Archive for the ‘General Info’ Category

KnCMinion is a Pimped UI for the KnC Titan Scrypt ASIC Miner

17, Dec 2014

kncminion-ui-for-titan

Peter af Geijerstam, a developer who specializes in computer security, has released what he calls a pimped UI for the KnCMiner Titan ASIC, called KnCMinion, as an alternative to the standard old-fashioned user-interface of the device. His more up to date interface does not replace the original Titan UI, just adds a more modern and beautiful UI with the more important information available in a graphical form, not just plain text.

The KnCMinion interface is located in a subdirectory (/kncminion) and is designed to provide a bit more information in a graphical form to the user. It creates client-side graphs of historical values as long as the page is open – it will start empty each time, as no data is stored on the Titan miner. KncMinion is built using CoffeeScript, AngularJS, D3.js, Bootstrap and jQuery and should adapt easily to different resolutions and devices such as a smaller resolution mobile phone. The top graph is the total hashrate in MHS for the miner, the smaller graphs below represent the hash-rate of each individual die for every cube on the Titan (4 dies per cube) with each graph displaying the min/max and current value for the selected duration.

What is interesting is the way that the KnCMinion interface is being installed on the miner, Peter has found out that he can easily package it as an firmware update and send it to the device. The KnCMinion does not modify any of the existing files, it only adds new files to the web-server that are needed for the proper functionality of the UI, however he expresses his concerns that this can pose a security problem. Someone may package a malicious code and trick people to install it as software update and gain access to their mining device.

– For more information and to download the KnCMinion UI for the Titan Scrypt ASIC…

VertCoin (VTC) Test Pool With Lyra2RE Support Available Now

10, Dec 2014

vertcoin-vtc-lyra2re

We have received some questions about a pool available for testing the new Lyra2RE-capable GPU miners before the actual VertCoin (VTC) hardfork to the new algorithm happens from the currently used Scrypt-N. Hashlink has setup a working pool for testing your settings and miners using Lyra2RE algorithm, so you can get ready for the hardfork when it happens in a few days. Do note that this is a testnet pool and it is currently intended only for testing, you will no be mining any real VertCoin at the moment! Also as a reminder, make sure you have updated your VertCoin wallet to the latest version 0.9.0.1 prior to the hardfork.

Using sgminer for AMD with Lyra2RE support:
sgminer -k Lyra2RE -o stratum+tcp://stratum-eu1.hashlink.eu:10031 -u yourworker.1 -p password

Using ccMiner for Nvidia with Lyra2RE support:
ccminer -a lyra2 -o stratum+tcp://stratum-eu1.hashlink.eu:10031 -u yourworker.1 -p password

– For more information about the VertCoin Lyra2RE test pool by Hashlink…

What You Can Currently Earn Mining Bitcoin and Litecoin

9, Dec 2014

current-bitcoin-hashrate-difficulty-chart

Lately we are seeing an interesting development in the world of BTC and LTC mining, there is a rapid increase in the difficulty and network hashrate of Litecoin even though the price is not that high. With Bitcoin we are seeing a slight drop in the network hashrate and difficulty, and the prognosis for the next adjustment is also for a decrease in the hashrate and difficulty. While we are expecting LTC difficulty to continue to rise with more ASIC miners getting introduced on the market, we are kind of surprised to see the slight drop for BTC. The reason for that is probably the old mining hardware that is getting too expensive to run with the current low exchange rate for Bitcoin and is taken offline.

Below we are going to take a look at some common hashrate amounts for both BTC and LTC and see what you can currently mine with them in the form of USD at the current level of difficulty and at the current exchange rates. Do note that the below numbers represent the estimated daily coins that you might be able to mine and there are no expenses calculated for electricity.

Bitcoin:
10 GHS – 0.04339 USD/day
100 GHS – 0.4339 USD/day
1 THS – 4.339 USD/day
10 THS – 43.4 USD/day
100 THS – 433.9 USD/day
1 PHS – 4339 USD/day

Litecoin:
1 MHS – 0.0676 USD/day
10 MHS – 0.676 USD/day
100 MHS – 6.76 USD/day
1 GHS – 67.6 USD/day
10 GHS – 676 USD/day
100 GHS – 6760 USD/day

Here is how things look in terms of an average cost for electricity that you would have to pay for a certain hashrate for both BTC and LTC to get an idea about the costs associated with running an ASIC miner for mining Bitcoin or Litecoin. You would need to deduct these costs from the numbers above as they represent only what you will be mining if converted with the current exchange rate. Do note that the average price per KHW of power can greatly vary based on your location, so the costs can vary quite a bit, so the numbers below are just a rough estimate. We base the power usage estimate for BTC using 1000 GHS at 800W as per Bitmain AntMiner C1 specifications (0.8 Watt/GHS) and for LTC using the 100 MHS at 1100W as per Innosilicon A2 MEGA Terminator specifications (11 Watt/MHS). As an average price in USD of the energy used for the estimated numbers below we are using 13 Cents per Kilowatthour.

Electricity costs for hashrate:
1 THS Bitcoin – 2.496 USD/day
100 MHS Litecoin – 3.432 USD/day

So the actual daily profit after paying for the electricity with a 1 THS Bitcoin ASIC miner at the moment will get you just about $1.843 USD per day, $55.29 USD per month if the difficulty level remains the same with a miner that can cost you something like 10 times what you can earn in a month. The actual daily profit after paying for electricity with a 100 MHS Litecoin ASIC miner at the moment will get you about $3.328 per day, $99.84 USD per month with the current conditions with a miner that can cot you about 15 times what you will earn in a month.

This makes the mining model of mine now and sell the coins immediately to cover the costs not so attractive at the current exchange rates and if you don’t have more up to date hardware or free electricity there is not much point to continue mining with old hardware. At least in the winter you could take advantage of the heat generated by the miners to save on heating at home for example, or use the cold temperatures outside for better cooling and save on extra electricity costs for properly cooling miners. The idea to mine now and save the coins to sell them later when the exchange rates are more favorable seems more attractive, but it is also riskier, especially for big mining operations that do have significant operational costs. With cloud mining operations the maintenance fees that you would have to pay are even higher than what you need to pay for electricity at home and you still need to purchase the hashrate itself. So the levels of daily profit can easily get even two times lower than the ones we calculated above if you mine at home and pay for electricity that is not too expensive in your region.


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