With me building this mining setup I've encounter quite a few issues I was not really aware of or ready for.
It's currently 3 Raspberry Pi's running.
Halfway Through Day 1 Of Fully Running
Everything had overheated. So I have junk electronics lying around. I had to figure something out so I build this (below), and its working currently.
Its from an old Hitachi charger I used Artic MX-4 Thermal Compound. I was hoping it would solidify but this doesn't. So with my custom cut heat sinks I need to find a way to attach them more securely.
I also had to power the fan seperately because its a 12-Volt fan. I have two 5V fans I plan on powering with the Pis themselves. Which would require me looking up the pin configuration...which I will slide off and come back with a picture of that pin configuration.
Source
The way it seems looking at this I'm going to need some kind of termination end. I'll have to google what those are now to make that pin connection.
Above are Dupont Connectors. These are what I need to create the pin connections. So we will see what we earn off of these next few posts so I can order these, or however much the mining yields.
Also being I have only a small solar panel currently. Probably 200 Watts or so. Ive had to find alternative means on a budget to power the bank as well. So I have an old Xbox 360 power supply. So I dig it out, and find I only have the hard wired side.
So I do a little electrical work and find out the 7 colored cables inside go as follow.
- Black (2x) = Negative
- Yellow (2x) = Positive
- Blue/Red = Signal wire to allow charging voltage, I imagine a load detecting wire
*Grey = Not needed in this set up
So that outputs 14.4 V DC at about 12 amps. Which should charge the loadless battery bank in about 8 hours. We'll see if it gets hot and needs to be supplemented with something else.
It however goes into a charge controller that then charger the batteries and feeds the inverter that feeds the powered USB hub that powers Pi's. I could use several step down transformers to achieve the same thing, but I'm using what I have to keep the cost low.
I'll have to get whatever panels I can get off of Temu soon enough to make this worthwhile.
With utilizing all the old Pis the set up looks like this below
I have to rebuild the 2 Pi 5s into something a little more cleanly, and secure. This is all a prototype of a self sustaining system. Any input is welcome. More ways to acquire "free electric" is also welcome.
If there also is a specific brand of panels I should be looking into as well please let me know.