Topic: [Project Assistance] Have Access To Free Electricity, but... - page 2. (Read 2205 times)

Very much on the right track here, I like where we're going now. That was the generalization given to me by the professor, since he's not very well acquainted with Bitcoin (well, frankly, I've only been in it for three weeks now... bought a U3... thought it was cool, bought three more, running off 12V supplies than run nearly 24/7 anyway, and it kept going), so he left the particulars up to me, but yes, in all reality it's a PR stunt. Attract students to the possible future of the financial industry and how it's affected by technology (we can only hope, block size debate notwithstanding).

The room is dead secure, there's also a HAM station in there that never gets used and has never been jacked. Have my license, but never been on the air. Campus security/PD is also on top of things around there too. Besides, at a half a million people, there wouldn't be anywhere to practically unload a stolen miner around here anyway.

I am not sure if its specific to member rank, but your next member rank will be at 30 activity "Jr Member". So basically after 6 weeks since the potential activity is +14 per 2 weeks i believe.

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Sound good, if you "marketize" your project into showing how you can "earn more money" even though its specific to Bitcoin earning, you could get more attract to the project and also raise the awareness of Bitcoin. Sound great to me, 2 bird one stone. Or 3 bird if you count your personal gain in the story.

The easiest way to do this would be to get 2 1.91v S5 which may be an hassle, and then the easiest way to downvolt one would be to use a 11v or 10v PSU, since using a step down is more work... but could be cool if you use more engineering-y hardware.

Maybe slap some external sensors with LEDs for the cool factor among today's kids or something.

And hopefully your stuff won't be stolen/sabotaged.

Oh this isn't a graded project. Told that professor I wanted to set up a mining rig to pay my electric bill and buy me a 6-pack. He said if I can turn it into a project of some sort, it's all fair game.

Seriously though, I think that should be the deal, two S5's set up in such a way as to compare a modified one to a stock one, performance, power usage, noise levels, etc. The amount of web development in there wouldn't necessarily detract anything from the fact that things have been customized and added and research done. In all reality, the attendance/acceptance numbers for the department appear to be down, and I think anything to attract attention to those on the fence or who haven't quite decided exactly where to go (there's about 3,500 of those last time I checked) might decide engineering. Department needs em, "industry" needs 'em. I don't blame em for bribing me to come up with a project to attract people.

I can also completely understand the noob/spam thing. Just not sure when the timer goes down to something reasonable.

Oh yeah, sorry, anti newbie spam features xD

I'm not sure exactly how to go about feeding the data to a Pi and then displaying it on a monitor, but basically if you could feed it two set of data from two concurrent S5, one that run undervolted and one that run stock and use hardware which more enter the realm of "Engineering" and less "Web development" then you could have something of interest.

Another idea would be to change the fan, showing the difference in noise, cooling, anything. There's also 3D printed mods for it that could be interesting to at least look into.

There's a lot of things you could do, just gotta see what's the most proper thing to get a good grade since i'm assuming it would be. But if not, just whatever fit best your engineering stuff curriculum.

That's a very valid and epic point. Get a couple S5's and see if I can make one notably more efficient, seeing as how saving energy and green power is a big issue around here.

That bloody 360 second timer is annoying. Server, I'm trying to have a conversation here, and not on the Sprint network!

Alight, basically, i just meant if you think about getting an S5 for undervolting, make sure its a v1.91 but basically as you might have read on the thread, its a bit of a pain since you need to feed it lower Voltage with a downstep or a adjustable PSU.

If you set up a miner with downsteps and stuff to raise efficiency you could also add efficiency comparison. Could make for a cool electrical project. Just not sure how much in board electronics you are but if getting some buck converter from amazon fit in your curriculum then this could be a cool project for you.

It's an S3, and I think this is one of those S1's converted into 3. Very different looking board, like a dual-board stacked configuration. One says "S3_CtrlBoard_Power_V1.1" and the networking board says just "Bitmaintech V1.2" and a 2013 date stamp. Yeah, China's kicking America's ass in everything except ... well ... censorship. Same with the north in terms of mining. I live in a state where from October to May it's less than 10C outside, and I can just camp a miner next to my window and keep the place heated. Worked during our quick cold spell last week. I'm not looking to rake in a sh*tload here, just want to pay the power bill and buy a 6-pack while pumping the blockchain trying to ROI.

Missed your edit: is that 1.91 something to be avoided on the S5's?

Check the top right of your S5 PCB(edit: if you get one*) and tell me if its 1.91v.

I would say 0.075 is fairly expensive, its not because you used to have 0.15 that 0.075 is good for mining, sadly, it depend on your competition's electricity price.

Basically you're competing with people that get electricity at 0.02-0.04. A ton of the hashrate is in China and a lot of the rest is hosted in the north regions with free cooling. But if you ever run a miner at home you can have that fan thing turn off to not take electricity, since the heat generated from the miner would cut on your heating bill.

My .075 isn't bad (used to be .145 flat rate 24/7, just switched), since that includes the distribution charge as well, so that's an all in per-KWh charge. I have a partially dead S3 here at home already and I switched fans on it to reduce noise, the active bank only runs around 50 degrees unless the ambient temp is up around 27-30, which it does sometimes. The weather's cooling off now, so it'll be much much lower now.

I get "free heat", but the blower that moves that air is hooked to my meter, and it's old and beat up, so not sure the power consumption on that thing. Couple hundred maybe. I noticed a thread on undervolting the hell out of an S5, if I could squeeze some efficiency out of that, might not be bad at home.

That sound good. For mining next to your head, the problem is really just your electricity cost that you laid out. It make any investment at all prohibitive. Even the super efficient USB key or the latest chip would be pretty costly.

In term of noise an underclocked S1 and probably S3 would work, but you would not be making much buck and you'd have to use those time plug thing that will turn it off during peak hour and with my personal experience with watt meters like the kill-a-watt, they just blow up since "they aren't actually designed to work continually" so i'm guessing cheap timer would burn out as well. In truth beside a super underclocked S3 or underclocked S5 i don't think there are options for you.

I'm sure you could find something more industrial but iirc your base 0.075 is still pretty expensive.

However if at any point in the year you need to pay for heating, then we can talk this over, as ASIC make for the perfect heating machine since you would need to pay for generating heat anyways.

BLOCK_C - Even if I was doing it near my head, I live off-campus in a little studio that's individually metered and capable of over 100A of 120 and 40A of 240. It's well laid out. Biggest difficulty if I did it nearby would be the girlfriend. She can sleep through a lot, mind you... slept through a guy unloading an entire clip a block away (yikes, ye drunk bastards), but I think something as loud as what the S7 is predicted to be might not be well off next to the bed.

However, if a "get S7, mine till the revenue slows down appreciably and re-sell the hardware" strategy works, might consider that one for at home, seeing as how this Bitmain gear seems to hold its value quite well. That's a whole 'nother story though.

notlist3d - That's kind of the idea I was going after with displaying data, along with VirosaGITS clarification on having to do any sensor based data the hard way, through sensors/ADC's, and some sort of software. Being I'm still at Associate's level, it's obviously not anything too crazy, but some more stuff like maybe calculating and displaying efficiency (GH/W, using a fixed rate W number since there's too much involved in metering that and feeding it in constantly), the power supply voltage and temps as well as the miner itself, stuff like that. Get it all piped into a Raspberry Pi or something similar to be able to chew on the stuff I feed it as well as display stuff it can get from someone's API.

At least those are my thoughts at the moment.

OP seem to have already discussed it with a teacher getting the greenlight, he would have to set up temp and not use software report of the miner however. So its not about permission its more about making it fit in the engineering curriculum. Other than that he is probably fine.

If he sticks with one pool, depending on the pool it could show a lot of the data.  Anything from total BTC earned to hashrate with nice graphs over X days.

So showing data I think is easy.  It's just just getting the permission to put a miner in it.  I could see a little trouble with it as not developed by a student they might not really care about it.  So might take something extra to get them to add it to room.

Yes OP explained that the project would run in an engineering section, on some sort of display case/closet. The place is cooled and maintained. He is not going to sleep next to a 75dB miner. Of this we made certain.

As such we are merely waiting for OP to clarify/consolidate his plan.

Reread up on his second post it is not dorm mining it will be in " it will be in basically a glorified closet with a display window that's used for nothing more than showing off the engineering department's projects.".   So it's to show off projects of engineering students.

I personally would never dorm mine with the sound. (One could make a argument for the avalon 4.1's)  I don't think it is something that will catch on and bunch of students in dorm do.

As an EE major I'm sure you are aware of how electricity works.  A lot of those old dorms have outlets that are daisy chained together.  So if lots of people try to copy you you could start tripping breakers or burn the building down.  I would look into the electrical system of your dorm and make sure you're not going to run any risks of fire etc.  If your project is successful everyone is going to want to do what you do and the dorm probably doesn't have the power for it.

I think this is important.   Does the university pay for the projects?  Or are you footing the bill on the miner?

Get permission first before sinking money into a miner.   And if you have a good advisor it can make a huge difference.  I have had good and bad one's and you would be surprised how much of a difference an advisor on your side can make.

But still get it in writing from someone who can authorize it that any income from it belongs to you and not the University. Better safe than sorry I'd think that the dept head/director would be a position for that and if it later turns out that they are not authorized to do that - it's their problem not yours.

It was the director of the Department who approved this idea, why I figured it was legit.

You can do this but you won't be able to keep any of the Bitcoins or Fiat money, its belongs to the University actually.

Read your Terms and Conditions or seek an advisor.