Hello, various fans and consumers of GekkoScience equipment
As often happens around this time of year, we're pleased to announce the release of a new product!
The Smart Hub
Basically we took the GekkoScience Base Hub and added a brain.
We've got 9 powered ports on top, all with data - no dummy ports - and two lower-power side ports for extending to more regular hubs. All ports are protected with the same self-resetting 3.5A fuses we used on the upgraded Base Hub (any sold in the last year), and powered across two high-current main regulators for better power handling than any Base Hub so far. It's got a Raspberry Pi Zero W 2 controller built in, with integrated wifi and ethernet onboard. It's got a green-on-black OLED screen and software made for mining. We partnered up with the guy who originally designed what is now the Mars Lander for this one so it's at least slightly cooler-looking than our usual stuff, and has a pretty good software setup.
On first boot or after a factory reset, this hub will boot as a wifi host and tell you its IP so you can connect to its convenient web interface. Over ethernet, it's immediately ready to configure. From there you can set up your local wifi and your pool configs and miner settings, which take effect upon reboot and persist until it's hardware-reset. The default mining mode cycles through stats (including individual miner hashrates) and keeps a running ticker of BTC/USD price as well as other useful data. This should reduce the learning curve for using our products, as it makes most things plug-and-play. No need to compile cgminer and SSH and command line - unless you want to, of course. It's still a linux computer, and useful for more than just mining.
The vertical port spacing on the hub is sized for sticks with individual snap-on fans, so you can use all 9 ports for sticks. All 11 ports have data lines for connecting any USB miner or device, including another hub with more sticks, or a stack of R909 pods.
We'll be putting a fan power jack on future stick versions, but for the meantime in order to fully support being able to use all ports, we're also putting together a USB splitter which will enable powering a snap-on fan from the same jack. USB-port and regular 2/3/4-wire fans will all work. Sold separately.
In case you're skeptical because all the good pictures here are CAD renders, here's the first one off the production line (I always keep the first one to play with; somewhere I have Compac serial number GS-10000000 and every museum is jealous)
The first batch is already shipping to resellers, and they should be available in time to reach you by Christmas (depending on local conditions of course).
These authorized sellers will have stock:
AltairTech (US)Bitshopper (Germany/EU) 101 Crypto (AU/NZ)The Solo Mining Co (UK)The Smart Hub is the first step in what will be a fairly significant revolution for GekkoScience mining hardware. We've got big plans and are looking forward to what's coming next.
