Tartanleaf

Author: Greg Weir

  • Bitaxe Community Update: Naja Duo, ESP-Miner 2.15.0 and the BM1373 Generation

    Bitaxe Community Update: Naja Duo, ESP-Miner 2.15.0 and the BM1373 Generation

    The last two weeks have moved the open-source home-mining story forward on two fronts at once. New BM1373-based hardware is moving from prototypes and announcements toward products people can order, while ESP-Miner 2.15.0 changes the way Bitaxe firmware updates work.

    There is also a useful caution running through all of this. A product announcement, an open hardware repository, firmware support and something you can buy today are four different things. They sometimes arrive together. Often they do not.

    That distinction matters more as the Bitaxe family expands.

    The Naja Duo brings BM1373 to a Bitaxe product

    The headline hardware announcement is the Bitaxe Naja Duo 1201, launched by Solo Satoshi at the end of August. It uses two BM1373 ASICs, the newer generation of silicon associated with Bitmain’s S23 machines.

    Solo Satoshi lists the Naja Duo at about 4.4 TH/s and 42 watts at its default settings, or roughly 9.5 joules per terahash. If those numbers hold across production units, that is a substantial efficiency improvement over BM1370-based desktop miners.

    The vendor also reports an 8 TH/s overclock at about 92 watts and much higher results under experimental liquid cooling. Those figures are interesting, but I would treat them as demonstrations of headroom rather than recommended operating points. Higher clock speed, voltage and temperature all change the reliability equation. A quiet, efficient miner that runs consistently is usually more useful than a benchmark that cannot be sustained.

    Other practical changes include individual chip-temperature monitoring, a larger colour display, an XT30 power connection and cooling designed for a two-chip board. The product is described as running the mainline ESP-Miner and AxeOS stack.

    There is one naming wrinkle worth knowing. The older bitaxeorg/bitaxeNaja repository currently describes an untested two-chip BM1340 prototype, not the newly announced BM1373 Naja Duo. I have not found a corresponding BM1373 hardware repository in the Bitaxe organization as of August 30. That does not make the product claim false, but it does mean buyers should not assume that every reference to “Naja” describes the same board.

    My practical advice is simple: verify the exact model number, firmware, warranty, power supply and published design files before ordering. For a newly launched model, I would also allow time for production owners to report thermals, stability and real wall-power measurements.

    NerdAxe Gaia offers a single-chip route

    The NerdAxe Gaia approaches BM1373 from the other direction. It is a single-chip desktop miner advertised at roughly 2.4 to 2.6 TH/s and about 25 watts, depending on the vendor listing. European listings currently describe it as a pre-order product with September shipping.

    That makes it an interesting low-power entry into the new silicon generation, but there is an important firmware distinction: Gaia is part of the NerdAxe family. Its BM1373 support is in the ESP-Miner-NerdQAxePlus project, not the main Bitaxe ESP-Miner release.

    The interfaces share a family resemblance, but firmware is hardware-specific. Do not choose a firmware file because the dashboard looks familiar. Use the release and flashing instructions for the exact board and revision you own. Early Gaia buyers should also expect its BM1373 support to be in the 1.1.0 pre-release line rather than the older stable branch.

    ESP-Miner 2.15.0 simplifies Bitaxe updates

    For existing Bitaxe owners, the most broadly useful development is ESP-Miner 2.15.0, released August 21.

    The largest change is unified firmware. AxeOS is now embedded in esp-miner.bin, so the normal update no longer requires a separate www.bin upload. After installing 2.15.0, refresh the browser page so it loads the updated interface.

    The release also adds mDNS support. On a network that supports it, you can reach a miner by its hostname—for example, bitaxe.local—instead of first looking up its IP address. This is convenient, although keeping a record of the IP address or DHCP reservation is still worthwhile when troubleshooting.

    Other changes include better undervoltage information, total uptime and hash counts, multi-line charts, a restart confirmation, fixes for several memory and WebSocket problems, and further Stratum V2 work. The Stratum changes include larger frames, better handling of fractional pool difficulty and an optional per-pool authentication requirement.

    This is a meaningful release, but “meaningful” does not mean “install immediately on every stable miner.” Before updating:

    1. Record your pool, network, frequency and voltage settings.
    2. Confirm that 2.15.0 supports your exact board revision.
    3. Download firmware only from the official ESP-Miner release page.
    4. Update one miner first if you operate several.
    5. Leave it at known-good settings while you confirm temperatures, accepted shares and stability.

    If your miner is stable and you do not need the new features, waiting for more field experience is also a reasonable decision. I explain that decision process in Should You Update Bitaxe Firmware?.

    OSMU adds the Gamma Hex to the hardware conversation

    The item I found on OSMU that was not in my initial notes is the Bitaxe Gamma Hex 1300. Its new Bitaxe organization repository describes a six-chip BM1370 design using an ESP32-S3, a colour display and ESP-Miner.

    This belongs in the “watch the project” category for now. The repository is new, has only a small number of commits and does not yet publish a release. That is enough to establish that the design exists; it is not enough to treat it like a mature, widely available model.

    The distinction is important. Open repositories let the community inspect and improve a design early. They are evidence of development, not automatically evidence of production readiness.

    A more useful way to compare the growing model list

    The market is becoming harder to describe with a single list of names. A better comparison asks four questions:

    • Which ASIC and how many chips does the board use?
    • Is the hardware design published, and where?
    • Which firmware project supports the exact board revision?
    • Is it a mature product, a new production model, a pre-order or an experimental design?

    By that measure, the late-August picture is clearer:

    • Naja Duo 1201: newly launched two-chip BM1373 product; attractive vendor specifications, with independent production experience still to come.
    • NerdAxe Gaia: single-chip BM1373 product in pre-order or early-shipping status; uses the NerdQAxePlus firmware family.
    • Gamma Hex 1300: newly published six-chip BM1370 open design; still early in its repository life.
    • Existing Gamma, Supra, Ultra, Max and UltraHex designs: established reference points, although actual retail availability varies by model and vendor.

    The important change is not simply that miners are getting faster. New-generation ASICs are reaching desk-sized, open-source hardware, while firmware and product families are becoming more specialized. That creates more choice, but it also puts more responsibility on the buyer to match the model, firmware and documentation correctly.

    I will continue updating the Bitcoin Mining with Bitaxe Updates page as production experience catches up with the announcements.

    For a practical guide to setup, tuning, monitoring and recovery, see Bitcoin Mining with Bitaxe. The free Bitaxe Owner’s Maintenance and Troubleshooting Pack provides printable baseline and troubleshooting worksheets.

    — Greg Weir, Tartanleaf

    Sources and verification notes

  • What a Local Lobby Display Changed at a Nova Scotia Inn

    What a Local Lobby Display Changed at a Nova Scotia Inn

    At a busy inn, many front-desk questions are simple but time-sensitive. Guests want the Wi-Fi password, the weather forecast or the menu. Before Open Lobby Board was installed at Auberge Gisele’s Inn in Baddeck, staff generally supplied that information verbally.

    I installed the board in the lobby and had it running around the end of June 2026. It puts commonly requested information on a lobby display, runs on a Raspberry Pi and remains under the property’s control. Management can update it from the trusted local network without maintaining a cloud account or paying for another subscription.

    The useful features were the ordinary ones

    It would be easy to judge a lobby display by the number of features it offers. The more useful question is which information guests actually look for.

    Wahab Khan, General Manager, identified three practical items: the Wi-Fi password, the weather and the menu. Of those, the clearest observed change involved the weather. He reports that weather questions at the front desk have “really gone down.”

    That is a modest result, but it is also a useful one. The board does not need to replace the front desk or automate every interaction. It only needs to make routine information visible enough that guests can find it without waiting to ask.

    What the evidence does not show

    The board also includes a menu QR code. Gisele’s keeps a physical menu at the front desk, and guests usually refer to it. As a result, this installation does not show that the QR code reduced requests for paper menus.

    Khan believes the QR code would be useful where a paper copy was not readily available. That is a reasonable use case, but it is different from an observed result. The distinction matters in a practical case study.

    Easy updates and no reported reliability burden

    A display is only useful if the information stays current. Khan describes the board as easy to read and extremely easy for management to edit. He also reports that it has been “extremely reliable” and has had “zero issues.”

    Those observations support the project’s original design priorities: keep the interface straightforward, keep routine changes simple and avoid turning an information screen into another service that requires continuing administration.

    Local control is part of the value

    Open Lobby Board is designed for a Raspberry Pi connected to a display on a trusted, non-routable local network. It has no advertising service, hosted dependency or subscription requirement. It is an open-source example project rather than a managed product, and it should not be exposed directly to the public Internet.

    For a property in a high-volume tourism town, Khan sees value in any practical way to reduce repeated questions. The Gisele’s installation suggests that the strongest case for a lobby board may not be a long feature list. It may simply be dependable access to the few pieces of information guests ask for most often.

    About Open Lobby Board

    I developed Open Lobby Board and released it through Tartanleaf.com Inc. as a free, open-source community project under the MIT License. It is provided as an example for technically comfortable operators, not as a hosted or supported commercial service.

    View Open Lobby Board and its setup documentation on GitHub, or see it alongside Tartanleaf’s other resources on the Tartanleaf Tools page.

  • Bitaxe Community Update: WallAxe, Firmware and BM1373 – Mid-August 2026

    Bitaxe Community Update: WallAxe, Firmware and BM1373 – Mid-August 2026

    Bitaxe Townhall #62 put WallAxe at the centre of the latest OSMU discussion. Gio joined the town hall to explain a project that combines a Bitaxe and its power supply in a compact enclosure that plugs directly into a wall outlet.

    The idea is easy to understand. A normal Bitaxe installation has a board, a separate power supply, a cable and some way to keep the assembly stable and clear of obstructions. WallAxe aims to turn those pieces into something closer to a small appliance.

    That sounds like a packaging change, but it raises useful questions about where the Bitaxe ecosystem is going.

    WallAxe and the next stage of home mining

    WallAxe is best understood as a conversion and packaging project, not a new mining ASIC. It builds around existing Bitaxe hardware and tries to remove several points of friction for a new owner – choosing a suitable supply, managing the cable and mounting the equipment neatly.

    For an experienced builder, those jobs are manageable. For someone buying a first small miner, they are among the least polished parts of the experience. A well-designed integrated unit could make a Bitaxe easier to place and easier to explain without changing what the board does.

    The trade-off is safety. Once a product connects directly to household mains power, enclosure design, insulation, heat, clearances, strain relief and safe servicing matter more than appearance. A compact enclosure also has less room to move heat away from the miner and its power electronics.

    The practical test for WallAxe will therefore be whether it can preserve the openness and repairability that make Bitaxe interesting while meeting the expectations people reasonably have for a mains-connected appliance. Until the design is mature and independently evaluated, it should be treated as a developing open-hardware project rather than a finished consumer product.

    ESP-Miner 2.14.2 remains the current verified release

    The latest verified ESP-Miner release remains version 2.14.2, released on July 8. Its published changes include a fix for a use-after-free race condition and a correction to frequency fallback during self-test.

    That does not mean every owner should update immediately. Firmware work is a maintenance decision, not a reflex.

    Before changing firmware, record:

    • the Bitaxe model and hardware revision;
    • the current firmware version;
    • pool and network settings;
    • normal temperature, fan speed and hash rate;
    • any recurring errors or recovery behaviour.

    Then read the release notes, confirm that the image matches the hardware, keep a recovery path available and change one thing at a time. A baseline makes it possible to tell whether an update improved reliability or merely changed the symptoms.

    BM1373 parts are becoming easier to obtain

    BM1373 has also moved a little closer to practical experimentation. TinyChipHub is advertising individual BM1373 chips at US$69.99. The seller describes about 2.5 TH/s as a reference point for sustained operation and much higher figures as overclocking tests with sharply increased power use.

    Those are vendor claims, not independent finished-device benchmarks. The parts are also described as coming mainly from dismantled Antminer S23 Hydro equipment, which adds another variable for designers and buyers.

    The important development is not the headline hash rate. It is that independent builders can now obtain parts for prototypes in small quantities. Turning a bare ASIC into a dependable miner still requires board design, voltage regulation, cooling, firmware support and a supply chain that can deliver chips of consistent quality.

    BM1373 may support a higher-performance generation of open miners, but a seller’s chip-level number should not be treated as the expected performance of a future Bitaxe or NerdQAxe product.

    A broader range of open miners

    The official Bitaxe organization now includes projects such as the dual-chip Gamma Turbo and the multi-chip Gamma Hex alongside the established single-chip boards. WallAxe explores a different direction – not simply more hash rate, but a cleaner physical installation.

    That variety is a sign of a maturing ecosystem. Open home mining is separating into several practical categories:

    • low-power single-chip boards for learning and experimentation;
    • multi-chip designs for more hash rate on a desk or shelf;
    • display and interface projects that make monitoring easier;
    • packaging and power projects intended to simplify installation;
    • next-generation ASIC experiments whose real performance is still being established.

    For an owner, the useful question is not which design has the largest number in a listing. It is which design fits the available power, cooling, noise tolerance, network and maintenance skills.

    What to watch next

    Three things are worth following over the next few weeks:

    1. Whether WallAxe publishes enough design and safety detail for meaningful community review.
    2. Whether ESP-Miner reliability reports settle around 2.14.2 or lead to another maintenance release.
    3. Whether BM1373 prototypes produce repeatable efficiency and thermal results outside vendor demonstrations.

    The direction remains encouraging. Bitaxe is becoming more than a single board. It is an open ecosystem of hardware, firmware, enclosures, power systems, monitoring tools and operating practices. The next step is proving that added convenience and performance can arrive without giving up safety, transparency or repairability.

    For a practical owner workflow, see Bitcoin Mining with Bitaxe and the free Bitaxe Owner’s Maintenance and Troubleshooting Pack.

    – Greg Weir, Tartanleaf

  • Four Practical Resources for Understanding Your Home Network

    Four Practical Resources for Understanding Your Home Network

    Home networking tends to become complicated at exactly the wrong moment. A video call starts breaking up. A television buffers in one room but works in another. A new router presents a screen full of unfamiliar settings. Someone changes three things at once, the problem appears to go away, and nobody is quite sure which change helped.

    The difficulty is not always the technology itself. It is often knowing which question to ask first.

    Is the internet connection failing, or only the Wi-Fi? Is the problem limited to one device? Is the router reachable? Is DNS working? Is there another router between your network and the internet? Would moving an access point help, or would that simply move the weak area somewhere else?

    I have been working on four related resources for those situations: the book Smart Tech for Real People: Home Networking, the free Home Network Baseline and Recovery Pack, the free Smart Tech Toolkit and the open-source HomeNetCheck application. They overlap, but they are not four versions of the same thing. Each serves a different purpose.

    Watch: Which Part of Your Home Network Is Failing?

    The book explains the system

    Home Networking is for readers who want to understand the network they already have without having to become network engineers.

    It begins with the path into the home: the modem or optical network terminal, the router, switches, Ethernet and Wi-Fi. It then looks at coverage, mesh systems, guest networks, smart devices, VPNs, provider equipment, security and troubleshooting.

    The aim is not to supply a single ideal configuration. Homes, budgets and internet services differ too much for that. The more useful goal is to understand what each part does, where a failure might occur and which changes are worth trying.

    That matters because troubleshooting works better when changes are small and reversible. Replacing every piece of equipment may appear decisive, but it can be expensive and may conceal the original cause. Checking one part of the signal path at a time is slower for a few minutes and usually faster overall.

    The Kindle and paperback editions of Smart Tech for Real People: Home Networking are available through Amazon. The paperback can also be ordered through bookstores and libraries supplied by Ingram; ask for the title and author or use paperback ISBN 978-1-997095-02-6.

    The pack preserves a useful baseline

    The free Home Network Baseline and Recovery Pack is a printable companion for recording what normally works before the next outage. It helps you identify important equipment and tasks, map useful connection paths, and preserve the details you will need when something changes.

    The pack is an original companion rather than an excerpt from the book, and it is useful on its own. It is delivered by email with occasional practical home-networking updates. HomeNetCheck and Tartanleaf’s other existing tools remain freely available without subscribing.

    The Toolkit helps organize decisions

    The Smart Tech Toolkit is a free browser-based companion. It includes a Network Helper, privacy and device planners, safety and scam checks, and practical guides.

    The Network Helper does not pretend that a few answers can replace observation or testing. Its purpose is to help narrow the situation and suggest a sensible next step. The other tools address decisions that often surround home technology: what information a device collects, which security questions matter and what to check before trusting an unfamiliar message or request.

    No account is required. Answers remain on the user’s device, and the Toolkit works offline once it has been visited. It is intended to be something people can open when they need it, without first creating another profile or handing over more information.

    HomeNetCheck examines symptoms

    HomeNetCheck is different from the Toolkit. It is a downloadable, open-source desktop application for Windows, macOS and Linux—not a browser application.

    It checks common parts of the network path, including router reachability, DNS, double NAT, latency, packet loss, internet speed and the Wi-Fi information made available by the operating system. It then presents the results in a plain-language report.

    HomeNetCheck does not change router settings or attempt to repair the network automatically. That restraint is deliberate. A diagnostic application should help someone understand what it observed before it starts altering the system being examined.

    The report can identify symptoms and point toward useful questions. The book provides the background needed to interpret those symptoms, the pack preserves a baseline for comparison, and the Toolkit helps organize the next decision. In practical terms:

    • The pack can record which devices and tasks worked normally before the problem began.
    • HomeNetCheck can show that DNS lookups are failing.
    • The book explains what DNS does and why that failure can make an otherwise working connection appear broken.
    • The Toolkit can help the user work through the next checks without changing several unrelated settings.

    No single resource can diagnose every network, but the combination offers a more useful path than random experimentation.

    Why I kept them separate

    It would have been possible to put every checklist, diagnostic and explanation into one large application. I do not think that would have made the result easier to use.

    A book is good at building understanding and showing how ideas connect. A printable pack is useful for preserving a baseline and working through recovery. A browser-based toolkit supports short, structured decisions. A desktop application can inspect information that a normal webpage cannot safely or consistently access.

    Keeping those roles separate also makes the limitations clearer. The pack does not inspect the network. The Toolkit does not claim to inspect it either. HomeNetCheck does not teach the whole subject, and the book cannot measure what is happening on a particular computer at a particular moment.

    Together, they support a simple sequence:

    1. Record a baseline while the network is working.
    2. Observe the problem carefully.
    3. Check which part of the path appears to be failing.
    4. Understand what that part does.
    5. Make one small, reversible change.
    6. Test again before changing something else.

    That sequence is less dramatic than replacing a router or resetting everything to factory defaults. It is also more likely to reveal what was actually wrong.

    Available now

    Smart Tech for Real People: Home Networking is available in Kindle and paperback editions. Its book page provides the localized Amazon link and bookstore or library ordering information.

    Get the free Home Network Baseline and Recovery Pack. It is delivered by email and is complete and useful without buying the book.

    The Smart Tech Toolkit is free to use in a browser, and HomeNetCheck is free and open-source software for Windows, macOS and Linux.

    Other Smart Tech for Real People titles and their current publication status are listed on the series page.

    If you use the pack, Toolkit or HomeNetCheck and find something unclear, I would be interested in knowing where you hesitated or what you expected to happen next. That sort of feedback is especially useful because it identifies the explanations that still need work.

  • Bitaxe Community Update: A Gamma Finds Block 957,382

    Bitaxe Community Update: A Gamma Finds Block 957,382

    A palm-sized Gamma found a full Bitcoin block, ESP-Miner moved into the 2.14 series, and multi-chip open-hardware miners continued to stretch what a desktop rig can do. Here is what matters—and what still belongs in the “wait and see” column.

    A Bitaxe Gamma finds block 957,382

    On July 9, a miner using a single Bitaxe Gamma through Public Pool found Bitcoin block 957,382. The block paid 3.1382 BTC, including the 3.125 BTC subsidy and transaction fees. The block itself can be checked independently on mempool.space, while coverage of the miner and hardware identified the device as a Gamma running at roughly 995 GH/s to 1 TH/s. The reward was worth about US$200,000 at the time.

    The detail that caught most headlines was the contrast: a miner costing roughly US$150 found a full block after about eight hours online. It is a wonderful result, but it needs the right interpretation. Eight hours was the winner’s actual runtime, not the expected time to find a block. At that hashrate, a solo block remains an extraordinarily rare event.

    I still think “lottery miner” is a useful shorthand, provided we do not let the metaphor turn into a promise. A Bitaxe does real work and submits real shares to the Bitcoin network. It also gives its owner a very small chance of finding a block. The July win is proof that the chance is not zero; it is not evidence of predictable income.

    What makes the story worthwhile is not simply the payout. A small open-source miner became part of Bitcoin’s permanent history. That is a remarkable outcome for hardware that can sit on a desk.

    ESP-Miner is now in the 2.14 series

    The firmware picture also changed this summer. The current production release listed by the project is ESP-Miner 2.14.2, issued in July. It follows the much larger 2.14.0 release, which added a customizable AxeOS dashboard, better mobile presentation, downloadable logs, pause and resume controls, a WebSocket API, and Stratum V2 support. The 2.14.2 maintenance release fixes a race condition and improves frequency fallback during self-test.

    This is not an emergency update story. It is a reminder to check the release notes, confirm that the image matches your board, and use the project’s documented update path. If a miner is stable, there is no prize for being the first person to install every release. Back up or record your settings, avoid interrupting power during an update, and leave experimental builds to situations where you are prepared to troubleshoot them.

    BM1373: interesting, but not yet a Bitaxe product

    There is growing community interest in Bitmain’s newer BM1373 ASIC, with discussion centred on higher per-chip hashrate and the possibility of a future generation of compact miners. For now, I would resist attaching firm specifications or shipping dates to a future Bitaxe. The official Bitaxe organization’s published hardware list still identifies the Gamma and Gamma Turbo as BM1370 designs; it does not list a generally available BM1373 Bitaxe.

    That does not mean nothing is happening. Chips are appearing in the broader home-mining conversation, and open-hardware developers are clearly exploring what comes next. But chip availability, board design, power delivery, cooling, firmware support, and manufacturability all have to come together before an interesting ASIC becomes a dependable product.

    The practical consequence may arrive before the new hardware does: anticipation of a next generation can soften prices on current Gamma boards. A discounted BM1370 miner does not suddenly become obsolete. For learning, experimenting, running a node-adjacent appliance, or taking a very long solo chance, the current hardware still does exactly what it did before.

    NerdQAxe++ shows what more chips—and more power—can do

    The NerdQAxe++ is not a Bitaxe, but it belongs in the same open-hardware home-mining conversation. A four-chip BM1370 model gives builders another way to balance hashrate, heat, noise, and power on a desktop.

    Vendor figures vary by revision and cooling configuration. TinyChipHub describes its NerdQAxe++ Remastered at about 5.2 TH/s and 80 W in its normal configuration, with its own internal testing reaching about 6 TH/s at 100–110 W. Solo Satoshi reports that Revision 7 runs at roughly 4.8 TH/s and 69.5 W at stock settings, with substantially more overclocking headroom after a redesign of the power-delivery system.

    Those are vendor measurements rather than universal guarantees. They are also a useful illustration of the engineering trade-off. More frequency and more chips can produce more hashrate, but they also require better power delivery and cooling. The impressive number is not always the setting you would choose for quiet, efficient, continuous operation.

    Multi-device setups add another possibility. Several small miners can point at the same pool or be managed as a small home fleet. That makes the Bitaxe useful not only as a standalone solo miner, but also as a modular building block. It does not improve the economics by magic; it simply lets the owner add hashrate in manageable steps.

    The larger lesson

    The Gamma block win will understandably receive most of the attention. My larger takeaway is that open-source home mining continues to mature around it. Firmware is becoming more capable, multi-chip designs are becoming more refined, and the next ASIC generation is close enough to provoke serious discussion.

    None of that changes the basic advice: buy a small miner because you want to learn, experiment, support open hardware, or participate directly in proof-of-work—not because a headline makes the payout look repeatable.

    Sometimes, however, the long shot lands. In July 2026, one Bitaxe Gamma proved it.

  • HomeNetCheck: Making Home Network Troubleshooting Less Technical

    HomeNetCheck: Making Home Network Troubleshooting Less Technical

    Home network problems have a way of becoming technical very quickly. A slow or unreliable connection may be blamed on Wi-Fi when the underlying issue is DNS, double NAT, the router, or the Internet connection itself. The information needed to narrow that down is often scattered across settings screens and command-line tools.

    I originally built homenet, an open-source command-line tool that runs a series of common network checks and brings the results together in one report. It is useful for people who are comfortable working in a terminal, but feedback from friends made one problem clear: the command line was still a barrier for many of the people the tool was intended to help.

    That feedback led to HomeNetCheck, a graphical desktop version for Windows, macOS, and Linux. You download it, open it, and click Check my network. The application runs the diagnostic checks and presents the results in a plain-language report.

    What HomeNetCheck Looks For

    HomeNetCheck examines several common sources of home-network trouble, including:

    • Whether your router or network gateway can be reached
    • Whether DNS responses are unusually slow
    • Whether the connection appears to be behind double NAT
    • Network latency and available Internet speed
    • Wi-Fi information when it is available from the operating system

    The report is intended to provide a useful starting point. It identifies what appears to be working, what could not be confirmed, and what may deserve a closer look. It does not make changes to the network or promise to repair every problem automatically.

    Two Ways to Use the Same Project

    The graphical and command-line versions serve different users:

    • HomeNetCheck is the graphical application recommended for most people.
    • homenet remains available for scripting, automation, remote support, and anyone who prefers a terminal.

    Both are free and open source under the MIT License, with no subscription. They are community resources rather than supported commercial products.

    An Invitation to Try It

    The graphical version is still an early release, and real-world feedback is especially useful now. I would like to know whether the instructions make sense, whether the explanations are clear, and where someone who is not a networking specialist becomes uncertain or gets stuck.

    If you try HomeNetCheck, please feel free to send me your observations. Reports from different computers, operating systems, and home-network arrangements will help improve both the application and its documentation.

    Download HomeNetCheck and Learn More
  • The Licence Is the Beginning: Practical Skills for Getting on the Air

    The Licence Is the Beginning: Practical Skills for Getting on the Air

    Passing the amateur-radio license exam gives you permission to transmit. Confidence on the air comes from what you do next.

    The amateur radio licence exam tests knowledge: regulations, basic electronics, operating procedures, and safety. That knowledge is necessary. It is not the same as being comfortable on the air.

    Most newly licensed operators discover this quickly. The exam covers what you need to know. The air is where you learn what to do — and the gap between those two things is wider than most people expect.

    Understanding the Basic Signal Path and Radio Controls

    Before making a contact, you should be able to trace the signal path from microphone to antenna and back again. Know where the audio enters, how it is modulated, what the amplifier does, and what the antenna radiates. On the receiving side, understand how the antenna picks up signal, how the radio selects a frequency, and how the audio reaches your speaker or headphones.

    Every radio is different, but the controls share a common vocabulary: frequency selection, VFO versus memory channels, squelch, RF gain, AF gain, filters, and mode selection. If you cannot find each of these on your radio without searching, spend time with the manual and the front panel until they are familiar. Muscle memory matters when conditions change quickly.

    Preparing for a First Contact

    A first contact does not need to be impressive. It needs to be completed. The goal is to exchange information clearly, confirm that both stations copied each other, and end the contact cleanly.

    Before transmitting:

    • listen on the frequency to confirm it is not in use;
    • have your callsign ready and know the phonetic alphabet version;
    • know the signal report system (RST for voice, CW for Morse);
    • keep a pen and log nearby, even if you plan to log digitally later;
    • if calling CQ, state your callsign clearly and slowly, twice.

    The first exchange will feel fast. That is normal. With practice, the rhythm becomes natural.

    Repeaters, Nets and Operating Etiquette

    Repeaters extend your range by retransmitting your signal from a higher antenna site. They are also where most new operators make their first contacts, because someone is usually listening. Before using a repeater, learn its offset, tone, and any access rules. Listen for a while to hear how operators on that machine conduct exchanges.

    Nets — scheduled on-air gatherings — are an excellent way to practice in a structured environment. A net control station manages check-ins and directs traffic. Joining a net as a visitor teaches you timing, brevity, and protocol without the pressure of a free-form QSO.

    General etiquette applies everywhere: identify your station at required intervals, keep transmissions short, yield to emergency traffic, avoid interrupting ongoing contacts, and do not tune up or test on a frequency that is in use.

    Logging and Confirming Contacts

    Logging is not just a regulatory requirement in some jurisdictions — it is your personal record of progress. A minimal log entry includes: date, time (UTC), frequency, mode, the other station’s callsign, signal reports sent and received, and any notes about conditions or the contact itself.

    Confirming contacts through services like LOTW or QRZ.com adds a layer of verification and is a common part of the hobby. The confirmation process teaches you to keep accurate records, because a mismatched log entry can prevent a confirmation from matching.

    Diagnosing Why a Contact Attempt Failed

    Not every call gets a response. When a contact attempt fails, the cause is usually one of:

    • No one is listening. The frequency may simply be unoccupied. Try a different band or time of day.
    • Propagation is not cooperating. Band conditions change with time of day, season, and solar activity. What worked yesterday at the same frequency may not work today.
    • Your signal is too weak. Power output, antenna efficiency, and feedline losses all matter. A SWR check and a power meter reading can rule out hardware issues.
    • You are not being heard clearly. Audio quality, microphone technique, and background noise affect intelligibility. A recorded test transmission can reveal problems you cannot hear live.
    • The frequency is in use but you did not hear the other station. This happens when propagation is one-way or when a distant station cannot hear you but can be heard by others.

    Diagnosing failures is a skill. Each one teaches you something about radio, conditions, or your own station that you would not learn from a successful contact.

    Practicing with the Free RadioBook Game Suite

    The RadioBook Game Suite is a free, browser-based set of interactive games and simulations that let you practice amateur radio skills without a radio. You can build virtual circuits, practice Morse code with instant feedback, simulate on-air contacts, identify interference patterns, estimate band conditions, and work through a license-class ladder — all from a web browser, with no installation required.

    For a newly licensed operator, the Game Suite is a low-pressure environment to build the reflexes that make on-air time more productive. For an instructor or club leader, it provides ready-made exercises that complement classroom material and exam preparation.

    The games do not replace real air time. They make real air time more efficient by letting you fail safely, repeat quickly, and arrive at your radio with a foundation of practiced responses.

    Try the free RadioBook Game Suite →

    When you are ready to go deeper, the RadioBook series covers amateur radio from first principles through advanced operating — five books with companion browser games, available now in Kindle and paperback.

    For occasional updates about RadioBook, game improvements, and new companion material, join the RadioBook Updates list.

    — Greg Weir, VA1GW

  • Bitaxe & Friends Update – Mid-July 2026

    Bitaxe & Friends Update – Mid-July 2026

    The last couple of weeks have been more about pool architecture and decentralization than about new boards or flashy firmware drops. The latest Bitaxe townhall dug deep into how solo pools, latency, and payout schemes affect decentralization, while Atlas Pool and other open-source efforts continue to push on performance and transparency. (YouTube — Bitaxe Townhall #61)

    Pools, decentralization and solo mining

    Bitaxe Townhall #61 (July 14, 2026) focused almost entirely on the current state of Bitcoin mining pools, with Scot, WantClue and Matt from Atlas Pool dissecting pool centralization, payout schemes and the practical meaning of “solo mining.” They distinguished “solo mining” as all-or-nothing lottery mining (no reward sharing) while using “pool” to mean any hosted Stratum endpoint that provides work and accepts shares, including solo-style setups like CKPool, Public Pool, Atlas Pool and similar.

    A big chunk of the conversation covered how a handful of large FPPS pools (Foundry, Antpool, F2Pool, ViaBTC, etc.) dominate the network, how “Antpool & friends” likely control closer to half the hashrate once template-sharing relationships are accounted for, and why that raises censorship and reorg risk concerns. The townhall also highlighted smaller solo and decentralization-oriented pools (Public Pool, Atlas Pool, PyBlock, Gridpool) as ways for hobby miners — including Bitaxe users — to push hash away from those big hubs.

    Atlas Pool’s architecture and latency focus

    Atlas Pool’s operator walked through how he’s built the pool with a heavy focus on performance and uptime, using globally distributed Stratum+node endpoints fronted by anycast on AWS. Rather than a single backend region, each Atlas endpoint runs both a Stratum server and a full node locally (per-region), so miners in Europe, Australia or North America are routed to the nearest live endpoint and can fail over to another region automatically if that region has issues.

    One key theme was that “latency matters” primarily because slower block notifications translate into more stale work and rejected shares, which is literally wasted electricity at scale. Atlas Pool has been explicitly optimizing both network latency and block notification time (how fast miners hear about a new tip) to reduce stale share rates, and the townhall spent time contrasting that with bigger pools that sometimes home-run anycast endpoints back to a single region.

    Stratum v1 vs v2 and job declaration

    The townhall also dug into Stratum v1’s limitations and what Stratum v2 brings to the table, especially around miner-selected block templates. Scott emphasized that the real “headline feature” of Stratum v2 and related proposals (like “datim”) is job/templating control: miners (or their local node) can construct their own block templates instead of blindly accepting the pool’s template, which reduces the pool’s ability to silently censor specific transactions.

    At the same time, both Scott and Matt noted that most of Stratum v2’s benefits are more meaningful for large pooled miners than for solo miners: features like binary encoding and share batching are nice, but they don’t radically change the experience when you’re running a Bitaxe pointed at a solo pool or your own node. The general takeaway for hobbyists was that Stratum v2 is a welcome evolution, but the “gold standard” remains mining directly to your own node when possible.

    Scam pools, transparency tools and AxeOS improvements

    Another notable thread was the story of how Atlas Pool’s operator built a script to verify pool block templates and discovered scam “pools” that were secretly proxying users’ hash to BCH backends and pocketing rewards. That work led to public call-outs of specific scam pools listed on common pool-listing sites, and inspired additional tooling like Scott’s “pool checker” script and UI improvements in AxeOS to expose how much of each coinbase payout is actually going to your address.

    For Bitaxe users, the practical outcome is that AxeOS can now show coinbase breakdowns, pool scriptSig data and other details directly on the miner dashboard, making it easier to spot suspicious payout splits without needing to decode raw templates by hand. This sits alongside vendor guides (e.g. D-Central, Solo Satoshi) on safe firmware updates and reinforces the message that “trust, but verify” applies just as much to pools as to firmware.

    Solo nodes, sovereignty and usability

    The closing section of Townhall #61 turned into a frank discussion about what “decentralization” should mean in practice for miners. Scott argued strongly for self-sovereign setups — running a full node and pointing your Bitaxe or Antminer directly at a CKPool/Public Pool-style solo server on your own infrastructure — while acknowledging that the current tooling is still more complex than it should be and that community work (Public Pool, updated CKPool, Gridpool, Go-based pools) has already made huge strides in the last couple of years.

    Matt took the “hybrid” view: fully sovereign nodes are ideal for those who can run them, but there should also be well-run, transparent pools for users who lack the time, money or confidence to operate their own node and Stratum stack. Both perspectives agree on the core goal: more options, more open-source implementations and more hash away from opaque mega-pools, with Bitaxe-class devices acting as a kind of gateway drug into that ecosystem.

    — Greg Weir, Tartanleaf

  • ISBN Backlog Canada: Why Indie Publishers Wait Months to Release Books

    ISBN Backlog Canada: Why Indie Publishers Wait Months to Release Books

    Update — July 13, 2026: Tartanleaf received additional ISBNs and has since published RadioBook Volumes 4 and 5 and both the Canadian and U.S. Ham Radio Answer Guides. The Smart Tech for Real People series remains in development and is not currently available for purchase. The remainder of this article describes the situation as it stood on July 11, 2026.

    If you are a Canadian author or publisher with a finished manuscript, edited, formatted, and ready to go, you might reasonably expect to publish it within days or weeks. That is how it should work. That is not how it works right now.

    The Problem: ISBN Delays in Canada

    In Canada, ISBNs are issued exclusively by Library and Archives Canada. They are free. They are mandatory if you want libraries, bookstores, or distributors to carry your work. And as of mid-2026, the wait for a new block of ISBNs is running at three months or longer.

    This is not a temporary glitch. The backlog has been growing since at least early 2026, with no published recovery plan and no way to expedite.

    Why Not Just Use Amazon KDP’s Free ISBN?

    Amazon KDP does offer free ISBNs for print books, but with a significant restriction: the imprint listed is Amazon’s, not yours. That means your book is effectively locked to Amazon’s distribution network. Libraries, independent bookstores, and non-Amazon retailers generally will not stock a book tied to another company’s ISBN.

    For a Canadian publisher who wants wide distribution — including Canadian libraries, local bookstores, and international channels — a publisher-controlled ISBN from Library and Archives Canada is the only viable path.

    What This Means for Tartanleaf Publications

    I used the allotment of ISBNs I was issued. I applied for more in July 2026. I am now in the queue with everyone else. Here was the direct impact on my publishing schedule at the time:

    • RadioBook volumes 4 and 5 are complete and ready for publication. They are sitting idle.
    • The Ham Radio Answer Guide — Canadian Edition paperback is ready, but the eBook is blocked.
    • Smart Tech for Real People (12 books, all drafted) cannot move past formatting into release.

    The work is done. The only blocker is a government queue.

    What Other Publishers Are Experiencing

    This is not an isolated issue. Canadian indie publishers across genres are reporting the same frustration, and the timelines keep stretching. The investigative journalism site The Receipts has documented the ISBN backlog extensively, reporting that “ISBN Canada’s stated 30-day window has stretched past 3 months. The agency confirms it cannot expedite requests.” Read their full investigation.

    Lincoln Shand, a fantasy author, applied two weeks before his May 19th launch only to discover the backlog had pushed his timeline out by months. “At one point, the normal wait was 3-5 business days,” he wrote. “So now I wait.” Read his full account.

    Warriors of the Last Days, a dystopian novel series, received a response from LAC explaining that “very high volume of requests and staff holidays” have pushed processing beyond the published 30-day window. See their update.

    Even the official Canada.ca ISBN page now carries a “significant backlog” notice, warning applicants to expect up to two months — though publisher reports suggest the actual wait is now 3+ months. View the official notice.

    In the Authors Supporting Authors Facebook group, Canadian publishers have been sharing their timelines since February 2026:

    “I applied on Jan 2. I emailed them on Feb 2, and they replied that they were currently reviewing applications submitted on Dec.” — Genoa Kay

    “Mine took like 2 months and I had to send a bunch of emails asking what the hell was going on, it was very annoying.” — George Anthony

    “I was told they’re still working on applications from end of December.” — Al Malcolmson (February 2026)

    “I did mine last year and didn’t get my ISBN until this year. I think the wait period was 3-4 months?” — Jenna Frowen

    “It’s frustrating! It took about 1.5 months for me.” — Daniel Robert Verkoeyen

    The pattern is consistent: what was once a 3-5 day process has become a multi-month queue with no sign of improvement.

    What You Can Do

    If you are a Canadian author or publisher in the same situation, the most useful thing you can do is make the issue visible. Contact your MP. Mention it in industry forums. Share your own timeline. Bureaucratic backlogs tend to get attention only when they become publicly uncomfortable.

    For readers waiting on the next RadioBook or Smart Tech for Real People title: the books exist. They are written, edited, and formatted. As soon as the ISBNs arrive, they will go live. I will update this post when that happens.

    Last updated: July 11, 2026
    Current LAC processing time: 3+ months and growing
    Sources: The Receipts — ISBN Backlog Investigation, Library and Archives Canada

  • Bitaxe & Friends Update – Early July 2026

    Bitaxe & Friends Update – Early July 2026

    The last month in the Bitaxe and open-hardware mining space has been quieter on the headline-hardware front, but there are still a few threads worth flagging for anyone following Bitaxe, NerdQAxe, and their cousins. The focus remains on firmware polish, broader solo-mining context, and the slow-but-steady creep of BM1373-based designs from rumor toward reality.

    Firmware: ESP‑Miner cadence, not drama

    On the core Bitaxe side, ESP‑Miner’s release train continues to move, but without a brand-new, post‑June 6 firmware that changes the day-to-day experience for most users. The GitHub releases page still shows the early‑2026 “early access” line as the most recent branch, explicitly framed as a preview/test build rather than a stable, production firmware.

    For practical purposes, that means the major firmware storyline over the last 30 days is continuity rather than surprise: the early-access branch remains the place where new features land first, while production-minded users stick to the last stable, focusing on incremental bug fixes and AxeOS update workflows documented by vendors like D‑Central and solomining.de.

    If you are already on a recent stable release and comfortable with AxeOS’s “Check latest release” flow, there has been no urgent “drop everything and update” event in late June or early July—just the same slow burn of improvements and documentation refinement.

    Solo mining: data, not just anecdotes

    While not Bitaxe-specific, the solo-mining story around desktop-class miners kept building in early June with more concrete pool data and coverage. A June 3 report pulled together stats from multiple solo pools—CKPool, Public Pool on Umbrel, and Braiins Solo—showing dozens of verified solo block wins since mid‑2023, including several new ones in 2026.

    The piece highlights that solo miners are still occasionally landing full 3.125 BTC rewards (plus fees) with payouts often in the 200,000 to 300,000 USD equivalent range, even as hashpower centralization continues at the farm scale. That may not change the expected-value math for Bitaxe-class rigs, but it reinforces the idea that the “lottery ticket” framing is grounded in fresh, measurable events rather than old legends.

    For readers following Bitaxe and NerdQAxe specifically, the implication is that the ecosystem those boards live in—small, often open-source miners pointed at solo or hybrid pools—remains very much alive and statistically visible in pool operator reports.

    NerdQAxe++ and “remastered” clones

    Outside the Bitaxe.org umbrella, NerdQAxe++ continues to evolve as a Bitaxe-derived, higher‑hashrate option. Mineshop’s 2026 review positions NerdQAxe++ as a 4.8 TH/s, desk‑friendly ASIC miner based on the Bitaxe hardware design, clearly targeting the same hobby/solo‑miner market but with more raw hash on tap.

    In late June, TinyChipHub followed up with a beginner‑friendly setup guide for the “NerdQAxe++ Remastered” variant, quoting around 5.2 TH/s ±10% at roughly 80 W, with four BM1370 chips and a very Bitaxe‑like Wi‑Fi/AxeOS configuration flow. The guide is framed squarely at first‑time miners: walk-throughs for joining the built‑in Wi‑Fi network, saving credentials, and making sure the on‑screen SSID matches what your laptop or phone sees.

    For anyone already comfortable with Bitaxe, NerdQAxe++ is less about learning new concepts and more about deciding whether the added hash and power draw are worth the incremental cost and noise. In other words: same open‑hardware philosophy, slightly more industrial‑strength implementation.

    BM1373: from rumor to practical considerations

    The BM1373 conversation is still mostly forward‑looking, but there are a few more grounded hints about how that chip will shape the next wave of Bitaxe‑adjacent hardware. A Facebook discussion from late April, still very relevant in June/July, notes that BM1373 is coming with revised boards and explicitly mentions replacing defective chips in NerdQAxe++–class devices—an early sign that the ecosystem is thinking about repairability and lifecycle, not just performance.

    At the same time, vendor content aimed at mainstream buyers has started positioning BM1373-based gear as the “next” step after current Bitaxe Gamma/GT and NerdQAxe++ boards, with some reviews referencing prototype GT‑style miners hitting multi‑TH/s figures on BM1373 while staying within hobby‑friendly power envelopes.

    There is still no clear, official “you can buy this BM1373 Bitaxe right now” announcement from Bitaxe.org, but the gravitational pull is obvious: next‑gen chips plus open‑hardware designs are converging; it is just a question of who ships what, when.

    What matters for hobby miners right now

    Taken together, the last 30 days look less like a “big release” month and more like a consolidation phase for the Bitaxe family and its relatives:

    • Firmware: ESP‑Miner’s early‑access line remains active but unchanged in June/early July, with community guides reinforcing safe update paths for AxeOS users.
    • Solo mining: fresh pool data confirms that desktop‑class miners—including Bitaxe‑class rigs—are still part of real, verifiable solo block wins in 2026, keeping the lottery metaphor tied to actual outcomes.
    • Related devices: NerdQAxe++ and its remastered variants continue to mature as Bitaxe‑inspired options with more hash and power, backed by beginner‑friendly setup guides from vendors like TinyChipHub.
    • Hardware horizon: BM1373 is moving from abstract spec sheet to practical design and repair discussions, even if fully mainstream Bitaxe‑branded boards based on it are not yet broadly available.

    — Greg Weir, Tartanleaf