Topic: [Project Assistance] Have Access To Free Electricity, but... (Read 2226 times)

Its the boards, the way the chips are made its a pain to even check at the chip level or find out which chip would be causing a problem, like in RichBC's situation. Basically even though the v1.91 take the downvolt well, they all react different and it take only one chip to make the whole board not downclock very well.

The controller is probably pretty standard, it can even be interchanged from certain miner to another if you just flash the SSD to the proper firmware.

Was it the hash boards or controller causing the issues? Also, at this point I'm not so much going for overt efficiency gains as much as trying to drop the temp. If I can bring it down to 11.8 or so, maybe even 11.5, I could cool it off a bit.

The thread we're working on, do get good results but pretty much everyone that has earlier versions don't get good results. So in effect, only with v1.91 boards people have been able to lower the Volt and get efficiency gain.

Older versions were report to drop chip when you start dropping the volt significantly under 12v and there wasn't much gain to it. Please check your board version and post your results there that would be nice. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1151460.180

11.7 was sharing my computer's PSU with it. I wish I could undervolt the HP supply to about 11.5, as I've heard people are getting decent results below 11 even.

This guy in the video is using a peg to upvolt it, maybe you're able to downvolt it too?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYOgZqfjimw

Not sure if its a home made thing but you definitively should be running it closer to 12v in your case. But if you have one at 11.7 that sound pretty good too for stock speed. It should run stock speed without hashlost and still be more efficient.

This bloody supply, man. That 12.6V is really killing it. Ups the temperature by nearly 5 C from a supply that's about 11.7 loaded. I might not be paying for juice, but one of my goals was to have an S5 that was running in something besides a completely stock/typical configuration.

Yes, with a single fan, the air entry end of the heatsink is cool, while the other end is generally much hotter, by something like 10c+. So the setup i had before was a simple piece of paper force air flow to go through the fin's on the side from another airflow source.
Then i evolved when i was able to change my setup, now that the air is cool enough, i can leave the heat exhaust enter my appartment.

So i just put it on the side and the box fan in the window pull air cool enough to keep it cool without using the miner's fan much. Hence, in comparison, quite quiet. The only thing you must watch out for is for the exhaust of the heatsink to not get resistance from the air being blown from the box fan, so i leave the exhaust just outside the box fan... hell i'll get your a picture.

Yeah at this point being at home and experimenting with this loud-ass unit is something else. I'm okay with it, I get used to it after a while, although relocating it isn't out of the question. My cat and my girlfriend on the other hand... They're a little different.

I wish I had access to air that cool at the moment.

So you've got your S5 tipped on its side, if I read that right? I just blocked off that opening so air could go clean through like you'd expect a forced air cooling to do.

Yeah i don't know, Servers PSU come by the shovel, some have a volt adjustment pot but i'm not very familiar with server PSU's. At the moment i have a box fan blowing 18C air from the side's so air go through the fin, the fan is at 35% and the temps is 51/53c which is excellent and the noise is acceptable. Under 60dB~

That PSU is 20$ on ebay so it's probably not something very fancy. It might also itself be loud. Anyways, in your case, money wise, no its not worth getting a 160$ EVGA G2 i'd say since you're not paying for electricity, personally, even though i have mega cheap electricity i still get good PSU to have stable power, long lasting hardware and no fires xD

But as we previously discussed, stock speed is loud as fuck. Personally i only find it bearable under 2800 RPM. A second fan or some after market more silent fan could work depending on the ambient temperature and the speed at which you run it.

Also the speed really seem to settle after 20-30 minutes. I did short runs at first too, 10 mins runs as you can see in the charts.

But anyways, for me efficient PSU's is important to keep them from generating Heat into the ambient temp, and optimizing how many miners i can get on a 15a120v breaker. For you, that's up to you to decide.

The other upside is an ATX PSU will generally be really quiet. I don't know about the server PSU you have but the server one i have even though they are 94% efficiency get really loud at 800w/1100w limit.

I'm still doing short 5 minute runs checking hash rates vs power vs temp at the moment. I think the thing said v1.3. Shit, is this thing loud though. Mother of god. That's why I want to try to see if I can bring the voltage down to something a bit more normal.... or slightly under. You'd think a PSU for something as expensive as a server would have a fine tune pot on it somewhere.

Also, would a normal ATX computer PSU be worth it in terms of keeping wasted power down, as opposed to this server unit?

Hmm it seem like a low end PSU, at least reviews says its in the bronze efficiency usage, fairly wastefull about 90 watts more than a gold. But in your case it's probably okay but i'm not really sure how the S5 would work with over voltage. My ATX PSU's have a rock solid 12.05v~

I'm guessing as long as you don't see a lot of hardware errors you should be okay, what is the PCB version on the top right of the boards? I'm guessing a v1.91 would handle the over voltage fine but i don't know how the others will since i don't think they have oscillators.

You can compare your results (temps, speed, HWE%) with mine;
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/reviewmy-experiencewith-bitmains-second-hand-used-antminer-s5-batch-7-1151326

Since then the HWE% on my S5 went up its more like 0,002% now at 393.75.

So the first S5 showed up today and I'm running numbers. One thing that gets me is the power supply I'm using (HP DPS800GBA) is running hot at 12.65V. How the hell do I bring that down? Is there a pot somewhere easily accessible for fine tune?

Oh it's so pretty! lol no that's actually really neat, gives a nice graphical approach. If I have room for two displays in that window I can probably have a display with that on it, and one below it with the descriptions of the technology and numbers from the miner that's next to it all.

Maybe you could display this fancy block explorer live;
http://chainflyer.bitflyer.jp/

You can change the language to English by clicking on the Cog. Explain that each gem that fall is a transaction that just went through, live. Etc, there's many blockchain explorer. Not sure if you have to display it live but you could, maybe even on a small LCD screen showing live blockchain transactions..

Basically the aforementioned website is the same info displayed as https://blockchain.info/ but more "eye candy" i suppose?

Red tape. Never fast. I will most definitely keep all of you updated as things progress though. What I've gotten down so far from the dept head is to have a write up on the blockchain, some sort of screen showing blockchain activity, miner activity, operating characteristics (voltage, GH/s) and some other stuff in that same direction. I've got to go in next Wednesday for their weekly department meeting thing and present it to the rest of the faculty to get the final go-ahead. So that means a write up on the blockchain and its relevance to modern society and the future of the financial / security industries. Nothing too fancy, just a way to make things relevant.

Have you got any replies this week? I am wondering what you final setup will look like after all the ideas we bounced at the wall. Please keep me posted, i'd be up for more idea bouncing if you ever meet some technicalities that need resolved~

Here is a very short video about explaining it - https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/video-bitcoins-blockchain-technology-explained-in-2-minutes-1177497

You can go much more in depth if needed.  But that is a decent video for showing someone new who needs a quick anwser of what it is.

Just waiting on the go ahead from facilities and tech (network needed and I want a port so I can keep an eye from home).

In the mean time, anyone got a link to a good explanation on the blockchain and how it all works from the inside?

If I knew enough about most of the technology behind BTC, like the technical details of how the blockchain works, etc. I've read stuff a million times, but it seems there's way more to be had and I don't know quite what it is. In terms of the concerns, sound isn't one, so that's taken care of. I plan on documenting it, mainly for sharing with the people reasons. I can see the lines you put up there with topics and what sounds like a written report would go well in my, well, "technical reporting" course. Holy crap this project is going to be quite useful.

I'm confident whatever is there will be great. Exposure in general is good and making the case for a home miner is always great with all disclaimers stating you will lose every penny so don't spend what you cannot afford to lose. I know you are asking for build advice not legal or anything else, but throwing that out there to always protect yourself.
Look for opportunities when you do this. Talk to people in areas you may not already and take on an educated peer in the project who can be useful and teach you things. Because why not.

Show solo mining vs pool mining. Expand on the future of decentralization which is the opposite of what is needed.

Assuming you have any safety consideration including power and ventilation and IF "money is no object" and you're a gambler, get the S7.
-- another PC disclaimer:
It sounds like You can probably make more buying and holding.
...At Least I am told that quite often.

With what I see happening I think you are going to see the community underclock the S7 with variable voltage power supply or some equivalent. The string design has some folks doing some work. Get a power supply, or actually  get a couple. You can really show efficiency in a real world environment where it defines the landscape. You could even get a little political about efficiency in general, and how we are robbed of it every day. Off topic

I think:
Introduction to: A Bitcoin Miner: Attempt 1 --The S7
Main Body #1: Setup, Operation, and Maintenance --The S7
Main Body #2: Meet a Miner - Efficiency and Difficulty
3 Centralization
Running a node
Live Web Display with wifi camera  

I think what you are doing shows initiative, but be safe, and... I'm saying this figuratively, but get insurance on yourself in this situation relative to the school. Do not let someone do something stupid and you get burned with some 30k bill. Same for you too, check the wiring yourself or have a qualified person do it if you are not. Make sure you do not catch someone else's engineering project on fire, or them you. Make sure on the noise, even underclocked with great fans an S5, S7, will be noisy. If it isn't an issue, great, but don't think it won't be loud.

More than anything record it, take notes, and take tons of pictures and video.
You might make a youtube channel people can follow.

Easy for me to say all of that huh?
Good luck, I hope they see the initiative.

Explain the blockchain to everyone.

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.

-

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.

Fun is what they're after in that display closet; the more flashy stuff in there the better, they say. Yeah I'll chew on it a bit and come back to ya in a bit. If anything else comes to mind in the mean time, let me know.

Thanks in advance.

Then let it simmer and come back to me/us/here when you're decided. You'll probably want to take the API output and run it on a webserver and err, ask a friend or something to help you with the "web design" so it become your original work and not just piggybacking off an opensource Dashboard where you just "shake n bake" it -> done.

You'll just need to check how to have the webserver print the value from another url's output (The API) which is also something i need to learn. (Found a script from edonkey (user) that does just that so as soon as i care to...)

Then maybe just run a simple "refresh pages every 5 seconds" thing and it'll be almost real time tracking or something .

Make it light up red when there's an error, etc. Sound like fun but its not exactly engineer work, more fun software related stuff.

Being a non-credit project (this just needs to fit curriculum enough to not have it chucked in the bin by the Facilities staff), I'm allowed a bit more freedom, so I think a simple GUI or web front-end that monitors what the unit is up to is what he was asking for. I just figured to make it look cooler I could throw some hard sensors in there. I'm also still a little sick and not thinking completely on track.

I see, that would be pretty cheap to be fair, since the built in miner report the temps and you can use the cgminer API to display the temps and it would not be much work worth being gratified over;
https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer/blob/master/API-README

However you could use external sensors and it being display on some small LED screen. Or something.

Otherwise having the RasPi read the Temp is the same as reading it from your Antminer webserver, after all the software that would run on the RasPi would do it the same way the webserver does.

But; trying to use an AntMiner over a RasPi is in a way kind of a pain, since the Antminer is self sufficient and would not run off the miner application on the RasPi.

Personally i run M's Miner Monitor on Windows and it monitor the miner over SSH, so that's another thing you should check out, but you'll have to more clearly decide how to make it fit in your curriculum and what your setup will be.

Ultimately the easiest way to do this would be to simply run a USB stick miner on a Rapsi and then maybe "engineer" some led screen to display the temps being read from the miner's API.

For the purpose of your curriculum its not any less or more than getting a real miner that actually make you some money. (Check Sidehack's usb stick)
But of course since you want to make some money off of it too, check out the Antminer S3's. Also check out the S1, undervolted with simply a graphite pen would probably give you the cheapest quietest unit that will earn you a bit of money.

So an S5 or two for the on-campus pieces? That sounds do-able.

To keep it "within curriculum" I'll have to add some sort of hardware stuff like temp sensors being read from the Pi instead of the built-in ones, voltage readouts, etc. That's where it gets difficult since my experience with programming isn't very high, but the ADC (analog-to-digital), sensors, etc. I can handle. Any help from anyone would be awesome.

80dB might be a slight exaggeration but i mean very slight, i get 74dB on smaller units and i think the S5+ was around 76dB and is a similar heat density form factor.
So yes, with the echo you'd be very close to actually observable 80dB, probably just under and also the fans i have, since they seem to use very similar or just the same fan for S4, S5 (that i can tell so far) they also have a high bitch noise. Just to make it even worse. Just don't expect anything under 70dB.

For home mining, this is very hard, since you pay a lot for your electricity, BTC is volatile and there is a reward halving coming. You would have, at the very least to turn them off during peak hours at all cost.

A while back i might of told you, again, the Antminer S5 modded to make less noise and put it in its own room or something but now the difficulty has started rising again so you're kind of stuck in Limbo at the moment.

If the S7 was 30% cheaper i'd tell you to get that. You,re gonna have to do the math yourself, but with the added problem of downtime because of the peak hour cost... :S I can't recommend you anything.

For the Dashboard.

Check current mining Dashboard and popular pool/monitoring sites. I mentioned Minera before, its a linux distro that run on a RasPi. You don't need it for any mining but its dashboard is functional and practical even though commonly used (i think it use some open source dashboard) but i will let you figure that out.

Basically get your inspiration by checking out other practical dashboards. I'm sure some other members could throw in some links... Right? Guys? Hello? Anyone else willing to contribute?

That's actually a valid point now that I think about it, high W/GH aren't going to be in as much demand anymore, so that would dictate a drop in price. Heat shouldn't be a concern either, that part of the building is usually less than 20 degrees C no matter the outside weather and sticks pretty close even in the full classrooms with all our gear going. Is 80dBa an actual observed level on those? Good god, that's blasted loud. Don't think the girlfriend would let me get away with that one at home either. This advice might have saved me an awkward purchase. Slightly OT but what would be a good unit for at home? I'd like to keep as much GH/s on hand as practical because I'm a gambler and the fact BTC price is low right now and with the reward halving coming up "soon", I kinda wanna rack in what I can at the moment. That probably sounds insanely dumb, but that's what's been in my head.

Back on-topic:
Once the unit(s) been chosen, what would be the best method in going about putting together some sort of flashy UI/infographic display?

Something that won't blast enough noise to make you deaf if you stay next to it for extended periods of time (Seriously). Maybe a couple of S3's if you want a good unit that won't be too noisy, is fairly cheap and ultimately would be a good ROI since the S7 is insanely expensive per GH/s, its only upside being the lower power consumption(Which is not an upside to you).

S5's are good too, louder than the S3 but more manageable with aftermarket fans. Regardless, either way you'll be generating as much heat as a oven so you probably know better than me what you can fit and what you can't. Just gotta keep in mind the heat dissipation.

In a nutshell, less efficient units are more advantageous to you. Personally i'd get S5's. With free electricity they should ROI in 4~5 months.

I've got a webserver for other personal projects that's got all the necessary abilities, so that's already taken care of, and the sound shouldn't be a factor, 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. It's attached to one of the most heavily trafficked hallways, so again, shouldn't be a factor.

I was going to get an S7 anyway, but I figured the free power was cool. At home I get $.075/KWh and +$.15/KWh during peak hours (about 35% of the time). What would be a better unit to stick in there on campus in your opinion?

Well you sound a bit more related to hardware and electronic, i don't think cheesing your way by using some dashboard like Minera would be showing much effort. But you could do it and then plug your section of text.

Regardless, if you use a pool that give you an api, typically you will need to make a webserver that will read the API and display them nice and pretty, but this is more software and web work, which seem a bit out of your "curriculum".

Anyways, if you get more precise with what you need as help, maybe i and others can help, but i think the most important thing i can tell you right now is that a S7 is incredibly loud.

Make sure a sound blaster at 80dB is actually something you can run on campus without driving everyone nuts and getting expelled. I don't see much upside in a S7, especially if you won't be counting the electricity as a cost.

In talking with one of my professors, it turns out I could use power on campus **FREE**  if I could somehow turn it into a project that relates to the curriculum. Since I'm in the electronics/electrical engineering department, I figured something involving a Raspberry Pi and a display of some sort showing hash rate, a couple other impressive numbers of some sort, amount of BTC earned per day/total, operating temp, voltage, etc. of the device, along with a little informational text block about Bitcoin in general.

I plan on buying one of those fancy new S7's for this purpose, since at a 0 electricity cost and climate controlled very well, it could ROI by the end of the school year assuming I got it sometime before the end of October. However, I'm no expert at using the API's provided by many pools, exchanges, etc. and would like some help trying to figure out how to get started on this. If I get the help, I'm willing to share some, back to those who helped me get free juice.

Thanks, y'all.