Tl;dr: this is a wonderful and beautiful piece of equipment.
So, the other week when I first got around to setting up my BMM101 I was pretty angry/hostile (#936913). Shit was tricky installing, there were some updates I hadn't figured out, and — most importantly — not placing it close enough to the Wi-Fi router messed with the connection and operation. It forced the machine to restart which, if you've ever had them, makes the fan run full speed for about 20 seconds. (not nice in the middle of the night...)
All that I learned from a) stackers, and b) a member of the Braiins team who reached out.
Now that I've used the miner for a little while, I have more — positive — reflections.
Marin, from Braiins, walked me through some features, helping me to troubleshoot what was wrong, and calibrating my specific miner to work at its best. Very cool; very surprised at how friendly (and direct!) they were.
SUMMARY: awesome decorative Bitcoin gadget. Slick af, and since I wanted a BlockClock since forever I might as well have this one since it gives me some sats, too.
- output: comfortably in the 1.3-1.4Th/s range.
I can get it to about 1.5TH/s, but at that level the fan noise starts getting noticeable — it's otherwise completely silent — and the efficiency goes haywire (above 50W/TH)... not worth it. Instead, I comfortably run it at about 1.33TH/s, with 55W usage (41.5W/TH). Not that impressive... but it looks freakin nice, and it's my go-to for checking price/blockheight/fees.
- most obviously: the BMM101 isn't a profit-center. (It's to teach people about Bitcoin mining, Marin said). Even running it with a pool is a little bit of a waste (I should just be lottery-mining, honestly) since you guarantee yourself a financial loss. Via Braiins pool I earn a little over 2 sats an hour, or 55-something sats a day; at my home electricity rate of €0.11/kWh, that electricity costs me about €0.14 (55W x 24h x €0,11 /1,000): total loss = -€0.094. Is it worth some ~€30 a year in beauty and satisfaction? HELL YEAH.
In exchange I get: a nice lil Bitcoiny table object to look at, a convenient way to watch the state of the network plus a small addition to my indoor heating. Technically, then, this isn't a loss, since I heat my home with electricity anyway, so as long as running the BMM101 offsets my other heaters a tiny bit, it's free sats.
Still, I will never recoup the 270-odd dollars I paid for the machine. As always: should have just bought bitcoin instead.
More exciting are the various block parties (#960893) I can now take part of: that's new; that's fun.
- moving it was a mess; it fits nicely in a little box, and there are only three components (miner + power supply + cord). But once I arrived home with it, the only way to connect it to the new (home) network was to factory reset the entire thing. When I first tried, the menu for that didn't come up so I was googling for solutions, fuming with anger. Shocker.
I had a feeling that, when I was typing out the anger last time — fuming at my own inadequacy — I was overreacting. Once it gets working, it'll be fine... and I was right (wrong?), since that was indeed what happened.
Wonderfully happy about this microscopic contribution to non-U.S.-based hashrate LOL! (#965594)
Over and out.
Peace.