Zack figured out how to pair a 120v power supply to a newer generation single hash board. He’s created a printed circuit board that basically jailbreaks the hash board to accept any power supply. Using an APW3++ power supply from an older generation Antminer, you can mine bitcoin on 120v power with Pivotal Pleb Tech’s “Loki Board.”

The hash board donor machine I used is an Antminer S19 jPro 92Th. This particular machine has a stock efficiency of 29.5 joules/Th. The reason for only running one hash board is that in stock configuration with three hash boards, the S19 jPro uses around 2.7kW. This amount of power exceeds what a standard home 120v outlet can handle. Most 120v outlets are on a 15amp circuit. 2.7kW would require over 22amps.

The donor machine is running at home on 240v minus the one hash board for this single board build. I wanted to be able to continue to utilize the rest of that machine. So it is currently hashing with 2/3 board with a piece of high density styrofoam in the place of the missing hash board.

The APW3++ power supply is from an older generation S9 Antminer is readily available and cheap. It can run 1,100 watts which will power the single hash board from the S19jPro safely on 120v power outlet in your home.

Zack had shared the proof of concept, and he also shared a modification to the APW3++ power supply to up the DC voltage output allowing you overclock the single hash board. I wanted to build one of these, but begin testing a different way to assemble the single board 120v miner.

I had some ideas about how to put this together. We must have all the miner components, hash board, power supply, control board, and fans. I work in construction, and we frequently use slotted channel called unistrut. It just happens that the height of the unistrut is 1-13/16”. This is about 1⁄4” greater than the thickness of the hash board. The other thing I wanted to do is use plexiglass so you could see the hash board. Two reasons for this. One, you can see if the heat sinks are getting dirty and two, I just think it is cool to see the guts of the electronics. So sandwiched between two pieces of plexiglass, stood up with the unistrut channel I have housed the hash board.

The control board is placed near to the connections on the hash board because it has to be. The ribbon cable that connects to the hash board is short. The control board is mounted on small screws that thread directly into the plexiglass. In retrospect, I would rotate the control board 90 degrees so that the ribbon cable connection isn’t pulled so tight.

For an easy fan solution, I started using the leftover stock Antminer fans I had on hand. With the plexiglass staggered front to back just the right amount, I was able to make the 120mm fans work with them tilted on the inlet and outlets. Maybe not the most efficient way to do it, but at this point, I just wanted to see if it would work.

I decided to mount the power supply on the back of the unit. I drilled a few holes in the bottom of the PSU case and drilled and tapped the plexiglass to mount it. The power cables from the PSU to the hash board need to be heavy gauge. The stock configuration of the S19 jPro uses bus bars. With the APW3++ at 12.25v at 1,100 watts, that would be roughly 90amps.

Heavy gauge wires are required. I cut a couple small chunks of welding lead off the ground cable on my welder in the garage. I believe these are 2AWG. One thing to note is that the positive cable (yellow wires on the PSU attach to the end lug on the hash board closest to the end of the board. Don’t hook up your power with reverse polarity. To make it work, I had to modify the PSU case some to allow for the heavier lugs I used.

Zack has a hack to up the voltage output of the APW3++. He’s the expert on some of these numbers, but the jPro hash board prefers a higher voltage than the APW3++ stock 12.15v. There is a small potentiometer that can be removed and replaced with a fixed resistor which will change the output voltage. Depending on what resistance you install you can fine tune the output voltage. I opted for a 2,700 ohm resistor which would allow me to overclock and produce more hashes. The result of the upgrade changed the voltage from 12.15v to 13.25v. I was looking for a balance that would allow me to over clock but not red line the PSU. You can find Zack’s guide for the PSU modification here.

The control board is a Xilinx C71 running BraiinsOS firmware. Not too much to say about the control board, but there are some differences between them. It’s important to note that each control board may require a unique Loki board configuration.

 My initial results surprised me. I was

expecting a drop in efficiency since thisvis a Frankenstein machine. This single board from the 92Th machine makes 37Th by itself. Drawing 9.26amps at 119v equals 1,102 watts. 1,102 watts/37Th = 29.78joules/Th. So stock efficiency but producing about 20% more hashes! It’s like the 92Th machine running at 111Th. So not only can we run on 120v power, we have upgraded the performance significantly.

Once it was up and running. I found the stock fans to be too loud. I wanted to improve the cooling efficiency and slow the fan speed down some. The initial design left a gap on each side of the hash board for air to circumvent running over the heat sinks. I installed some high density styrofoam in those gaps and found that the fans ran about 15% slower.

Still looking to do better yet, I installed an AC Infinity 6” inline fan with a galvanized duct from the local home store to replace thestock fans. This further reduced the noise. I was able to rework the unistrut and moved the angle brackets forward that hold the uprights for the hash board. Then prepossessing two of the brackets, was able to mount the AC Infinity fan to one of the legs of the assembly.

The other thing to add with the AC Infinity fan is Zack’s Cloudline Njord board. It plugs directly into the control board and controls the speed of the AC Infinity fan. I’m currently using these on most of my Antminers at home to improve cooling and reduce noise.

Check out my video here that shows the install of the Cloudline Njord Board:https://rumble.com/v2l9sym-bitcoin-home-mining-upgrade-your- miners.html

A Wifi bridge was added to remove the need to run an ethernet cable to the control board. I didn’t realize how much I’d appreciate not having to run an ethernet cable. You need to plug it in initially and connect to it to set up the local wifi networks you want it to talk to. The Vonets device I’m using can be found on Amazon for about $25. The nice thing about this device is that it runs on 5v-15v so you can hard wire it directly to the PSU. I cut the power plug off and tied the wires right onto the PSU lugs. I liked this thing so much I added one to my S9 space heater as well.

The next step is to further improve the hash board housing and assembly. In my opinion there is too big of a gap between the end of the heat sinks and the plexiglass. In order to force the air through the heat sinks, the gap should be as near to zero as possible. Maybe .010”.

While some of the component prices may vary greatly on market conditions, here is a quick price list rundown…

$300 1/3 of a used Antminer S19 jPro

$40 APW3++ PSU

$130 Xilinx control board

Then if you want the fan upgade you have:

$120 AC Infinity 6” Inline Fan

$45 Cloudline Njord Board

Here you have around $500 in items needed, but maybe you have a stash of decommissioned S9’s in the basement and a broken S19 you can salvage a hashboard and control board from. Then you need the hardware to assemble a framework to hold it all. There are some other designs out there. @satstackingpleb on twitter has a build using an electronics cabinet. I like the simplicity of that, and it keeps everything contained a little nicer. My next iteration of this may utilize a cabinet like his.

An easy to assemble, efficient, 120v powered, reasonably quiet, Bitcoin miner deployed in a way to recover the waste heat will be sought after by everyone regardless of how you value Bitcoin. I hope this experiment will help more people realize the potential Bitcoin home mining offers.

If this project interests you, please feel free to send feedback, criticisms, hate mail, suggestions, whatever.

If what you found here was helpful and want to leave a tip, you can zap me on Nostr or send to my paynym.

@Bitckle npub1f928hzm4ps7ltxlmz07nhzc9766qq4akk0ue9vl7ay777ewmazjqh7d83v

Paynym +summerbar4Ca

Respectfully,

Travis Bitckle @bitckle

A Week of the ePIC UMC V-5 Whatsminer Control Board

I received an ePIC UMC V-5 Whatsminer Control Board from Altair to provide feedback and report my findings. Being a larger fan of MicroBT than Bitmain I was excited to see an aftermarket product finally available for Whatsminer. The source code is NOT available for review. It is my understanding  ePIC is working toward a source viewable product in the future. This would be a milestone for Bitcoin Mining since most pools and hardware manufacturers are “black boxes”. I find it ironic that Bitcoin, the FOSS software that has created the best money on the planet has so many closed source tools for mining. Some companies that used to be FOSS are no longer FOSS. Not the topic for today. Nonetheless, hats off to ePIC Blockchain Technologies for the accomplishment of bringing hardware and complimenting software product to market no others have to date.

TLDR

• Finally, we have the “When Whatsminer” question answered. It wasn’t
• Out of the box UMC V-5 did not reach factory sticker TH. (See below why)
• Only servers with chip type 1950, 1960, and 1968 are supported. Check compatibility guide before ordering. The team is actively expanding to include more models.
• ePIC has developed a Dashboard tool that is available for fleet management. It is not necessary for single workers and is not discussed in this write-up. Everything needed can be accessed and adjusted in the web GUI.
• Required a beta version of the firmware to be installed to achieve similar & superior efficiency over manual adjustments utilizing the Whatsminer Tool with factory firmware.
• No presets available currently
• Perpetual Tune & Voltage Optimizer/Chip Tune  did not yield worthy results.
• Manual Performance Settings of MHz & Voltage yielded super efficiency over factory Whatsminer tool adjustments temporarily.
• ePIC team is actively working on improving the firmware.& committed to making this product a successful tool.
• I think future updates will allow users to have better success and additional tools.
• Hardware is fully supportable with Upstream Pyasic

Installing and setup is simple and well documented in their user guide. The control board arrives with the most updated firmware available for download. One thing to note in the guide the team will edit soon is the notation on page 30 of the User Guide stating,  “Chiptune is not available in Whatsminers”. This feature is now available as a tool in the latest Firmware.

My goal was to ascertain the default efficiency and see if I was able to reproduce the personal best efficiency with the Whatsminer Tool. I am not interested in overclocking, personally.

My experience was less than stellar but I do not want to persuade the reader to forgo purchasing this aftermarket part and installing the firmware if you like to tinker. I personally am not. I am a plug-in go brr guy. I do not have any hardware integrated into my home and I do not currently re-use heat other than to keep my relative humidity under 90% in the barn from evening to sunrise.

To test the  UMC V-5  I used a compatible M31S+ VE21 82T rated at 42 J/TH by Micro BT. This is similar to what I have seen on this server over the last three years at stock settings. Best results using factory firmware and Whatsminer Tool have been 33J/TH (21.4% improvement). Out of the box I was not able to achieve the sticker hashrate of 82TH/S. This was concerning at first. After discussion with the ePIC team, it was reported the default hashrate for this model was set at a target of 75TH/S based on the wide variation in boards and chip numbers in this model. Note, out of the box the default may not match your sticker TH. I noticed in the ePIC telegram group this was a common question. Over the last week of use I had issues with the tuning algorithms. The team provided an unreleased firmware version that seemed to be more responsive. My experience with the MicroBT Whatsminer Tool has generally been tuning manually using wattage and frequency settings after witnessing the results using the preset Low, Medium, and High-Power modes. Note, currently the ePIC board does not have a wattage setting. I was told by the ePIC team that this may be in future releases.

There are a number of adjustments available for tuning. I am not going to get into each one in effort to keep this read short. The main tabs are Performance and Perpetual Tune (Algos). The Performance Setting tab will in the future include presets similar to other aftermarket firmware. It is recommended by Epic for users to use ChipTune over Voltage optimizer for the best results.

Perpetual Tune and Voltage Optimizer/Chip Tune did not yield much success with achieving stable results. Ideally, the goal for a stable tune is reported by the team to take approximately 30 minutes. I first attempted to underclock using ChipTune at 50TH/S. This was a speed I knew achieved good results with the Whatsminer Tool at a wattage setting of 1,650 watts. The lowest allowable preset in the GUI was 60TH/S.  The ePIC team assisted me an adjusting the API to allow for a ChipTune setting of 50TH/S then, provided an updated firmware version. However, I took several hours to complete the process as seen in the following consumption table.

I am not an electronics expert, but this constant “tuning” concerns me. I have had a couple JPro servers shit the bed using during autotune that were not repairable, one voiding the warranty. Tinker at your own risk anon.

Below are the results of the process trying to mirror my success using factory Whatsminer Tool. The Whatsminer Tool at a – 30% frequency I will see 33J/TH. Notably, this attempt was subpar. Attempts were not as successful as my experience with factory tools. I was able to achieve similar results after support from the ePIC team and making manual adjustments of MHz and Voltage.

From what I understand, the ePIC algo is supposed to tune the server to where chip optimization reaches 95%+/-. Note the third table  with chip performance.

After several attempts using the Voltage Optimizer and Chiptune  algos I was not able to hit my intended efficiency target of 33J/TH. During the week I was in contact with ePIC and they were responsive. It was suggested I manual change via the Performance Tab>Tune the MHz setting to 580 and Voltage to 12.2. Finally, success.

While away from the site I checked Lincoin Mining Platform displaying API data and noted a record 29.41 J/TH. Was this power measured at the wall? No, but the API data provided by the PSU, displayed in the Lincoin Asic Management tool, is always spot on.

I had powered down to do some heat mitigation work in the barnmine and was not able to get back to this efficiency upon reboot. I will continue to try manual adjustments.

The goal of this write up was to see if this product out of the box was worth purchasing and could I achieve similar efficiency or better. My conclusion was yeah, kind of but it took some work. Should you buy this product? That is up to you anon. I would recommend this product if you like to tinker and are looking for future updates by the ePIC team. I personally would like to see wattage adjustments, presets, and Perpetual Tune being more responsive.

Don’t purchase this product with the expectation it is an out of the box upgrade. The product is new and actively being improved. After reaching out to ePIC team I received immediate responses to my questions. Some tools are still in development, and this is fine.

I had several conversations with the ePIC team throughout the week. They appear motivated to make a great product. If you want to support the development team and enjoy manual tuning, I recommend you purchase the product and providing user feedback, both positive and negative. I think they have a good thing going.

It came to my attention toward the end of this writeup that ePIC is supported with Upstream Pyasic, by Brett Rowan of Upstream data. If you are using Pysasic  to manage your fleet, it should be functional but is still missing model selection.

Hope this helps others who are curious about the newest aftermarket hardware and software available Whatsminer.

Keep Hashing #PlebMiner

Barn

Whatsminer is a beast, it eats kilowatt hours for breakfast. An M30S++ 100-110T is rated at 31 W/TH when compared to its competitor, the Antminer S19J Pro being rated at 29.5 W/TH. The reported efficiency is +/-5% less than the Antminer. And, that has a significant impact on the power bill. However, bear in mind that you will see pleb miners opting for the Antminer. Further, with aftermarket firmware such as Braiins OS+ or VNISH you can tweak the settings to overclock or underclock any of the Antminer rigs. I prefer Whatsminer regardless of the efficiency gain of the Antminer running stock.

In a low hashprice environment at home, miners look for as much efficiency as possible.The more efficient, the more innovative the miner is. We have seen these guys innovate ways to reuse waste heat back into their HVAC, even how to heat the water in their home, and some have even heated their pools and dried laundry with the excess heat. This essentially allows the miner to double spend on the utility bill. But, unfortunately hashprice has drastically plummeted since the spring of 2021.

Hashprice as defined by Luxor

Hashprice, a term coined by Luxor, refers to the expected value of 1 TH/s of hashing power per day. The metric quantifies how much a miner can expect to earn from a specific quantity of hashrate. You can denominate Hashprice in any currency or asset, but we display the metric in terms of USD or BTC (sats). For example

– $0.20 per terahash/second per day ($0.20/TH/s/day)

– 475 satoshis per terahash/second per day (475 sats/TH/s/day)

Hashprice is a function of three inputs: network difficulty, Bitcoin’s price, and transaction fees. Bitcoin’s hashprice will change with every new block added to the blockchain. Luxor’s Bitcoin Hashprice Index uses a 144 lagging SMA to account for transaction fees.

Hashprice is positively correlated with changes to Bitcoin’s price and transaction fee volume and negatively correlated with changes to Bitcoin’s mining difficulty.

Since we don’t all geek out over technical analysis or predictions, we won’t be going over them in this article. That is not the purpose of this piece and I don’t care to read tea leaves. The Hashprice Index over the last year is provided by Luxor in the following chart. And we can see by the visual representation of the downward sloping trajectory that the hashprice is clearly tanking. While it seems in the lower right space to be climbing somewhat steadily in the early weeks of 2023, we have twelve more months ahead to be able to clearly analyze the data instead of making predictive analysis. We can only hope for an upward trend; but don’t be surprised if it dips and pops back up again. One thing is for certain, we are still early and we are in for a bumpy ride.

There have been minimal efficiency options for Whatsminer owners other than factory Low Power setting. I have been a fan of Low Power Mode since this summer. When Low Power Mode is enabled, a user is able to hash more efficiently by reducing power consumption and reducing the Watts/Terahash. Low power mode can be +10% more efficient than normal mode. Whatsminer updated firmware to allow for more customized settings. They released a firmware and Whatsminer Tool update in October 2022 that allows for more control and better efficiency.

The most recent Firmware Update allows for frequency and power limit settings. Make sure to update the firmware and the tool for full functionality. It is available on their website for download.  See the photograph below for more detail:

The video tutorial can be viewed here.

*The classic power modes are illustrated here from the tool user guide  .Link

The October update allows the ability to adjust frequency and power consumption. The up-frequency option is only available for water cooled rigs. For the plebs with air cooled rigs, the frequency can be lowered or power limited in an effort to increase efficiency thereby decreasing the W/TH (J/TH for our non U.S. pleb miners). I have yet to tinker too much with it but, I can tell you I have been able to reduce the W/TH further than the classic Low Power Mode.

In addition to Frequency Adjustment there is also a Power Limit Setting.

I have been running a few M30S++ with a -30% frequency and seeing about 27 W/TH. I have also adjusted one with a power limit of 1,930 watts with less efficient results. Below are three M30S++ 110T models in both frequency adjusted and power limit adjusted scenarios. It appears the frequency adjustment is working more efficiently than the power limit set to a similar wattage.

Both the Frequency and Power adjustment can be executed in bulk by selecting the IP addresses in the tool you want to change. For those thinking, “what is the reading on the wall?” I feel you. I can not compare second by second; but spot checking the WM tool data with my Iotawatt I observe +/- 10-20 watts between the two data points. The WM tool data is pretty damn close to what I am seeing off the circuits.

I wanted to write this quick post because I keep running across folks that say I wish I could adjust my Whatsminer wattage. Well you can bro. The efficiency gains are worth the time to tinker with. I also want to note that this release came out before Antiminer Christmas present. Imagine that? Hope this helps someone save some fiat on the power bill while hashrate, difficulty, and electricity pumps. If you have any questions feel free to reach out to any of the pleb miners on Twatter or join Steve Barbour’s Home Miining Wizards telegram channel. With constant upgrades and tweaks, Whatsminer is a beast. There is just no other way to put it.

Happy HashingBarnminer @btctwatterpants