I wondered what happened to Novello ever since they popped up in
another thread with an announcement of sorts.
As much as I enjoy reading this thread (both the scam accusations and the lengthy descriptions), I did have to go
+
at the transparent logical fallacy.
Novello: if against all apparent odds things are above board and you get your funding (either crowdfunded or via additional VC/Angel investment), I'll happily list the Nova-S in my StickMiners thread, now that it seems it can run without external power. (I know - best incentive ever.) Obviously using the external power port would make more sense if going for maximum hash rates.
( as an aside - all chip manufacturers should put out a reference miner design for their chips, using 1 chip or more (in case of chaining/stringing/whatever you want to call shared resources that can present unique challenges), and I was happy to see AsicMiner do as much for their BE200 )Some technical questions about power supply:
- Is the Nova-S board designed to handle drawing greater current off of the USB end, or will it max out - and if so, where would it max out? (e.g. is it self-limited to USB 3 spec / is there a PTC fuse / etc.)
- If powered via USB-only, are the fans and fan controller going to work, or is that squarely behind the external power?
- Wouldn't it make sense to ship the Nova-S without the AC adapter and just tell people what they need? Saves inventory, S&H, messing about with what plug people need (UK vs Europlug vs U.S. vs see wiki and be afraid, be very afraid) and thus ultimately cost, at the low risk (given the audience - well, most of the audience) of complaints about needing to buy a separate adapter / people buying cheap adapters off of aliexpress with output so noisy they can probably pick it up on their teeth fillings and then wonder why the miner keeps dropping.
All the good stuff about the chip (pin count, bga pitch, on-die temp sensor, etc.) seems to be behind NDA, so I'll ask only this about the chip: does it have a (tentative) name?
A last one regarding software: do you expect to A. be working together with the developers of various mining software to cater to those not using the RPi+minepeon combo, or will you B. fork (and preferably not ignore the applicable license(s), as some have done) and/or C. provide a full custom (webserver-based) solution?
Hi Steve,
Just about to leave, but I saw your post and thought it rude not to reply. Sorry it's brief.
1. The NOVA-S internal regulator will take power direct from a USB port, but since the current draw is limited to 0.5A on USB2 and 0.9A on USB3 it will adjust the chip clock speed (and voltage) to suit. this will limit now much it can hash, it won't be anything like full speed, more like 1/15 - 1/10.
The regulator is intelligent, so no polyfuse is needed, it will never put too much stress on the host system unless it detects that the host is our NOVA-HH. It has high current ports that can supply adequate current to tun the miner at full speed.
2. The fan controller will still work under any power source. The regulator 'talks' to the hashing module microcontroller and if the chip's getting too hot then the clock speed will be reduced and the fans allowed to run for a short while until order is restored.
3. The AC adapter. Yes, I appreciate what you say but I think you've answered your own question. if we supply the adapter then the customer gets what we know will work and even though it cost more than simply telling the customer to buy their own, it's a much more reliable solution for both parties. We want to make things as easy and simple as possible for our customers - and ourselves.
We don't have a name for the chip as such, it does have an on chip temperature sensor.
And as regards your last question we would plan to work with one of the existing developers. We've tried to make the systems as flexible as possible, hence the use of the 32 bit micros on every hashing module and the Pi system controller. It should be reasonably easy for a developer to design the necessary interface.
Hope this answers your questions?