I was never into BTC lottery miners, but I found one that I found interesting and I can easily repurpose into some other project. I was also thinking about getting a bunch of them for Christmas gifts pre-setup against a paper wallet.
Most people here have already probably heard about the Nerd Miner. It is a small device that uses extremely low power and provides extremely low hash rate for mining bitcoin. As far as I know, not a single Nerd Miner has successfully solved a block, but there has been a similar device that has. Solving a block right now nets 3.125 bitcoin reward or just shy of $200,000 USD.
Introducing the Heltec T-190
You can find this device on Amazon for about $30 or on Aliexpress for about $22, both include free shipping.
The T-190 is capable of mining bitcoin with a 119Kh/s hash rate. While this is pretty slow, it also only takes 0.59 watts while running and is almost 3x faster than most Nerd Miners.
The wattage jumps up to around 0.9 watts while the screen is on and the hash rate drops a bit. By default it will put the screen on stand by after 60 seconds.
When I got the device, it was on firmware 2.01, which is fairly old, so it does require an upgrade to get the maximum hash rate and some of the newer features. The device is super easy to update, just running a firmware update program in windows and waiting a few seconds.
It does include special software to monitor it, but if you run the latest version, it includes a web browser so you don't need it.
You can also easily monitor from the pool interface, and you can see here I'm seeing even better hash rates than advertised.
I've only been running it for about a day, but you can see the hash rate varies dramatically.
These devices are called Lottery Miners for a reason, the odds you win are slim to none. They are however fascinating devices and make really fun gifts. At 0.6 watts they take around $0.60 - $1.20 a year in power. You can think of it as buying a single lottery ticket each year for a chance to win ~$200,000.
They are not kidding when they call it a lottery miner.
Paired with a paper wallet, these make fantastic gifts for less than $30.
These paper wallets can be printed from https://bitcoinpaperwallet.io/, and you can even save the code locally and print them offline. A few years ago I printed a bunch of these with $100 on them for my family.
If you do a lot of these, you can get kits that include the software, bags, and hologram stickers or just pick up tamper proof stickers off Amazon.
Compared to the official Nerd Miner, this thing is a steal. The official Nerd Miner v3 is 78Kh/s and 1 watt for over $50.
I ordered 30 of these, and can probably upgrade them all to 3.02 within 1-2 hours.
Configuring them is really easy, you just use a phone or other device to connect to it's wifi hotspot, select your Wifi and enter a password and enter your Bitcoin address. It is all preconfigured to connect to Public Pool, one of the few pools that allow these low hash rate devices (with no fees no less!).
The great thing is if you get bored watching it fail to mine bitcoins, you can just repurpose it for any number of nerdy projects. It is a very popular ESP32 variant device with a nice 256k color TFT LCD screen, wifi, bluetooth, using super low power. I can think of 20 projects off the top of my head to use it for. For example, you can easily repurpose it to display the Hive price or even a couple of your favorite coins updating every one second.
Have fun!
I was a lottery / bet guy before coming to crypto then I thought: hey instead of spending weekly money with that, why not invest in crypto? I try to avoid this stuff like dbooster said. But these things arent called nerd miners for a reason. They are fucking interesting!! I would love to have one in hands to try and check how it works!!! I will try to find them around here!
Not as cool and useless as this
You see people are now putting micro computers into graphic calculators so they can cheat.
There was a project to mine bitcoin on the NES years ago: https://hackaday.com/2013/03/25/mining-bitcoins-on-a-nintendo/
Maybe I should fire up my Commodore 64...
I wish I still had my Timex/Sinclair 1000. I had the 16k RAM upgrade, which doubled it's mining capacity.
So much nostalgia.
More fun than lottery tickets IMHO. Particularly for kids interested in computer science, because they could use them for all manner of projects.
Thanks!
Not a gambler, but this would be fun to just play with.
the odds is too low? how do we know it does really work or just a fooling scheme
The hashing is confirmed by a third party (the pool), and the code base is public and has been used for a lot of similar projects.
The odds are super low, just due to the competition and the low hash rate, this device is less than a single watt of power, many LED take more power than that, and this is a fully operational computer. It's quite impressive.
I've long thought about buying a nerd miner just to make a conversation piece. But like a regular lottery ticket, when it comes to actually spending the money, I always decide I'd rather not waste.
But this one looks kind of cool. Maybe I'll finally go for it. Thanks for the intro.
wow cool! I didn't knew these kind of small miners actually worked 😀 I've got an antminer somewhere but it's pretty damn loud 😆
It's a fascinating device. But now I'm thinking, is the chance of successfully mining another coin just as small? Or is that not possible?
It's very very small, but there was a recent person who found a block on a usb device like this I believe. It's more of a novelty with a very very slim chance of being rich.
Love this! Recently a dude here in Holland mined one through a lottery miner and because of that I was looking into it. The rates remain small but this one at least in buying and also in electricity.
This is a fun one for some giggles!
What's great about them, it's so cheap to run the electricity costs is less than buying one lottery ticket per year.
@bpcvoter2, sorry! You need more $IDD to use this command.
The minimum requirement is 50.0 IDD balance.
More $IDD is available from Hive-Engine or Tribaldex
That's so interesting, l will budget for it, l like what it does, feel like owning one already 🥰🙏
I picked up a NerdMiner V2 a couple of months ago on Amazon for under $40. Seems to get the same hash rate as the V3. Might have to pick up one of these too...
Damn you now I need to buy one!
I know
I already added it to the amazon cart... I waiting to see if the wife ask what the hell these are since its her amazon account lol
If you pick it up on Aliexpress it's only $22 shipped.
Now who says all the fun has gone from Bitcoin Mining?!
Cool little device and novel idea of giving it to people for Christmas.
It shold come with the caveat to share the prize though...
:)
That's pretty awesome. I have never heard of them before. I might have to pick one or two up myself. I wonder if they make these for other tokens too.
Yes they have doge ones and so on but low hash devices are not good for sustain mining as they yield almost nothing,they are more suited for lottery for the jackpot.
Ah, okay. I get it. That does make more sense since it is a bit of a moonshot.
You can now upgrade the Nerdminer to get 104 GigaHash/s
I went down this rabbit hole, in my mind anyway. You can even make your own 😉
https://bitaxe.org/
https://osmu.wiki/
skot, the guy who started bitaxe has a fascinating story and both of the above projects are very helpful communities. They probably could help you squeeze more hash out of the one you have with firmware etc.
Yes. I’m very happy with my BitAxe …. You can overclock the Supra to get one Terra Hash/second… that’s 100 satoshi per day via Lightning.
You could probably squeeze 2 TH/s with the new Gamma : https://hive.blog/hive-125125/@offgridlife/get-up-to-1-2-terrahash-second-with-the-new-bitaxe-gamma-bitcoin-miner-for-usd148
Good day bro, pls why the downvote
Zaku can explain it to you.
the same guy down voted two of my posts too, I also asked and got the same answer, leaving me puzzled...