It Is All About BTC, LTC, ETH, DOGE, KAS mining as well as other alternative crypto currencies
With the colder weather incoming we are getting back on the topic of using crypto miners to heat our homes and take advantage of the excess heat that these devices produce while mining your favourite cryptocurrency. The Antminer S9 and or L3-based ASIC Space Heaters are still nice and all, especially if you already own some of those ASIC devices or want to get one pretty cheap, but things are moving further and we are starting to see designs based on newer ASIC hardware such as the BitChimney Space Heater that is based on a single Antminer S19 hashboard and capable of running on both 120V and 240V (US and Europe compatible). A silent and efficient device by Altair Tech that hashes nicely, stays silent and produces enough heat to also help you with heating at home… and it even looks quite nice with a cool 3D printed enclosure. Bit-Chimney Single Hashboard Space Heater is WiFi ready, runs on 110V-240V input Voltage, utilizes the Loki Kit by Pivotal Pleb Tech, runs at 23 TH/s at 750W or 30 TH/s at 1000W and at up to 60 Db noise level, so pretty silent. The first batch is expected to start shipping on October 30th priced at $699 USD. And if you are feeling more DIY-ish you might want to start tinkering around an S19 and make your own design as well.
The 3D printable case files for the BitChimney Space Heater by Altair Technology have been released online and you can download and print the case for the space heater yourself and build the miner if you do own a 3D printer and get the rest of the components you need such as the S19 miner hashboard, a suitable Bitmain power supply and a Loki board (if you need to run on 120V power in the USA or other country that uses the same lower voltage). Just go to Thingiverse to download the 3D STL files for the BitChimney Space Heater case and get on the route to building your own single board S19-based silent home Bitcoin miner.
It seems that somebody has finally made “the ultimate space heater” that can mine Bitcoin while keeping you warm. Enter Heatbit – a Bitmain Antminer S9 ASIC miner turned into a space heater with a great looking design, silent operation and mining Bitcoin while keeping you warm during the cold months. Do note that Heatbit is not being advertised as a Bitcoin miner that can keep you warm, it is just the opposite – a space heater that mines Bitcoin while keeping you warm. So, in essence it is a device to keep you warm when you need it, generating some Bitcoin while doing so to help you pay for the electricity it uses for instance, and not a Bitcoin miner that should always be kept on.
As for the claim that Heatbit is “The first heater that mines bitcoin” we cannot fully agree as there have been numerous such products over the years, though none of them apparently did get enough popularity. It is for sure not going to be the last one either on this market and lately we are seeing a lot of users also modifying the good old AntMiner S9 ASIC miners to be used as home heaters. Then there are also some mining companies that tried to advertise their ASIC miners as home heaters as well.
Heatbit was apparently conceived during the pandemic thanks to an Antminer S9 device being used by the company’s founder and apparently it has one of these legendary ASIC miners inside, but reworked to be silent and safe. Consuming up to 1.4 kW of power and able to deliver up to 14 TH/s of Bitcoin mining hashrate while operating at full capacity and being able to heat 170 square feet (about 16 square meters) according to the official specs. At full power the Heatbit should be able to operate with a noise level of below 42 dB, so it should be pretty silent, especially if you compare it to the very noisy stock AntMiner S9 ASIC that goes 80 dB or more when working.
Specifications of the Heatbit:
– Hashing power: Up to 14 TH/s
– Power Usage: 1.4 kW,
– Power: Warms up to 170 square feet, quietly
– Noise: <42 dBA - Size: 870x319x259 mm / 34,3x12,6x10,2 in - Weight: 31 lbs / 14 kg
The Heatbit is available in three different models, While and Orange for $1149 USD and a Wooden one available for $1199 USD and the device should be shipping already. You need to connect the device to a WiFi network and power in order for it to function and you can use the provided App to control and monitor how the space heater operates as well as to manage what Bitcoin it has mined so far while working. It all seems to be designed so that it can be really easy for the user as should be for a consumer product designed for more general users and not a miner targeted at more advanced users. If you are a traditional crypto miner you will most likely pass on that one as it comes quite expensive for what a S9 delivers in terms of performance and profitability though.
The App is available for both iOS and Android devices and it allows you to configure and control one or more Heatbit devices in your home or office or wherever you place them. It gives you an easy overview of how the heater is currently performing in terms of hashrate and you get to control the heat output you need between three settings – 50%, 75% and 100%. Do note that using lower heating percentage will also result in lower hashrate for the mining. The App also has a built-in wallet that allows you to manage the Bitcoin you have mined so far. There is a simple Demo mode available, so that you can check out the features of the App by downloading it even without having a Hotbit device like we did.
What we are kind of missing and would like to see as a feature is the ability to monitor the ambient heat in the location where you have the miner and a user controllable setting for a desired temperature to be kept in that room. A scheduler for when to automatically turn on and off the heater would also be quite nice to have. That is as far as heating goes, and having more stats on the Bitcoin mining part would also be nice. Things like how much it has mined so far in today, this week, this month and total etc. We know that the Hotbit is a heater first and Bitcoin miner then, and that its main goal is not to have it running at maximum level 24/7 like you would normally do with a miner, but still more stats is always nice.
The Bitmain AntMiner S9 series for Bitcoin (BTC) mining and AntMiner L3 series for Litecoin (LTC) or other Scrypt crypto coins re now legendary as although a bit old already they are still being used around the world and can still be nice to play around for various custom projects. You can pick these ASIC miners pretty cheap at the moment and use them as space heaters with a little tinkering to make them not so noisy. And they will not only provide you with heat or the cold winter days, but will also pay for some of the electricity they use by mining some crypto coins for you. So, although they may not be profitable if you think about them as miners, they can be turned into great space heaters that will still be better than regular heaters that only use a lot of electricity to generate heat.
If you still have and Antminer S9 or AntMiner L3 series of ASIC miners from Bitmain, or get some used units cheap, then you might want to check out the Hiveon ASIC Firmware for these devices as it will allow you to easily tweak them for either performance or efficiency. There are easy to use profiles to help you run the miner at the exact settings you want to with multiple options in between optimal power efficiency with reduced hashrate or highest possible hashrate. So, you can turn your AntMiner L3+ into a power efficient 500 MH/s Scrypt miner with 660W of power usage, or a 720 MH/s miner at 1300W of power usage or a few more options in between. Then you can head on to dual mining Litecoin (LTC) and DogeCoin (DOGE) for maximum earnings and the same applies to the AntMiner S9 series where you could be mining Bitcoin with a hashrate of 8.8 TH/s at 680W of power usage or up to 19.1 TH/s with 1880 Watts of power if you manage to properly keep the miner cool.
But HiveOn does not only offer alternative mining firmware of these ASIC miners, it comes with a complete management platform ASIC Hub for easier mining with ASIC miners, especially if you have more than just one miner. And there are not only the older S9 and L3 models supported with alternative firmware, newer Bitmain AntMiner ASICs are also available for use such as the S19 models or the T19. The ASIC Hub supports much more ASIC mining devices with their standard firmware from Bitmain, WhatsMiner, Avalon (Canaan), Innosilicon, Ebang etc. So, if you still haven’t checked out what features and advantages you might get with your mining hardware. Then there is also the HiveOS for GPU miners by HiveOn, if you still haven’t checked this one out as well.
– To check out the alternative ASIC firmware available from HiveOn…