Topic: [Open Source Hardware Project] Hive & Wasp Prototype Development (Read 16219 times)

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/the-wasp-project-collective-information-thread-422243

"One thread to rule them all,
one thread to find them,
one thread to bring them all
and in the darkness bind them."

Meeting Yesterday:

All Projects Overview

• We are still moving forward on a number of areas and from the meeting yesterday there has been significant progress on most of the projects currently going on in the WPC. The 0.1 beta hive (backplane) will be ready in time and sent to the EE in Seattle. Firmware has progressed and will be available for prototyping with hand assembled bringup boards and further use with the first prototype boards from the fabricator.
• The WPC Pool set a hard deadline for the testing of the pool as we near completion of that project. Our website will be reworked as we wait for pretty pictures / video and other media from the EE's working on firmware and hardware and our WPC internal share exchange has started development.
• Licensing story lines have been created and are being work on currently for use on the provisioning server where the firmware / licensing will be released and will be ready before sales begin.
• At this stage we are now reaching out to the community and finding partners outside the WPC who are interested in building our designs and have included a few of these people in our recent meetings so that they can see first hand where the team is in development and ask questions to the EE's. We want to open this up to those with the resources, time and focus to build our modular miners so that they can hit the ground running. We are here to support the mining community so big or small if you are keen and have time we want to include you in this Open Source project.
• We will have A1, BitFury and BitMain available at first and when we get our hands on the Minion we will provide that as well. If you are keen on using our designs then please contact me with your questions.

Logo Winner

• dzarmush is the winner of a really close vote by our members. We want to thank everyone who participated.
• Please contact me via PM or email [email protected]
• You have won a share valued at $250 USD as well as a free lifetime membership in the WPC valued at $100 USD.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3901162

ASIC Chip P0rn:

How many A1's to BitFury's you might ask?

Logo Competition:

We will announce a winner this week.

Membership:

We are keen to find more firmware people to help develop a range of functions we have planned for the Wasp & Hive. If you have experience in this area please PM me with your skills set and experience. I will push that information to our EE and see if that is what we require. If he is good with that then we can expedite your membership on that basis. As for those without those skills sets at this time we are going to hold off any new members until at least February and all membership will be through the website at that point.

See more information here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.4499869

A1, BitMain and BitFury Chips

The 2 - A1 samples got delivered today. Our feeling is that a Metal-core PCB for the A1s and their buck controllers is necessary, and then cutting slots in the FR4 Wasp will allow us to attachment copper heatsinks to the metalcore, and Bergquist pads to the tops of the chips and the passives, filling the gap for an aluminum sink for the top. Hoping this initial prototype design keep the temps down in the 40s, with air. All this is necessary so as to increase the potential lifetime of these A1 first run prototype chips. This all takes time so the A1 prototype will be later than the prototype PCB's for the BitMain / BitFury Wasps. Soon as we have working prototypes we will release that information on our website. BitFury will be the first prototype to be built followed closely by the BitMain and then A1. We plan on a Minion Wasp prototype beyond these 3 initial chips. The members have put in all the funding required to pay for all the components, chips and fabrication so there is just time and sweat to give before we have soemthing to show.


WPC Mining Pool

Latest update is that the whole pool team now has access to the servers and that means it is only a matter of days before we have the pool up for testing.

Logo Competition

Poll runs till Tue Jan 14, 2014 3:35 am

A1 Sample Chips

Scheduled to arrive Monday on the west coast at our EE's. Some lucky developers already have their chips.

Logo Competition

We have narrowed down the choices and are now on a second round of voting for the logo.

The following members in bitcointalk are still in the hunt for a single share and free membership in the WPC. We wish you all luck and may the best design represent our collective.

medUSA https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/medusa-106054
dzarmush https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/dzarmush-176058
W-M https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/w-m-88832
Operatr https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/operatr-92499

Ok... as we get close to the final product you can drop us an email via our website once it is up.

Yes I´m interested. And also in build some. I got some contacts to engeneers students with able to smd. Will this helpfull? I don´t know. 

We are self-funded, but if you are interested in building Wasps & Hives let us know always interested in supporting more DIY teams and just to note the designs won't be released until the prototypes demonstrate we have full working hardware, software and firmware.

reserved ;-)


Sounds like an interesting project. I will help support and help funding if it woks fine.

Update Mining Pool:

Looks like the pool team are finally getting things moving server wise that means the tinkering can begin. We will have more details to post next week on the mining pool.

Chips, chips and more chips

In a recent round of discussion with various members it seem we will have even more chips than we originally intended on the prototype side.
A1's, BitFury and BitMain all should be well "overstocked" in the coming weeks as some of our members are having their orders being filled and more samples are sent out.

WPC Logo

Still a day or two left on first round of voting we are keen to announce the winner of the contest but still need more members to chime in on the designs.
Voting is pretty tight and at least 3 designs are now in the running and I suspect we might have to do a run-off vote to break a tie.

We are likely to get hold of Edit: The 2 x A1 chips are shipping and will be in the hands of our EE by next week. We will try and update progress on the A1 Wasp as well as the BitMain and BitFury Wasp prototype versions as we have actual demonstrable progress. All major announcements with regards to the release date of the Software, Firmware and the Hardware being created by the Wasp Project Collective will take place on our website only after we have tangible product to demonstrate like the working emulator or prototype Wasps actually working on the test bench. Once the website is up we will post news here for all but at this point only basic information on where we are in development will be made here. When the A1 chips are in Seattle we will drop another note here for all those following this project. Also note we will update the winner of the LOGO contest here as soon as most members have voted on our forums.

Project work is still ongoing no rest for the EE Elves at the WPC workshop and PCB fabrication is 24/7 at the local West Coast US plant we chose for prototyping the PCB's. Note that the parts and the schematics have been ready for a week which means some prototypes soon... very very soon.

Members note the next meeting time. 1000 PDT Seattle 28th December or 1600 GMT.

Note we are currently building a team of WPC members to handle the PR / Marketing for us as we really need to have multiple contact points so that we limit the WPC's exposure to a single point failure. Ideally we will have a website up to have most of our communication and updates there and post here only on a weekly basis.

Remember we have the IRC Channel is located on the freenode IRC network.

#WPC-Public (public)

If you don't have an IRC client, click here to visit the channel with your web browser.

Downloads

Windows or Linux:  http://xchat.org/
Colloguy for Mac:  http://colloquy.info/
All: http://hexchat.github.io/downloads.html

I'll buy one. Get it working for scrypt and I'll buy another.

Update:

The time frame for the following items would be from now up to first or second week of January 2014.

The WPC Prototype Wasps

• We have in hand enough BitFury chips to produce 8+ prototype waps.
• We will have in hand enough BitMain chips to produce 8+ prototype wasp.
• We should have a first Hive prototype that is able to house wasps but as early prototype that will evolve.
• Target is to build a minimum of 20 total prototype boards in BitFury and BitMain configurations.
• If we have an odd assortment of chips we will also look at mixing and matching chips on the same Wasp.
• Video of the prototypes hashing will be made available to everyone.
• The gerbers and bom for the Wasp will be released only when we are confident that we have functional units.
• WPC will likely produce a small sample prototype run for testing and proof of concept purposes beyond the 20 initial boards.

The WPC Mining Pool

• We will have a functional mining pool up and running before the new year or possibly within the first week of January.
• Full testing of the mining pool will start after Christmas.
• Tentatively 20 Th/s to 300 Th/s range for this pool is estimated by the end of January 2014.

The WPC Website

• Site is ready except we want to have Wasp and Hive prototype pictures before we launch the site
• Site will add more and more functionality after it is live.
• Site will be a work in progress and feedback from WPC members and the community will undoubtedly be taken into account as we edit and modify the site.

The WPC Forums

• We already have a public facing forum for the community but will open that up after we post some basic information.
• News & Announcements - "Official News & announcements of the WPC"
• Publications - "Publications of The Wasp Project Collective"
• Apply for Membership - "Learn about the options available for membership in the the WPC"
• Hardware Support - "Hardware support forum for our products"
• Software Support - "Software support forum for our products"

Big meeting tomorrow... as we are going to received a number of important project updates on the Wasp and the Mining Pool as well as a pre-meeting to go over the the plans for a large production run for Wasps that will take place in January. All the members are keen on having modular miners on shelves before any sales start so we will be focused on the logistics challenges so that when Wasps and Hives are in stock we can ship direct in days thus given the community what is wants miners off the shelf.

Note to members we are moving off Zoho for most things administrative to our own forum over the next week or two so that we can communicate more directly with the WPC members. Please check your emails for the latest information on that move. We will phase out Zoho for all communications by January 2014 although we will retain some of the unique functions it has for project management over 2014 until we can integrate everything into our WPC servers.

We will post an update for everyone here before Monday.

And if anyone missed it at this time we are not accepting new members. Membership will reopen in Q1 2014 at some point in conjunction with a payment gateway for membership on our Website.

UPDATED:

Click link below to directly enter IRC Channel:
http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#WPC-Public

Click link below to directly enter IRC Channel:
http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#TheWaspProjectCollective