The WaspThe project team just finished our 1st meeting and are looking forward to the development of The Wasp for BTC, and hopefully LTC mining chips initially or more likely for a 2nd generation iteration of The Wasp. The Wasp will be based on the need to upcycle and provide mining operators with flexibility but also an unprecedented level of protection against the rapid obsolescence that current mining hardware is fraught with today.
The Wasp will be directly managed by S. Bailey with support from C. Decoster, D. Bicknell, J. Widajaya and J. Hudgins as well as others who have pledged both design, financial and other support for the duration of this project. Our first milestone will be to cost out the project and give a timeline that matches the availability of the 28nm ASIC's coming to market.
We are currently looking at 28nm chips the Hash Fast "Golden Nonce", Cointerra "Gold Strike", Black Arrow "Minion" and the Coincraft "A1" mining that can be used with our modular designed backplanes and boards. The Wasp being the board and The Hive being our backplane code name designations. We are confident that this approach will set this project apart as it would be able to mine either LTC or BTC and be able to swap out older chips with newer ones via our board configuration.
Our basic timeline after this post here is to garner more project members that can support the software firmware end as well as bolster our pcb design team. We are always looking for members to help fund and financially support the project and as this is a collective effort there is always aspects like heatsinks, fans, cases and PSUs that can be sourced for kits for customers. We hope to provide a bare bones miner that can be configured on site with minimal effort and support. We are also looking at posting our project up as an asset on BitFunder to also further support our efforts.
We are currently open to more people joining us on this adventure and we will have a second open general meeting to follow up on a number of points raised in our first meeting. If you are interested in joining us and working on this project feel free to post below or pm or email me. We will do our best to update everyone as time passes. I understand that there is quite vague and not completely spelled out but as time goes on the project team will be updating me and I will in turn revise and amend things hopefully making the project more accessible. What is Open Source Hardware?
http://www.oshwa.org/definition/.
Open Source Hardware (OSHW) is a term for tangible artifacts machines, devices, or other physical things
whose design has been released to the public in such a way that anyone can make, modify, distribute, and use those
things. This definition is intended to help provide guidelines for the development and evaluation of licenses for
Open Source Hardware.
ADDITIONAL DESIGN NOTES:
The Hives (Mother Planes)* On board USB hub with a port for each blade. Upstream port connects to linux board or box. At least one extra port for potential billboard display or local display & cooling-controller.
* On board 24-pin and 6/8 pin connectors for PC power supply (650-750W) provides 3.3, 5, and 12 V.
* Last blade connector can accept a server power supply (12V only) for higher power operation, not needed when system is tuned for low-power consumption, or when it has fewer than a full load of blades.
* 8 available connection points for the Wasps.
* Any Wasp no matter the type of the chip will work with the Hives.
* All blades driven through USB hub.
* Stand-alone hive is just a small card with sockets for power and USB.
* Hot swap.
* Linux embedded system to run cgminer/bfgminer bolts right down onto big mobo.
The Wasps (Blades)* Wasps can slot into mother plane.
* Wasps can stand alone and be stacked FPGA style.
* Wasps are made to fit the Hive form factor.
* Wasps can be independently powered and controlled without mother plane.
Update: To join The Wasp Project You now will have to contact me as Darin is doing other things now.
