Archive for the ‘Tests and Reviews’ Category

Power Usage and Thermal Images of the 1-chip Gridseed DualMiner USB ASICs

14, Mar 2014

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You can read our first impressions from the DualMiner USB Scrypt ASIC here and now we took some time to take some thermal images of the miner to check the temperature adn what actually gets hot, so you can consider some extra cooling as well as to measure the actual power usage of these small USB-powered devices based on a single Gridchip GC355 processors for mining BTC/LTC. It seems that the DualMiner’s aluminum heatsink on one of the sides of the device is working quite well, the temperature it shows is quite even and goes to just aa bit short of 50 degrees Celsius. That is with the miner running for Scrypt only mining mode at 850 MHz with 70 KHS hashrate, we are not very mich interested in the combined mining mode where the device also mines for SHA-256 cryptos, note though that if you use the miner in dual mining mode it will get hotter.

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The other side fo the device’s PCB is with the chips and the two things that get hotter as expected are the GC3355 processor as well as the controller chip, so you might want to add some small cooling radiators on them in order to get better cooling. Alternatively adding a small fan like a USB one to create a good airflow or combining both things will make sure that the miner will run for longer period of time at its maximum without giving you trouble. Again this thermal images shows the miner running in Scrypt only mining mode with temperature of the chips going as high as close to 53 degrees Celsius. If you run in Dual Mode however the extra 1W of power consumption that is expected from the BTC side might increase the operating temperatures with another 10-12 degrees on top of what we are getting with Scrypt only mode.

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What about the power usage? Since these devices are designed to be powered by a USB port their maximum power usage should be no more than 2.5W (0.5A at 5V) and that can be reached in Dual Mining mode. The idle power usage of the device when it is just plugged in and running in Scrypt only mode is a bit high at 0.875W, and it only increases to 1.485W when you start the miner. So getting about 70 KHS of Scrypt mining hashrate for just about 1.5W of power consumption is a great result for the hashrate you are going to get, what is not so attractive is the price that these devices are still being sold for. Nevertheless we are very satisfied from how the single chip DualMiner SUB ASIC devices are made and work, so next in line for similar testing are the 5-chip Gridseed BTC/LTC ASIC miners.

First Impressions from the Haasonline Automated Trading Bot

12, Mar 2014

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As a part of our ongoing tests of different automated trading solutions of crypto currencies we have now started testing the Haasonline Automated Trading Bot. We have already tested multiple solutions available for automated trading on the most popular crypto currency exchanges such as BTC Robot, Butterbot and Cryptotrader. All of these have both their own advantages as well as disadvantages, so you should check out our impressions and tests that we have ran using them to trade on different crypto exchanges. Let us get back to the Haasonline’s solution as the next in line for testing. We’ve had our eye on this software for a while already, but what was stopping us from trying it was the fact that there is no trial version available and the price of the software is quite high. With that said this automated trading solution seems to be one of the most advanced one out there and at the same time still being relatively easy for people that are not experienced traders. What is even stranger is the fact that there is not a lot of information available for the Haasonline Automated Trading Bot and no detailed reviews to actually help you in deciding if you should get it or not and the software has been available for some time already. Even the information about getting started and using the software is a bit scarce, so if you are a total newbie you might still have some trouble until you get to know the functionality of the software.

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We should start with what are the most important features that the Haasonline Automated Trading Bot provides you with. There are two versions of the software available, a Simple Trade Bot currently available for 0.45 BTC and an Advanced Trade Bot being sold for 0.90 BTC at the moment (these are apparently promo prices). So as we’ve already said the software does not come very cheap, but if it can help you actually make some money with automated crypto trades you might be able to quickly get back what you have paid for it. The major difference between the two versions of the trading software is that with the Simple one you get a maximum of 3 trade-bots active at the same time, and there is a limited number of securities and technical indicators available unlike wit the Advanced versions that has unlimited number of active bots and all of the trading options available. Now, what is recommended is to start with the Simple Trade Bot to try it and get to know the software and if you like it and want to get the full extras, then you can just upgrade it by paying only the difference in price to the Advanced version. This means that you can start with 0.45 BTC for the Simple bot and then only pay another 0.45 BTC to upgrade to the Advanced bot.

What you should also note about the Haasonline Automated Trading Bot software is that it is something you download and install on your own computer. The software runs as a server on your own computer that needs to be on and online all of the time in order to get effective trades and you are controlling it through a web browser. You need Windows Vista, 7, 8 or 8.1 (32-bits or 64-bits) operating system in order to run the trading software, Windows XP and RT are not supported. Now, if you don’t have or don’t want to run a computer 24/7 with the trading software installed on it, then you can get a Windows VPS server and install the trading software on it in order to get it running all the time and being accessible from different locations. Note that the trading software comes with a license for installation on a single computer and the license you purchase is valid for 2 years.

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Moving on to what crypto exchanges the Haasonline Automated Trading Bot supports. There is automated support for trading on Bitstamp, BTC-e, BTCChina, CampBX, CexIO and Cryptsy. The two most interesting thing is probably the presence of suport for Cryptsy as this adds a lot of flexibility thanks to the many alternative cryptos traded on that exchange, though CEX support and BTCChina might be interesting for some people. The comprehensive support for multiple exchanges and exchanges that not only trade BTC and LTC, but many other alternative cryptos in a single trading software is definitely a plus. There was also support for MtGox in the previous versions of the trading bot, but now that has been removed as Gox is no more.

When you are creating a bot in the Haasonline Automated Trading Bot you need to select the exchange it will operate on as well as what currency pair it will trade with and you can set a limit of the currency that it will be trading with if you don’t wan to use the full amount in the exchange. Then you have three set of tools that can be selected and the trading will be executed based on what Safeties, Indicators and Insurances you have chosen for the bot to use. The Safeties, as the name implies, are tools to protect your from losses in case something serious happens on the market, there are multiple tools that you can use for the bot you are configuring to ensure safe trading. Next are the Indicators – tools that use market analysis based on different algorithm to give signals when the bot should buy and sell. The third set of tools called Insurances are there to help you actually get profit when your bot is executing trades. An example of insurance is to take into account the exchange fees when trading, so that the profit you make should be higher than the trade fee for example, so that you will actually be making money and not trading just to cover the trade fee or even loose money from the trade because of the fee.

After you setup your bot you can do a backtest on the already available market data in order to see what kind of performance you can expect before actually activating it and allowing the bot to start trading live. Many of the tools you have available allow for further adjustment of their settings, so you can backtest and fine tune them for better results. The Haasonline Automated Trading Bot has another interesting feature called auto-tune, that basically allows you to automatically tune the trade Indicators of your bot in order to get even better results when the bot is trading. We are still checking out things and getting used to the features of the trading software, but you can expect more information and tips from us once we get better at the whole process of bot trading and optimization. The important thing is that we like what we are seeing so far and we can say for sure this is indeed the most advanced automated trading software for crypto currencies we’ve tested so far. If you are wondering what a good starting point for a trading bot is, then we can recommend to start with RSI and Stochastic Indicators with their default settings and the OvercomeFeeCosts Insurance and then see how the bot will work before starting to play further.

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And now for some quick results from our first simple trade bot configurations using the Haasonline Automated Trading Bot software and the above advice we have shared about the two Indicators with their default settings and the Insurance for the fees. Note that on CEX there is no trading fee, so there is no need to use the OvercomeFeeCosts Insurance there anyway, but on Cryptsy and BTC-e there is a fee for each trade. We have setup LTC/BTC trade bots for BTCe and Cryptsy as well as GHS/BTC trade bot for CexIO and within an hour we got a few trades executed realizing some profit. Note that we’ve allowed the bots to operate with only small amounts of currency while we are testing, so even if we got something wrong we would loose only small amount. The good thing is that the software allows you to set limits on the amount of cash or crypto coins each bot can operate with. That is why our profits from the trades of the bots may seem so low, by using larger amounts for trades you can realize more profit, but the risk of loosing more is there as well, so be careful with that when you start trading at first and haven’t setup enough protection features for your trading bots.

This pretty much summarizes our first thoughts and impressions of the Haasonline Automated Trading Bot software, but we’ll be keeping you up to date how things progress as we get to know the software better and have more experience configuring and optimizing the trade bots for different exchanges and crypto currency pairs. For the moment we like what we are seeing and we already got some positive results from the first trades executed with a very simple configuration for the trading bots we have setup for three different crypto exchanges. We are very positive about this automated trading software for the moment and hope we’ll soon have more information to share with you. Again if you are interested in checking it out, you better get the Simple Trading Bot first as you can always upgrade it to the advanced version later on by paying only the extra difference should you decide you need all of the features available.

– For more information about the Haasonline Automated Trading Bot for crypto currencies…

Weekly Report on Our PB Mining Cloud Mining Service Testing

11, Mar 2014

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One more week has passed from our ongoing PB Mining Bitcoin cloud mining service tests and we got some requests to report on how things are progressing. We are currently testing a few more other cloud mining services that lately do have some issues as apparently they are getting DDOS attacks from people trying to hack them and this is hurting the user experience. What we have noticed is that so far there were no problems with the normal operation of the PB Mining service since we’ve started using it more than two weeks ago and things are still running smooth and on time, definitely a serious plus in our personal opinion.

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As we’ve already discussed PB Mining is sending the payouts from the cloud mining hashrate that you have purchased every Sunday before Midnight. This is a bit of a drawback as you have to wait a week to get your earnings available the in Bitcoin wallet, it would’ve been even better if the payouts were daily, so that you would have access to the mined funds faster. Another thing that we have noticed since we’ve purchased another 9 GHs after the initial 1 GHS we used for testing was that each purchase comes on a separate line in your profile and that makes it a bit harder to track the overall results. Also when you are getting your payments sent they come in separate transactions for each purchased lot of hashrate, so if you purchase 10 or 20 times different amounts of cloud mining hashrate it will be harder to track them easily, though there are no problems and you are getting payed as promised and what you have earned right on time.

We have noticed that the total hashrate of the pool has reached 38000 GHS, so the operators of the service are apparently adding more ASICs all the time in order to supply enough hashrate with the increasing demand. If you are planning to start using the BTC cloud mining services that PB Mining provides it will be wise to wait a bit more until the new Bitcoin difficulty hits as we expect the price per GHS to get even lower. The next difficulty increase of the Bitcoin network should happen in about one more day, though the increase this time will be a bit more subtle with roughly about 12-13%. With the previous difficulty increase we’ve seen a price drop for the price per GHS, so we expect to see another one this time as well, so you can just purchase a few GHS to test the service now and get more in a day after the difficulty increases at even better price. Note that PB Mining does provide a long term contracts where you are renting the hashrate you purchase for 5 years period of time and you cannot sell it or transfer it to another user (at least for the moment). So do have in mind that if you plan on investing into cloud mining hashrate there, we do plan to increase our hashrate from the current 10 GHS to at least 20 for the next week when the new difficulty hits and we get an even better price per KHS.

– For more information and to try out the PB Mining Bitcoin cloud mining service…


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