About The Star Forge Fortune favors the prepared mind 🕊️ 🐭 🦆 🍓 🦣
The efficient 110 Watt Off-The-Grid, fully ARM'ed, solar powered, Starlink connected Cardano Stake Pool
Overview
The Star Forge is solar powered with 2 weeks of LiFePo4 battery storage and connected to the internet through Starlink with failover onto cable internet provider. The pool consumes just 110 watts of power.
Totally off the grid stakepool using solar panels, LiFePo4 batteries Apple Silicon and Starlink. I am a founding member of the Armada Alliance & on the core dev team for Tosidrop . I spend most of my time helping single stake pool operators run on efficient arm based computers.
I provide support to other Stake Pool operators, writing guides and providing a image you can flash to quickly spin up and sync a node within an hour on a Raspberry Pi.
Security & Privacy
The block producer is isolated on a separate vlan with it's own 1 Gbps interface connected directly to Starlink's power brick.
All communication to the Core is through a Wireguard UDP VPN. Essentially the pool looks like a couple encrypted webcam feeds on the wire. Network failover to broadband ISP with DDNS updating DNS records.
Hardware
True decentralization of the Cardano blockchain provides security to everyone's investment. Staking to a bare metal single pool operator is extremely important and it is up to you to stake responsibly. The Star Forge is doing it's part by providing an extremely efficient and secure option. Please support my work by delegating to my pool. Thank you!
- Mac M1 Mini x3 Asahi Arch Linux
- Turris Omnia open source router
- Starlink internet service provider
- Victron Solar MPPT charge controller and inverter
Original Pi-Pool (Deprecated)
It all started in the BERRY pool group. Before the BERRY telegram group was over run with NFT collectors there where many pool operators running on Raspi's. As time went on more and more upgraded to more powerfull servers.
The Raspberry Pi is still viable as of this writing on mainnet as a node. That is very impressive when compared to other chains.
Powerwall Specs (Deprecated)
Originally I had built a Tesla style Powerwall with lithium ion cells reclaimed from old laptop batteries. it was capable of running 3 raspberry Pi's on two solar panels. The power requirements for Starlink sealed the handmade batteries fate. I hope to use it soon with another project.
Building this battery took hundreds of hours and I do not recommend it. Each cell has to be obtained, taken apart and fully charged. Then discharged while measuring it's capacity and charged back up to a storage charge until all the rest are processed. Then the banks need to be balanced, assembled and then soldered with 5 amp fast blow glass fuses on both sides. The soldering itself took over 50 hours.
