Category Archives: Technology

cryptocurrency, Technology

Decent scrypt mining rig India

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I planned to set up a mining rig which would allow me to play a game or two with almost all the eye candy one. I do test rigs and advice friends basis the component availability. I have focus on efficiency rather than just the statistics. I had planned to setup a R9 280x based rig but had to settle for a 270x as 280x was not available in India at that time.

The data is pertaining to India and alot better prices will be available abroad.

Following is the component selection list.

Motherboard: Asus M5A78L-M-USB3 32GB DDR3 AMD Motherboard – Rs 4600

ASUS M5A78L-M/USB3 Motherboard: Motherboard

Processor: AMD FX-Series FX 6300 6-Core Processor (FD6300WMHKBOX) – Rs 7995

AMD 3.5 AM3+ FX 6-Core Edition FX-6300 (FD6300WMHKBOX) Processor: Processor

RAM: Corsair 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3 1600MHz Desktop Memory (CMZ4GX3M1A1600C9) – Rs 3250

Corsair Vengeance DDR3 4 GB (1 x 4 GB) PC RAM (CMZ4GX3M1A1600C9): RAM

Power supply: Corsair VS Series VS650 650W High Performance Power Supply (CP-9020051-WW) – Rs 4350

Corsair VS650 650 Watt PSU: PSU

Hard disk: Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA – Rs 3740

WD Caviar Blue 500 GB Desktop Internal Hard Drive (WD5000AAKX): Internal Hard Drive

GPU: Asus Radeon R9 270X 2GB DDR5 – Rs 17580

Cabinet: Doesn’t matter (I bought Circle CC830) – Rs 4500

CC 830

Total- Rs 46015

Would have been Rs 56000 with a R9 280x.

One can opt for a cheaper processor for AM3 socket which would reduce the cost further. I wanted to game as well so didn’t want that to be a bottleneck.

The above can decently mine at 410+Khash/s at less than 70 degrees. The cabinet has 5 fans for the airflow.

I would recommend to buy a motherboard with at least 2 PCIE 16x slots so as to have room for upgrade if you wish to add another card for mining.

I had to order another Gigabyte motherboard which can support 2 full slot cards and another 2 on ix slots via riser cable.

I would also recommend a beefier power supply just in case you don’t want to run on two separate PSUs.

Refer this post for my mining commands and config.

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Technology

Dogecoin (Scrypt) mining at 425+ Asus R9 270x

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We have setup a test rig to test Asus R9 270xDC2. Posting the image and the config command. I did try a lot of permutations and combinations and this is so far the best. Running for more than 5 hours now and very stable at less than 70 degree C

cgminer –scrypt -o stratum+tcp://stratum.dogehouse.org:3333 -uxxxxx -p xxx –gpu-fan 100 -l 1 –intensity 18 –thread-concurrency 21440 –shaders 2048 -w 256 –temp-target 85 –no-submit-stale -g 1

More on the details later. Please let us know of your setup, config and the results.

Technology

Global Bitcoin Conference 2013

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Bangalore, India. Home to over 350,000 IT Professionals, it already has a very strong bitcoin base. Bangalore is a cosmopolitan city whose citizens have a penchant for buying gold to protect against the Rupee’s decline. We are hosting the Global Bitcoin Conference smack bang in the middle of Bangalore, at the beautiful Sheraton Hotel. Why not spend a long weekend here, with the GBC as the highlight.
Events are all inclusive and are mix of networking, learning and increasing awareness. The program is designed to provide an overview of where the virtual currency industry is today and its future potential, and our panel of top venture capitalists will discuss what business opportunities are on the horizon. We will try to keep the speakers time to 15 minutes. Short and sweet.

Technology

Shortage of Bitcoins

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image

Sometime back I was struck by the rate at which Bitcoin value was growing. It hovered around 10 to 20 USD at that time. Then I went for my wedding and when I next saw it, it was already to the moon and back. Recently Bitcoin has proved its value and has been over $1000 since last couple of days. I got into cryptocurrency trading recently via BTC-E. The major challenge that one might face is getting the initial supply of bitcoins. I am not a fan of mining and considering that the green days of mining are well passed and it is not profitable for simple users, I recommend getting the initial bitcoins over the counter. I dont recommend bank transfers to exchange as these have long lead time and very high fee. Instead one can buy bitcoins from websites like localbitcoin.com or buy from friends if they have and are ready to sell.
Seeing the recent boom and huge demand for bitcoins the supply of bitcoins has become very apparent and people are finding it difficult to get hold of their first bitcoins.  I have had a good experience with localbitcoin.com with my transaction being completed in just 15 minutes.
It is easy and safe as there is an escrow but still I would say that do your research and see the feedback before getting into any transaction.
Let us know of other places to get bitcoins in india.

Internet, Technology

Bitcoin Meetup

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Bitcoin_euroLately there has been a lot of buzz about bitcoin. We had the first Bitcoin meetup today with Sunny, Harsh, Uday, sorry for not remembering the other names. We had 10 of us and it was a long and very informative discussion which setup the context of many more such meetups to come.

For me this was a meetup after a long long time (I guess more than 3 years) after all the Bar camps and other meetups in Pune for Null, Clubhack, POCC etc.

The name bitcoin has been gaining a lot of traction among the tech geeks and we would give it our best shot to make it more understandable to non tech people.

image: http://osintblog.org
Gadgets

Galaxy S3 has better display than iPhone 5

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The Galaxy S3’s display is just 1.1 millimeters thick and offers the full color gamut of the NTSC standard. In comparison, the iPhone 5’s display is 1.5 millimeters thick and offers 72 percent of the standard color gamut.

With consumers increasingly concerned with the minute details and specifications of their mobile devices, the results are a win for Samsung, and further illustrates the point that Apple no longer leads when it comes to adding the latest and greatest technology. That was already highlighted by the fact the iPhone 5’s two biggest new features — a bigger display and 4G LTE — have long been found in Android devices.

Read more at http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57524291-37/color-me-prettier-galaxy-s3-display-outdoes-iphone-5s/

image via iPhone informer

Gadgets

What is inside iPhone 5

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What’s inside an iPhone 5?

Luckily you don’t have to take one apart yourself to find out. The tech website iFixit has just released its annual look at the guts of Apple’s latest device, and it’s a pretty interesting read (depending on where you fall on the nerd scale).

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/782084/thumbs/s-IPHONE5IFIXITTEARDOWN620-large.jpgDespite Apple usually being reluctant to make its products easily repairable at the expense of design quality, iFixit’s experts say the new phone is not as obtuse as previous versions.

It says the case is easier to open, the battery is not as difficult to replace and the Home button is supported in a metal case which should stop it wearing out as often.

The phone also has a pop-out ear speaker, a 28nm Qualcomm MFM9615 chip to handle its LTE connectivity, and a light metal case.

Gadgets

Galaxy S3 vs iPhone 5

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Head-to-head ... the Samsung Galaxy SIII, left, and Apple's iPhone 5, right.

Even with a bigger screen, Apple’s iPhone 5 struggles to match Samsung’s Galaxy S III, at least on paper.

Apple’s new iPhone 5 is so incredibly thin and light that it even puts the waif-like Galaxy S III to shame. Even so, Apple lovers hoping to make up ground on Samsung’s 4.8-inch Android champion are likely to be underwhelmed by the iPhone 5’s extra screen real estate.

The iPhone 5’s larger, four-inch screen is only taller, not wider, than the iPhone 4 and 4S, so it doesn’t make what’s on the screen any larger (unless you turn it sideways, to watch a movie, for example). Its improved colours and whiter whites still look better than the slightly overblown colours on the Galaxy S III.

Read more here
Gadgets

Seagate Goflex Home Enable Torrents

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I had plans to buy a NAS for my storage and media server requirement. I had zeroed in on Iomega Cloud edition but some how I ended up buying Seagate Goflex home.

To my disappointment Goflex Home does not have support for downloading torrents natively as of firmware update 2.6.xx. Firmware 2.5.3 had this built in.

After some research I found that there is a way to enable the torrents on Goflex Home. Although it does keep giving me  error in the Seagate control panel but the torrent client keeps working normally.

Following is the method to get this done.

SSH into the NAS. Use a terminal on Mac OS X or Linux. If you are on Windows you can use putty.

$ ssh [username]_hipserv2_seagateplug_[XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX]@[NAS_IP_Address]

Where
[username] – User account on the Seagate GoFlex Home NAS
[XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX] – Product key. You can get it from “About GoFlex Home” on the main application in left bottom corner.
[NAS_IP_Address] – IP address of the Seagate GoFlex Home NAS

– After logged in gain root access.

$ sudo -E -s

– Edit the features.conf file to enable transmission client. Change “supportstransmission=0″ to “supportstransmission=1″. Save the file and exit.

$ vi /etc/features.conf

Post this we need to install the torrent client on the NAS.

The guide is available at the wiki

Once installed I did the following things to make sure that it works as I wanted it to.

I made the transmission folder in /home because the one I made on the hard drive failed to load settings post restart.

I specified the download location as /home/0common/Downloads.

I disabled access patrol.

I updated the firewall rules.

 

 

 

 

 

After going through all this I am thinking that I should have bought the Iomega one. And also after comparison I have found that the Iomega has more RAM and would have had saved me all the hassles.

 

 

Arduino

Verbalizer – Google voice search with Arduino

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The Verbalizer connects wirelessly to a personal computer via Bluetooth. When you trigger it, it opens google.com in a new tab and activates Voice Search. An audio notification is played, signaling when google is ready for your queryYou speak into the mic, and the query starts. Breakfast released all the plans and firmware appropriately, and left some I/O pins open for those who want to play with it.

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