How to turn sunlight into sats for less, solar bitcoin mining shack tour

[00:00:01]So, we call this the mining shack.

[00:00:05]I found this trailer [snorts] abandoned out in the middle of the desert when we first got to this property, it was rotting into the ground, buried in the dirt up to here.

[00:00:19]Had no wheels under it, or they were all disintegrated into the ground.

[00:00:26]And it was not painted like this. It was had a lot of holes in it and was falling apart.

[00:00:32]And I saw potential in it.

[00:00:35]The whole goal of this initial setup was to do as much as possible with kind of the least amount of work and materials and it seemed like a good place to store the miners.

[00:00:50]So, I coated the roof with the lastomeric and repainted things and kind of sealed it up. It's not 100% sealed, but it's uh keeps the water out, keeps the weather out.

[00:01:01]Protects the miners.

[00:01:04]Here's a a Wi-Fi little Wi-Fi repeater and I just threw together this box. This is an old pan I found out in the desert flipped upside down acting as the lid and it's siliconed and everything and that takes the wireless signal that comes from down there.

[00:01:22]It's crazy how far Wi-Fi goes out in the desert when you don't have obstructions and noise.

[00:01:27]So, I have a an LTE modem that pipes into a main router, shoots a signal up here, and also shoots the signal over to our other dwelling that's way over there.

[00:01:38]And with that I'm able to get a lot of Wi-Fi service out here. It's pretty surprising.

[00:01:43]Used to be a couple panels out here up on top.

[00:01:47]Just held up on these posts that are kind of buried in the ground.

[00:01:51]I've rearranged panels a lot out here.

[00:01:53]Right now this guy is just a single panel feeding in to a 12-V system, which is just a single battery, a little charge controller. You can get these on Amazon for like less than 20 bucks.

[00:02:10]Main shutoff breaker. This is just for that single panel.

[00:02:15]Runs a little tiny 100-W inverter that runs 24/7 off of this battery and charges off of that single panel.

[00:02:24]And that runs to an extension cord that goes out for the Wi-Fi repeater along with the switch that feeds hard lines to the miners.

[00:02:38]Right now I have three miners in here plus this one.

[00:02:42]Um but I'm working on need a new power supply fan. I'm waiting for that to come from China and I'm going to put that back together.

[00:02:50]And the goal was to have four miners running in here when the solar uh destruction happened when the wind came through, that kind of shifted things.

[00:03:01]But I'm back to running two miners when it's sunny, which is cool. It's not everything I want to be running, but it's much better than it was. And I'll kind of show you guys how I set that up outside in a minute.

[00:03:14]So, I have two of these inverters. You can get these Like I said, this is all done as much as budget-friendly as possible. So, I cut a lot of corners and did a lot of some things, you know, that should be in here for safety and whatnot that I don't have because it's trying to I'm trying to do as much as I can with very little resources.

[00:03:35]These inverters have been pretty reliable.

[00:03:38]They can put out about 5,000 W or pull in about 5,000 W of solar.

[00:03:43]They charge the batteries. They run the miners.

[00:03:47]They're the essential unit that kind of controls all this stuff >> [clears throat] >> and moves the power around and converts it from one form to another.

[00:03:55]They put out 240 volts, which runs to these outlets. These outlets, you'll notice they're regular household 110 volt, but I'm using them as 220 and I label them as such because even though they're same except turned sideways, they cost a lot more when they're 220. So, I just use 120 stuff.

[00:04:15]I have some smart [snorts] outlets that are able to toggle the miners. If you switch the power connector that's closest to the fans, it turns on and off the whole miner. So, this is like the main power that goes to the board and this is like an auxiliary power.

[00:04:30]That's how I control the miners. So, they are running on timers daily and I kind of adjust those timers throughout the year depending on how much sun is coming in.

[00:04:42]And if it's cloudy, I get on the app and turn things on and off manually.

[00:04:49]I got these little guys, battery equalizers. This is the same brand as the inverters. This stuff super cheap Chinese stuff, but I've had pretty good luck with it. I've been running this stuff pretty hard for like 3 years now.

[00:05:03]These batteries, four 12-volt lithium iron phosphate 100 amp hour batteries, wired in series to give you 48 volts, which is what this likes.

[00:05:16]>> [clears throat] >> Same thing on this side.

[00:05:19]Just exact same setup duplicated.

[00:05:22]I also have connected to this 12-volt system, this little relay switch that runs all the time and this has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in it and it controls, it has four separate relays that turn something on and off.

[00:05:36]So, instead of using the manual switch on the side of these, I bypass that switch, ran it up to here, so I control these also on timers or from a smartphone app. I can be out and about and if it gets cloudy I can toggle things on and off. So, it's pretty cool. It's very basic.

[00:05:56]All super inexpensive components, mostly uh purchased on Amazon or eBay.

[00:06:02]Um I don't know that you could get much cheaper than all this stuff. These batteries are pretty degraded at this time. They're at probably at 50% capacity or even less cuz I've been pushing them hard for yeah, close to 4 years, honestly, 3 and 1/2 years.

[00:06:21]They've been running miners.

[00:06:23]So, considering they're doing pretty good.

[00:06:27]Now, let's take a look outside and show you.

[00:06:30]This is kind of all temporary.

[00:06:34]Um you can see a bit of the destruction from when I had solar panels. I had a whole 'nother row here of 30 panels that were set up like this and I didn't anchor it down properly and they went flying.

[00:06:49]I made a video about that which you can find online.

[00:06:53]But, this is my temporary solution just to get up and running.

[00:06:57]Believe it or not, the panels sitting here on the side of the hill like this this has worked for me for 2 years since we moved out to this spot and I only had a problem once I started trying to do it more correctly and prop them up. And I know I didn't do a good job. I'm aware that I, you know, this isn't structural enough and there's nothing anchoring it into the ground.

[00:07:20]This one got pulled off to the side because of cabling actually.

[00:07:25]Uh when the first set flew the wires that were attached to it pulled on this and yanked it off to the side.

[00:07:33]But, I went out here the other day and I spent a few hours cleaning assess the damage, figured out which panels were completely destroyed.

[00:07:41]There's still quite a few destroyed panels laying out over there.

[00:07:45]But I was focused on getting things up and running.

[00:07:48]So, I spent a second day coming out and kind of re-wiring and configuring the panels that I did have left. So, I lost about 18 or 19 panels, but surprisingly quite a few of the stuff that flew over there, even one of these panels flew like 100 ft or something.

[00:08:08]It landed on some bushes upside down and it was fine.

[00:08:11]So, all things considered, I got pretty lucky.

[00:08:16]So, this is the main feed for the solar going back to the mining shack that feeds into that inverter box, the larger 48-V one.

[00:08:25]It comes down here and it splits off. There's two three-way splitters.

[00:08:34]So, each one of these is a parallel feed.

[00:08:38]So, parallel is wiring um together, not in series. So, the voltage stays the same.

[00:08:45]So, each one of these has about 300 V coming in on it from each set of nine panels.

[00:08:53]So, you'll see right here I have nine.

[00:08:57]These are all in series, which means the positive of one connects to the negative of the next and so [clears throat] on and so forth all around.

[00:09:04]So, if each one is about 30 V open circuit voltage, you add that up, all together it ends up being close to 300.

[00:09:13]And I went with nine because that was just the numbers that made sense with how many panels I had left. So, here's a set of nine.

[00:09:25]Here's another set of nine. This guy's just an extra panel, but I'll put to use somewhere else.

[00:09:33]And then here we have eight that are still up on the mounts and then this ninth one I just added in and jumped it in in series with the rest of the eight.

[00:09:42]And that's how it gets to the proper voltage. Different inverters like different voltage inputs.

[00:09:49]You got to check the different uh the specs on it. This particular inverter can go up to about 500 volts in.

[00:09:57]And higher voltage is nice because you can run smaller wires.

[00:10:02]It's more efficient.

[00:10:04]And you're just more likely to get more power out of things. I've tried a lot of different configurations. I've done series of eight.

[00:10:12]I've done up to series of 11 or 12, which starts to get up towards that higher limit.

[00:10:19]But so this right now is temporary. I want to get some metal poles and do some proper anchoring and whatnot, but it works for now. It's a lot better than mining nothing.

[00:10:32]And so we got 27 panels on the side of our hill here pulling in probably a peak of about 4,500 watts.

[00:10:43]It's not perfectly ideal. Ideally, you want all the panels at the same angle.

[00:10:47]And ideally, they would shift to different angles at different times of the year. In the summer, they would want to be more flat.

[00:10:55]In the winter, you'd want them to be more closer to 45°. That's why I went with this kind of in-between angle. It might be about 30°.

[00:11:03]Cuz we're kind of standing on a hill here. Even these that are on the ground have a slight slope.

[00:11:09]So it's not perfectly dialed.

[00:11:12]Um maybe on a perfect day whenever if everything was level and the sun was exactly straight above, I might be able to get 5,000 watts out of this, but more realistically, I'm getting just over 4,000 if it's sunny out.

[00:11:30]On a day like this, it's kind of tricky to mine because my batteries aren't very good and so even just like 20 minutes of cloud cover, the battery strain, miners shut off.

[00:11:42]So, you know, it takes some interaction and some work. I would love to set up the little uh a home server with some kind of way to monitor the weather and automatically toggle stuff. And I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually.

[00:11:55]Maybe that's something I can run on that start 9 server I have coming.

[00:12:00]Um but yeah, with that setup I'm only wanting running one inverter right now. All 27 panels run into there.

[00:12:09]And with 4,500 W, that's enough to run two miners.

[00:12:13]So in the morning when the sun comes up at about 8:00, 9:00, I turn one on.

[00:12:18]And then when we get closer to peak hours, like 11:00 a.m. or so, the second one will come on.

[00:12:24]And vice versa at the end of the day, the first one shuts off. So they kind of work in shifts. Each one will run for 7 hours or so.

[00:12:32]Depending on the weather, I have to keep track of it and keep tabs on it and toggle things.

[00:12:38]For the clouds.

[00:12:39]>> [clears throat] >> But it's pretty cool. Like I said, the whole goal with all this was to do very I wanted to do a lot with with minimal supplies.

[00:12:51]Um I just bought 2 by 4s from Home Depot and built the shelf. All this paneling used to be from shipping crates and most of it it's been used before. I uh in our last old property these were part of another structure.

[00:13:06]When we left that property, I took everything apart. It was all just screwed together, brought all the pieces of wood so that I could rebuild things.

[00:13:15]And that's a common theme on our property. I like to reuse things and see what I can get, make make a lot happen with very little. And I've definitely accomplished that. This is a very inexpensive setup.

[00:13:28]Um the solar panels I originally purchased 120 of these panels and I got them for I want to say 30 30 or $35 a piece at Santan Solar in Phoenix, Arizona.

[00:13:41]These same panels at the same place are now like 50 or $55.

[00:13:46]So, they probably degraded a little bit over time, but overall they haven't gone down in value, that's for sure. I could resell these now for the same thing I bought them for um probably pretty easily. Obviously, I've lost quite a few um over the years. I think I even sold some at one point. Not sure why I did that.

[00:14:06]Now, I just want more panels again.

[00:14:08]Um but we'll continue to rebuild. I'll make another video when I get something more permanent set up.

[00:14:15]And yeah, keep sharing with you guys. A lot of people have wanted to see a follow-up to the solar stuff.

[00:14:21]And this is this is what I got. This is the temporary solution.

[00:14:26]Just throwing it together and just wanted to get some mining going again.

[00:14:30]It feels good to have some hash going and once I push pause quit on this video, I'm going to turn the miner back on cuz we got we got a decent amount of sun coming in, which is cool.

[00:14:44]Um this setup, even if I had all six miners running, it's not a lot of sats.

[00:14:51]Um I can get a couple thousand sats a day, maybe up to 3 4,000 if I had all of them running, which is two of them running, I might only be getting a thousand a day.

[00:15:03]But to me, that's a lot of Bitcoin. I know it doesn't seem a lot in dollar terms. This is quite a lot of work to go through to get a dollar a day um if you're thinking of it in dollar terms, it's not worth it at all.

[00:15:15]But for me, this was, you know, learning how to fish, learning how to convert sun into Bitcoin. that concept is just it's uh uh so cool to me. I can't get over I just really enjoy taking sunlight and turning it into Bitcoin.

[00:15:32]And it's not an insignificant number of sats, you know. The way I see Bitcoin and its value is like how hard is it to get.

[00:15:39]And I know how hard it is to get because I had to build all this and get this equipment and set it all up and learn a bunch to make it happen.

[00:15:48]And I'm not too worried about the USD price of Bitcoin. If it went to zero dollars, but we were exchanging it for goods and services, that would be fine for me. I don't see the point comparing it to dollars.

[00:16:03]But, I guess that's about it. I I hope you guys appreciate this follow-up video.

[00:16:07]It's been a a while coming and yeah, I appreciate your support. Thanks for all the love.

[00:16:14]Be sure to run a node and support the Bitcoin network. I appreciate you watching and and re-sharing this video on Nostr.

[00:16:21]That's where I'm going to find my home.

[00:16:24]And uh love you guys. Have a good one.

[00:16:26]Peace.