Bitcoin mining looks like something reserved for big facilities: warehouses, megawatts of power, and nothing you would or should run at home. With the Bitaxe, we proved the industry wrong. NerdNOS takes the idea one step further. What changes how people feel about Bitcoin mining is a beautiful product — something you can touch, interact with, and call your precious.
How it started
The idea came out of a conversation with friends in the Open Source Miners United (OSMU) community. There were so many NerdMiners connected to public solo pools, glowing on desks all over the world — and yet, hashrate-wise, none of them actually helped.
That felt like a waste of a great idea. People clearly loved having a little miner on their desk. So we asked ourselves: what if we kept everything people love about the NerdMiner and gave it a real mining chip?
NerdNOS is the answer: an upgrade for the NerdMiner you already own.
From kilohashes to gigahashes
A classic NerdMiner is a LilyGo T-Display S3 running NerdMiner firmware. The ESP32-S3 computes SHA-256 hashes on its own CPU, which gets you somewhere in the kilohash range. It is a fantastic learning device, but a general-purpose microcontroller is simply not built for proof-of-work.
At its core, NerdNOS is a PCB that attaches to the T-Display S3 and adds a dedicated Bitcoin mining ASIC: the BM1397, the same chip used in the Bitaxe Max. The ESP32-S3 stops hashing and does what it is good at — handling Wi-Fi, talking to the pool, feeding work to the ASIC and driving the display.
The result is 150-200 GH/s, more than 1,000,000x the hashrate of the original NerdMiner — from the same small device on your desk.
Built for the desk, not the data center
The BM1397 can run much faster than it does in a NerdNOS. We deliberately underclock it heavily, keeping the whole device at about 8 W. That is low enough to run from a regular USB port that can supply at least 2 A, without a dedicated power supply.
Heat still has to go somewhere, so NerdNOS uses a custom heatsink designed by my friend IamGPIO. It is shaped specifically for this board, keeping the ASIC at a comfortable temperature while staying true to the compact NerdMiner look.
Three screens, one miner
A NerdNOS is meant to be looked at, so the firmware ships with three screens. Press the first button to cycle between them:
- NerdNOS — live mining data from your miner.
- ClockMiner — a clock face, so your miner earns its place on the desk even when you are not watching the numbers.
- GlobalStats — Bitcoin network statistics at a glance.
The second button turns the display off and on. Mining continues either way.
Set up in five minutes
- Flash the NerdNOS firmware from the Bitaxe web flasher — no software to install.
- Plug the miner into a USB port that delivers at least 2 A and wait for the Wi-Fi message on the screen.
- Connect to the
NerdMinerAPnetwork with the passwordMineYourCoins. - Enter your Wi-Fi details, your on-chain Bitcoin address and your time zone, then save.
- Look up your address on the pool to confirm your miner is hashing.
That’s it. Your NerdMiner just became an ASIC miner.
A lottery ticket you can hold
Let’s be honest about the numbers. At 150–200 GH/s, a NerdNOS is a tiny fraction of the Bitcoin network’s hashrate. Every hash is a real attempt at finding a block, but the odds for a single device are extremely small. Solo mining with a NerdNOS is a lottery — and if you hit, the whole block reward is yours.
The real value is elsewhere: learning how mining works, taking part in proof-of-work with your own hardware, and adding real hashrate to the network instead of just watching a counter.
Open source, all the way
Like the Bitaxe, NerdNOS is open source. Both the hardware and the firmware are published on GitHub, so anyone can study the design, build their own, or contribute improvements.
If you would rather not build one yourself, you can buy a ready-made NerdNOS at TheSolomining or nerdminer.de.
What’s next?
There are plans for a v2. That’s all I’m going to say for now.