived (I didn't realise that UPS delivered at 8 pm!), so we'll be installing that in a minute.
The second H-board (component 2) literally just arrived (I didn't realise that UPS delivered at 8 pm!), so we'll be installing that in a minute.
Forgive my confusion here, but I thought the deal was supposed to be that earlier investors would be getting paid before later investors. Meaning that your shares get activated when later orders go online, but not when earlier orders go online, until your hardware is online too.
Seems a little messed up that group 7s hardware shows up earlier, and all the earlier groups are still waiting. Wasn't that the system that was put in place, in order to encourage earlier investing?
Not complaining, or trying to be a pain in the ass, just trying to figure out what the deal is.
Seems a little messed up that group 7s hardware shows up earlier, and all the earlier groups are still waiting. Wasn't that the system that was put in place, in order to encourage earlier investing?
Not complaining, or trying to be a pain in the ass, just trying to figure out what the deal is.
Apologies for causing any confusion wrenchmonkey. There was some discussion on the thread about this before we opened up the bitfury burner component. In the end, we decided when we opened up the collection for component 7 (https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3176617) that we should not change the terms and conditions in the OP.
Quote
All other terms and conditions set out in the OP will remain the same. In particular, please note that we will still distribute any mined BTC in the way stated in the OP: "BTC mined will be distributed to group members in proportion to the number of shares that they own and the number of coins mined by the miner (the miner is defined as all hardware components in this group buy that are actively mining) since the last payment.""Payments will only be made to group members who have shares in components that have been delivered. Payments will not be made to group members who have shares in components that have been ordered, but not delivered." This means that if the bitfury burner arrives before the starter kit then group members who have contributed to this component will begin hashing first, but other group members will benefit from better GH/s/share when the components that they have contributed towards come online. I think that everybody should benefit from this.
Basically we think that this benefits everybody. Early adopters do not loose anything. The components that they have shares in still arrive when they would have anyway and they begin mining at this point, as planned. However, because the GH/s/BTC worked out better for the bitfury burner, adding this to the group's miner improves the overall GH/s/share for those early adopters, so they get more hash power than expected. The whole group also benefits from having two independent bits of hardware in the miner, as if one goes down for any reason then the other should keep running. The group members contributing towards component 7 did so anticipating that they might start mining earlier, although because Cryptx had no track record they also took a risk with this (we could have still been waiting for the bitfury burner), but they also joined the group on the understanding that all components become part of a pool that all group members benefit from when their components are hashing (as described in the OP).
I particularly didn't want to change the terms and conditions set out in the OP, as this is something that everybody signed up to. Also, if we had changed things to institute a "queue" of shares, rather than doing this by component, it would have made things complicated and confusing; and would have made the bitfury burner look rather unappealing to new group members. In this case we may not have secured it for the group and everybody would have been worse off in terms of GH/s/share.
I hope that this makes things clearer. Let me know if not.
Forgive my confusion here, but I thought the deal was supposed to be that earlier investors would be getting paid before later investors. Meaning that your shares get activated when later orders go online, but not when earlier orders go online, until your hardware is online too.
Seems a little messed up that group 7s hardware shows up earlier, and all the earlier groups are still waiting. Wasn't that the system that was put in place, in order to encourage earlier investing?
Not complaining, or trying to be a pain in the ass, just trying to figure out what the deal is.
Seems a little messed up that group 7s hardware shows up earlier, and all the earlier groups are still waiting. Wasn't that the system that was put in place, in order to encourage earlier investing?
Not complaining, or trying to be a pain in the ass, just trying to figure out what the deal is.
A quick hardware update for you:
Bitburner fury: The hardware has been running fairly stable at around 48 GH/s for some days now. Over the first 2-3 days it crashed a couple of times with a particular "usb_write error on avalon_write" error that seems to be common with these boards (based on reports on the forum) and this could only be recovered by re-flashing the firmware. I noticed at this point that the firmware that was controlling the fan speed was keeping this rather low and switched to powering the fan directly from a 12V supply. This is a little louder, but has significantly reduced the board temp and things have been running stable since. Keep your fingers crossed that it stays this way! It really feels as though these boards are pushing the chips to their limits, so we're not going to tinker with this hardware now, just let it get on with things. On the cryptx thread there are reports of a couple of people getting their "hashrate protection" cashback. We've not had this yet, but when we do we will let you know before sending an appropriately sized refund back to those who contributed to this component.
BFSB starter kit and H-boards: So far the BFSB kit has been very reliable and we've had no problems with it. The "autotune" function of chainminer seems to be rather conservative in terms of the level of hardware errors that it will allow and was tuning our H-board to around 30-32 GH/s. We decided to do some manual tuning of each chip a couple of days ago and this pushed things to around 33-35 GH/s with very few hardware errors, which is great. I think pushing these cards any further would require some fairly effective heatsinks on the chips and the voltage regulator. Our second H-board is due to arrive tomorrow and we'll let you all know when it's here - although you'll see the hashrate spike on eligius
! As with the previous BFSB kit, we'll let autotune take care of the board for 12-24 hours and then do some manual tweaking of the chips on top of autotune's best efforts to get the most out of each card. We've had no shipping notification for the other kit yet, but I would imagine that it will probably ship out soon.
That's all for now.
Bitburner fury: The hardware has been running fairly stable at around 48 GH/s for some days now. Over the first 2-3 days it crashed a couple of times with a particular "usb_write error on avalon_write" error that seems to be common with these boards (based on reports on the forum) and this could only be recovered by re-flashing the firmware. I noticed at this point that the firmware that was controlling the fan speed was keeping this rather low and switched to powering the fan directly from a 12V supply. This is a little louder, but has significantly reduced the board temp and things have been running stable since. Keep your fingers crossed that it stays this way! It really feels as though these boards are pushing the chips to their limits, so we're not going to tinker with this hardware now, just let it get on with things. On the cryptx thread there are reports of a couple of people getting their "hashrate protection" cashback. We've not had this yet, but when we do we will let you know before sending an appropriately sized refund back to those who contributed to this component.
BFSB starter kit and H-boards: So far the BFSB kit has been very reliable and we've had no problems with it. The "autotune" function of chainminer seems to be rather conservative in terms of the level of hardware errors that it will allow and was tuning our H-board to around 30-32 GH/s. We decided to do some manual tuning of each chip a couple of days ago and this pushed things to around 33-35 GH/s with very few hardware errors, which is great. I think pushing these cards any further would require some fairly effective heatsinks on the chips and the voltage regulator. Our second H-board is due to arrive tomorrow and we'll let you all know when it's here - although you'll see the hashrate spike on eligius
! As with the previous BFSB kit, we'll let autotune take care of the board for 12-24 hours and then do some manual tweaking of the chips on top of autotune's best efforts to get the most out of each card. We've had no shipping notification for the other kit yet, but I would imagine that it will probably ship out soon.That's all for now.
Payouts for GB members with shares in components that are currently hashing (#7 and #1) has just been made. See below for details. Please note that some shares on eligius have not yet been paid and this payout only constitutes what we have actually received to date.
Transaction ID: 9dfef1fef4ee4a5dcc4c941db68ea431924a674955657b5731c023e190317f36
Transaction ID: 9dfef1fef4ee4a5dcc4c941db68ea431924a674955657b5731c023e190317f36
The micropayment yesterday seemed to work OK, so we've now sent this week's full payment to GB members with shares in component 7. This corresponds to all BTC mined (0.314947 BTC) before we added the BFSB starter kit (component 1). Please see below for the details. We'll make the payment for BTC mined since the starter kit was added later today. Apologies, the accounting for this will be a bit complicated until all components are here and mining! If anything is unclear let us know.
Transaction ID: 63874e8e43affb2220aa8d42738fea126121ab47335498ebda968d67c87dacc9
Transaction ID: 63874e8e43affb2220aa8d42738fea126121ab47335498ebda968d67c87dacc9
OK, so I've made a test payment (just a small amount of BTC to ensure that the system we have in place is working) for GB members with shares in the bitburner fury. Details are below. Please could you let me know if there are any problems receiving coins, as I'd like to make the full payments for this week tomorrow?
Transaction ID: 810d7688bd2513eda0a28508a449c891413092b7b70e42fdabc5f3722279bc7b
Note: the second payment (0.0005 BTC) to 11EmQ.... is the hosting charge.
Transaction ID: 810d7688bd2513eda0a28508a449c891413092b7b70e42fdabc5f3722279bc7b
Note: the second payment (0.0005 BTC) to 11EmQ.... is the hosting charge.
A nice fit in that case 
and a good bump in the hashing power.
and a good bump in the hashing power.
Great news
looking forwards to more to come in the future
looking forwards to more to come in the future
Hi All, I'm very pleased to say that the starter kit arrived safe and sound today. It's now hashing away nicely at 32-33 GH/s . A big thankyou to Punin and all the team. Talk about "under promise, over deliver" - that's a 30 % hashrate increase (compared to the advertised 25 GH/s) out of the box without any manual tuning, pencil modding etc!
At the moment all of the hashpower is directed at eligius on the same address as the bitfury burner so you can follow its progress at (1568Cr5PQFy3JVhQnvajQkbYyinM4AcCFH). Once it's bedded in a bit I'll switch over to load-balanced mining on all of the three pools that I mentioned the previous post (eligius (using 1568Cr5PQFy3JVhQnvajQkbYyinM4AcCFH), bitminter and HHTT (using the same address 1568Cr5PQFy3JVhQnvajQkbYyinM4AcCFH)). This seems to be the only way to have some kind of failover capability using the chainminer software (it's a bit different to cgminer in that respect).
Just to let you know, before starting up the starter kit I made a note of the BTC balance and kWh that the bitfury burner had generated up to that point. This will be used for the first payment for those who contributed to the bitfury burner (I still plan to make this payment at the weekend - it's not a job for late at night). The "miner" is now defined as both hashing components, as described in the OP.
I'll try to post some photos shortly.
. A big thankyou to Punin and all the team. Talk about "under promise, over deliver" - that's a 30 % hashrate increase (compared to the advertised 25 GH/s) out of the box without any manual tuning, pencil modding etc! At the moment all of the hashpower is directed at eligius on the same address as the bitfury burner so you can follow its progress at (1568Cr5PQFy3JVhQnvajQkbYyinM4AcCFH). Once it's bedded in a bit I'll switch over to load-balanced mining on all of the three pools that I mentioned the previous post (eligius (using 1568Cr5PQFy3JVhQnvajQkbYyinM4AcCFH), bitminter and HHTT (using the same address 1568Cr5PQFy3JVhQnvajQkbYyinM4AcCFH)). This seems to be the only way to have some kind of failover capability using the chainminer software (it's a bit different to cgminer in that respect).
Just to let you know, before starting up the starter kit I made a note of the BTC balance and kWh that the bitfury burner had generated up to that point. This will be used for the first payment for those who contributed to the bitfury burner (I still plan to make this payment at the weekend - it's not a job for late at night). The "miner" is now defined as both hashing components, as described in the OP.
I'll try to post some photos shortly.
Now collecting towards 3 drillbit boards from drillbit's batch 1 (~60 GH/s, late October early November delivery estimate). These have already been ordered and paid for. (Note: Orders from drillbit's batch 1 are currently sold out to new buyers.)
Now 11 / 25 shares remaining for this component
Now 11 / 25 shares remaining for this component
im in for a share on the drillbit system please.
ty.
ty.
Now collecting towards 3 drillbit boards from drillbit's batch 1 (~60 GH/s, late October early November delivery estimate). These have already been ordered and paid for. (Note: Orders from drillbit's batch 1 are currently sold out to new buyers.)
Now 12 / 25 shares remaining for this component
Now 12 / 25 shares remaining for this component
Hi All,
So for those of you who have been missing the opportunity to contribute towards bitfury kit for the GB since BFSB stopped taking orders we now have something new for you that allows us to open the GB again. Stinky_Pete has managed to secure (and pay for) 3 Drillbit boards from their first production batch (https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/drillbit-system-miners-avalon-range-available-now-10499-266235). He is willing to add this hardware to the group's miner, while keeping some shares back for himself. This will work in a similar way to how we included the bitfury burner in the GB. We will open a collection for a new component (component 8 - Drillbit boards) and collect share contributions for this until 20:00 BST on 29th October 2013. If there's not sufficient interest by this point then Stinky_Pete will run the miner privately outside the group (any shares contributed to the bitfury burner at this point will be transferred to future H-board collections or refunded depending on the wishes of the contributors).
Drillbit board details
* 3 boards with 8 chips per board --> combined hashrate estimate of ~60 GH/s
* Boards will be stacked in a mini plane backboard, which allows for efficient power connectivity and simple control (e.g. by an RPi)
* Shipping estimate: Drillbit anticipate that they will ship these in late October or early November
* Costs (paid 9.3 BTC for boards, 0.75 BTC for shipping, 20% import VAT will be due on entry to the UK, heatsink costs will be ~ 0.2 BTC)
Details
We propose to offer the drillbit boards as the next component in our group buy, based on 25 shares** (13 of which would be kept by Stinky_Pete) for the component (at 0.5 BTC per share) to the group in the same way as other components in this group buy, the only difference being that this component is already ordered and comes from a different supplier. The bitburner fury will become component 8 of the GB. All other terms and conditions set out in the OP will remain the same. In particular, please note that we will still distribute any mined BTC in the way stated in the OP: "BTC mined will be distributed to group members in proportion to the number of shares that they own and the number of coins mined by the miner (the miner is defined as all hardware components in this group buy that are actively mining) since the last payment.""Payments will only be made to group members who have shares in components that have been delivered. Payments will not be made to group members who have shares in components that have been ordered, but not delivered."
** We reserve the right to amend the maximum number of shares if there is a sudden, significant drop in the BTC price. This is to ensure that we are able to cover the fiat cost of the miner. If we have to do this then those who have already contributed shares will be given the opportunity for refunds.
I hope this is all clear. If you have any questions then please post here. I'll update the OP shortly.
So for those of you who have been missing the opportunity to contribute towards bitfury kit for the GB since BFSB stopped taking orders we now have something new for you that allows us to open the GB again. Stinky_Pete has managed to secure (and pay for) 3 Drillbit boards from their first production batch (https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/drillbit-system-miners-avalon-range-available-now-10499-266235). He is willing to add this hardware to the group's miner, while keeping some shares back for himself. This will work in a similar way to how we included the bitfury burner in the GB. We will open a collection for a new component (component 8 - Drillbit boards) and collect share contributions for this until 20:00 BST on 29th October 2013. If there's not sufficient interest by this point then Stinky_Pete will run the miner privately outside the group (any shares contributed to the bitfury burner at this point will be transferred to future H-board collections or refunded depending on the wishes of the contributors).
Drillbit board details
* 3 boards with 8 chips per board --> combined hashrate estimate of ~60 GH/s
* Boards will be stacked in a mini plane backboard, which allows for efficient power connectivity and simple control (e.g. by an RPi)
* Shipping estimate: Drillbit anticipate that they will ship these in late October or early November
* Costs (paid 9.3 BTC for boards, 0.75 BTC for shipping, 20% import VAT will be due on entry to the UK, heatsink costs will be ~ 0.2 BTC)
Details
We propose to offer the drillbit boards as the next component in our group buy, based on 25 shares** (13 of which would be kept by Stinky_Pete) for the component (at 0.5 BTC per share) to the group in the same way as other components in this group buy, the only difference being that this component is already ordered and comes from a different supplier. The bitburner fury will become component 8 of the GB. All other terms and conditions set out in the OP will remain the same. In particular, please note that we will still distribute any mined BTC in the way stated in the OP: "BTC mined will be distributed to group members in proportion to the number of shares that they own and the number of coins mined by the miner (the miner is defined as all hardware components in this group buy that are actively mining) since the last payment.""Payments will only be made to group members who have shares in components that have been delivered. Payments will not be made to group members who have shares in components that have been ordered, but not delivered."
** We reserve the right to amend the maximum number of shares if there is a sudden, significant drop in the BTC price. This is to ensure that we are able to cover the fiat cost of the miner. If we have to do this then those who have already contributed shares will be given the opportunity for refunds.
I hope this is all clear. If you have any questions then please post here. I'll update the OP shortly.
great news !
nice to see some hardware hitting the ground and actually mining. Now i just have to wait for my H board to arrive before i start earning.
nice to see some hardware hitting the ground and actually mining. Now i just have to wait for my H board to arrive before i start earning.
Hopefully this shouldn't be too long monkeynutts. Punin has just updated us all on the order queue (https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3342107) and things are progressing nicely.
I've also just noticed that our group's component 2 (H-board #1) is now "completed" on the BFSB site and we've got a UPS tracking number (its not shipped yet, but the shipping label has been created). Sadly UPS seem to be frustratingly slow with their shipping. Our starter kit has only just left Finland after sitting in a warehouse in Helsinki for four days (maybe they were waiting for somebody to row over in a boat from the UK to come and pick it up
). I swear that these shipping companies introduce an artificial penalty and sit on your packages for as long as possible if you don't choose their most expensive rates 
.
great news !
nice to see some hardware hitting the ground and actually mining. Now i just have to wait for my H board to arrive before i start earning.
nice to see some hardware hitting the ground and actually mining. Now i just have to wait for my H board to arrive before i start earning.
The bitburner fury has arrived! Some photos are below. I've spent quite a while today tuning the clock and voltage settings and we're currently hashing at around 49-50 GH/s in cgminer (275 MHz, 1075 mA, ~5% HW errors). The whole setup (pi + miner + a box of fans) is using 125 W at the wall (about 85 W for the fury itself). Pushing it any further just raises the % HW errors and power consumption, but doesn't have a big impact on hashrate (I've never seen above 51 GH/s), so on balance I think we're close to the sweet spot and we need to look at how it performs over a longer period now before trying to tweak any more. Obviously this is a long way from the 64 GH/s that Cryptx promised, so I'm expecting them to honour their 100 Euro "hashrate protection" refund.
We're currently mining on eligius and you can watch the miner by inputting the mining address (1568Cr5PQFy3JVhQnvajQkbYyinM4AcCFH) at the pool (bitminter and HHTT are the failover pools). Don't worry about the spikes in hashrate today, this is just a bunch of starts, restarts etc. while tuning. Fingers crossed the board stays stable overnight.
We're currently mining on eligius and you can watch the miner by inputting the mining address (1568Cr5PQFy3JVhQnvajQkbYyinM4AcCFH) at the pool (bitminter and HHTT are the failover pools). Don't worry about the spikes in hashrate today, this is just a bunch of starts, restarts etc. while tuning. Fingers crossed the board stays stable overnight.
Delivery updates
According to fedex the bitfury burner has made its way over the last couple of days to a nearby town and so I think all is still on track for delivery tomorrow. Also, I've just checked the UPS tracking info for the starter kit and this is scheduled for delivery by Thursday 17th October. All looking good at the moment.
Since we'll be up and running soon please could you all have a final check of the list of payout addresses and number of shares for each component etc. in the OP and let us know if you see any problems ASAP
Payouts
Payouts will be made once per week, as described in the OP. This will probably happen on the weekend. We will be testing out our payout system with a small test payout when each new component arrives (as the list of group members with delivered components will change at this point and we want to make sure that all is working as it should). We'll post here when this is happening and we will need you to let us know ASAP if there are any problems that might affect the main payouts.
Pools, BTC address etc.
We're still planning to use Eligius and Bitminter and suggest "Horrible Horrendous Terrible Tremendous" as the third pool (~1% fees depending on share difficulty used, but no merged mining). The bitfury burner will be controlled using cgminer on a dedicated RPi and we'll start with Eligius as the primary pool with the other two as failovers. The BFSB kit will run bitfury's chainminer software, which uses load balancing across three pools rather than a failover mechanism, so all three pools will be used. Once the miners are running and we know that all is set up correctly we'll post the worker names and the BTC address that pool payouts will go to so that you can keep an eye on them in real time (if you're so inclined).
Communication
We've only had a few email addresses from group members and no bitmessage addresses. If you want to be kept in the loop if the forum goes down again please pm these to us. It's been pointed out that there may be some issues with bitmessage in terms of resource usage and potentiall with security (e.g. https://bitmessage.org/forum/index.php?topic=1666.0). I don't know the protocol well enough to judge I'm afraid. Email would be our preference in any case, but we will use bitmessage too if group members want it.
That's all for now. Hopefully we'll have some unboxing pics to post tomorrow!
According to fedex the bitfury burner has made its way over the last couple of days to a nearby town and so I think all is still on track for delivery tomorrow. Also, I've just checked the UPS tracking info for the starter kit and this is scheduled for delivery by Thursday 17th October. All looking good at the moment.
Since we'll be up and running soon please could you all have a final check of the list of payout addresses and number of shares for each component etc. in the OP and let us know if you see any problems ASAP
Payouts
Payouts will be made once per week, as described in the OP. This will probably happen on the weekend. We will be testing out our payout system with a small test payout when each new component arrives (as the list of group members with delivered components will change at this point and we want to make sure that all is working as it should). We'll post here when this is happening and we will need you to let us know ASAP if there are any problems that might affect the main payouts.
Pools, BTC address etc.
We're still planning to use Eligius and Bitminter and suggest "Horrible Horrendous Terrible Tremendous" as the third pool (~1% fees depending on share difficulty used, but no merged mining). The bitfury burner will be controlled using cgminer on a dedicated RPi and we'll start with Eligius as the primary pool with the other two as failovers. The BFSB kit will run bitfury's chainminer software, which uses load balancing across three pools rather than a failover mechanism, so all three pools will be used. Once the miners are running and we know that all is set up correctly we'll post the worker names and the BTC address that pool payouts will go to so that you can keep an eye on them in real time (if you're so inclined
).Communication
We've only had a few email addresses from group members and no bitmessage addresses. If you want to be kept in the loop if the forum goes down again please pm these to us. It's been pointed out that there may be some issues with bitmessage in terms of resource usage and potentiall with security (e.g. https://bitmessage.org/forum/index.php?topic=1666.0). I don't know the protocol well enough to judge I'm afraid. Email would be our preference in any case, but we will use bitmessage too if group members want it.
That's all for now. Hopefully we'll have some unboxing pics to post tomorrow!
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