VIM2 Based Crypto currency Miner Build

2 questions:

How are you going to connect the VIMs to the world? (I cant see RJ45s and hubs being cost effective, let alone the space! WiFi/BT would have a lot of dangly antennae. Or USB/GPIO?)

I presume you have a financial model to go with the tech plans. I have no intention of trying to pry into your proprietary assumptions but do you have any headline number say how long to repay costs, or anticipated life of the mine, or annual ROI?

They are going to use ethernet in this version - been cooking up an alternative that is much less cable intensive! The dark grey boxes in the bottom are 48 port switches. Have had to get bootless ethernet cables to make them fit as you’re right - there isn’t much space! Getting this many boards to join to a standard WiFi router is a bit of a non starter. I will be using one vim to provide DHCP /DNS service to the rest and bridge to the WiFi for connecting to the internet

ROI for the whole thing is not at these spot prices as bitcoin has just tanked and done the usual and taken the alt coins with them as well. So right now its something like 2 years to get the investment back (including electricity) but conservatively expect that proves to recover to the point where ROI is something like 6 to 12 months which is comparable to ASIC miners

Also worth saying I’ve got other SBC based miners that have been running for ~1.5yrs and they are still going strong. Can always change coin if needed. But this approach has been the advantage of longevity as power costs are much lower than servers so difficulty can go up much higher before it becomes unprofitable to mine. A used servers does have a much lower cost of entry though.

Power wiring done - 12awg crimps are hard work!

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Ethernet going in - this bit isn’t going to be fun!

Decided on a quick power test for my backplane PCB - could be expensive if I got that wrong! All working!

Compute carrier finished

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Installed and just network cabling to go - then time for power up and hope for no smoke!

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:crossed_fingers: Dont want any of those components releasing the magic smoke because can imagine a challenge to debug!

Another curiosity question. how/when did you/will you sort the OS & application? I guess conceivably when sorting the heatsinks you had some personal time with each board.

Let’s hope not! Timed out on finishing this yesterday :frowning:

They all have standard is os at the moment, going to do them in there - easier to power / hold etc. All buttons facing upwards so should be easy… Intend to use one as the master and then a NFS for the rest to make it much easier to maintain

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After nearly 2 months of work / life getting in the way im back on this this morning - all working - only problem is I cant get it to burn using my USB hub so limited to 3 at a time! 6 down, 84 to go!

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Happy to see you’re processing well.

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Hello, I was growimg curious about your progress. Good to see. You have put much effort in to this project. Well done… :slight_smile:

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Currently having issues with DHCP, each board keeps getting a new IP address continuously, annoying as can’t stay ssh’ed in long enough to fix anything. Currently thinking something to do with the random MAC addresses, so going to try fixing them based on CPU serial number. Going to have to unplug networking and do one at a time thou or figure out how to build a new image that fixes MAC addresses! All good fun!

Is anything here helpful?

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What OS do you record in VIM2 ?

Does your mining support VIM2 device plug on/off even the mining is still running? As in some case if one of the VIM2 board broken down, can fix up easier.