What do you need before you start?
Setting up a Bitaxe takes about ten minutes. You need four things:
- The Bitaxe and its power supply. The Bitaxe Gamma, Bitaxe Supra and Bitaxe Ultra run on 5 V through a barrel jack and need a supply that can deliver about 6 A. The Bitaxe Gamma Turbo needs 12 V. A phone charger or USB-C cable will not power any of them.
- A 2.4 GHz WiFi network. AxeOS cannot join 5 GHz networks, and the Bitaxe has no Ethernet port.
- A Bitcoin address you control. Copy it from your own wallet. On DirectPool it must start with
bc1or3; addresses starting with1are rejected. - A phone or laptop to join the miner's setup hotspot.
Put the Bitaxe somewhere with free air around it. The board has a small fan and a heatsink, and it gets warm. Keep it off carpet and away from curtains.
How do you connect a new Bitaxe to WiFi?
A new Bitaxe does not know your WiFi yet, so it creates its own network for setup.
1. Power it on and join its hotspot
Plug in the supply. The small screen lights up and, after a few seconds, the miner opens a WiFi hotspot named Bitaxe_ followed by a few characters. Join it from your phone or laptop. It has no password.
2. Open the setup page
A setup page usually opens by itself. If it does not, open a browser and go to http://192.168.4.1. Some phones warn that the network has no internet; choose to stay connected.
3. Enter your home WiFi
Type your WiFi name and password exactly, including capital letters. Save. The Bitaxe restarts, joins your network and shows its new IP address on the screen, something like 192.168.1.57. Write it down.
If the screen keeps showing the hotspot name instead of an IP address, the WiFi details were wrong or the network is 5 GHz only. See the troubleshooting checklist.
Which pool settings do you enter in AxeOS?
4. Open AxeOS
Go back to your normal WiFi, then type the IP address from the screen into a browser on the same network. This opens AxeOS, the dashboard that runs on the Bitaxe itself. Open Settings. On newer AxeOS versions the pool fields sit under a separate Pool tab.
5. Fill in the four pool fields
| Field | What to enter for DirectPool |
|---|---|
| Stratum Host | stratum.directpool.io |
| Stratum Port | 3333 |
| Stratum User | bc1qyouraddress.bedroom |
| Password | x |
Replace the example address with yours. The part after the dot, bedroom here, is a worker name you choose. It lets you tell several miners apart on the pool page. Use letters, numbers, dashes or underscores.
AxeOS wants the host and port in separate fields. Do not paste the full stratum+tcp://stratum.directpool.io:3333 into Stratum Host; that is the format for miners with a single URL box. If you want to know what each part means, read Stratum URL, worker and password explained.
6. Save, then restart
Click Save, then Restart. AxeOS keeps using the old pool until it restarts. After about a minute the dashboard should show a hashrate and a growing count of accepted shares.
Careful: copy and paste your Bitcoin address instead of typing it. Rewards in a DirectPool block go straight to the address in Stratum User, so one wrong character means you are paid to an address nobody controls.
How do you know the Bitaxe is mining on DirectPool?
Check two places:
- AxeOS dashboard. Look for a hashrate close to the expected figure (about 1.2 TH/s on a Gamma at stock), accepted shares going up and a pool connection with no errors.
- DirectPool. Paste your address on the home page. Your worker appears after the first shares arrive, usually within a few minutes. The hashrate shown there starts low and becomes accurate over the following hour, because the pool can only estimate speed from the shares it has seen.
You do not need an account, email or password on DirectPool. Your address is your login. Payouts happen inside the block the pool finds, as outputs of the coinbase transaction, so there is nothing to withdraw. You can check this yourself on the verify page.
What numbers are normal for a Bitaxe?
These are typical stock figures from the makers' published specs. Your unit may be a little above or below.
| Model | Chip | Hashrate | Power | Supply |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ultra 204 | BM1366 | about 450 GH/s | about 13 W | 5 V |
| Supra 401 | BM1368 | about 600 GH/s | 12 to 15 W | 5 V |
| Gamma 601 | BM1370 | 1.0 to 1.3 TH/s | 15 to 20 W | 5 V, 6 A |
| Gamma Turbo 801 | 2x BM1370 | 2.0 to 2.45 TH/s | 35 to 43 W | 12 V |
The chip temperature in AxeOS usually sits between 50 and 65 °C at stock settings in a normal room. AxeOS protects itself: if the chip passes 75 °C or the voltage regulator passes 105 °C, it stops mining, runs the fan at full speed and restarts at lower settings. Details are in the Bitaxe settings guide.
What are the most common setup mistakes?
- Adding
stratum+tcp://to Stratum Host. Enter the bare host,stratum.directpool.io. - Forgetting Restart after Save. Nothing changes until the miner restarts.
- A router that mixes 2.4 and 5 GHz under one name. If the Bitaxe will not join, give the 2.4 GHz band its own name in the router settings.
- A weak power supply. Under-powered units reboot, show low hashrate or will not start the chip. Use the supply that came with it or a quality 5 V 6 A unit.
- An address starting with 1. DirectPool only accepts
bc1and3addresses. - Expecting the pool page to match AxeOS right away. Give it an hour before comparing numbers.
What should you expect after setup?
Be clear about the money. At about 1.2 TH/s, a Bitaxe Gamma makes up a tiny fraction of the whole Bitcoin network, so its share of any pool block is small. DirectPool is also a small pool, so its blocks are irregular. A Bitaxe is a way to take part in mining, learn how it works and support pools that are not run by the biggest companies. It is not an income source. The odds calculator shows your live chances, and Can a Bitaxe find a block? explains them.