DCENT_ExpansionPack — D-Central Technologies
DCENT_ExpansionPack: Wi-Fi for Your Miner, Without the Compromise
A small open-source bridge board that puts a DCENT_OS miner on your home Wi-Fi: scan a QR code, and the board routes the miner over a private Ethernet subnet — the miner never touches your Wi-Fi password. ESP32-C6 + wired Ethernet, open hardware (CERN-OHL-S-2.0), open firmware (GPL-3.0). The v0.1 design is frozen and fab-ready; no boards have been manufactured yet.
v0.1 Design Freeze — Fab-Ready, Not Fabricated
DCENT_ExpansionPack went public on GitHub in July 2026. Here is the honest status — further along than a sketch, not yet a product.
What Exists Now
A frozen v0.1 hardware design: full KiCad schematic and layout (ERC-clean), a JLCPCB-ready fabrication bundle, and feature-complete firmware that fits its flash budget. Anyone can read the files and send them to a board house.
What Does Not Exist Yet
No board has been manufactured or tested. Fab-ready files are a strong claim about design discipline, not about validated hardware — first articles come next, and we will report what breaks. Nothing is for sale today.
What Comes Next
First fabrication and bring-up, then a v0.2 already sketched in the open: multi-SKU power input, USB-C, and an onboard temperature/humidity sensor. Join the Discord to follow the bring-up.
What Is the ExpansionPack?
Industrial miners speak Ethernet; homes speak Wi-Fi. Most people bridge that gap with a closed-firmware travel router and a password typed into a web form. The ExpansionPack replaces that with a purpose-built open board: an ESP32-C6 (Wi-Fi 6) plus a wired W5500 Ethernet port that gives the miner its own private subnet and routes it to your home network. You provision it by scanning a QR code — the Wi-Fi credentials live on the bridge, never on the miner, and nothing about your setup leaves your house.
QR-Code Onboarding
Scan a code, confirm the network, done — the target is under five minutes from unboxing to a miner on the dashboard, with live credential validation in the captive portal so you are never left guessing whether the password took.
Isolation by Architecture
The miner sits on its own private Ethernet segment behind the bridge. It never holds your Wi-Fi password, and the bridge is the only thing that talks to your LAN — a cleaner security posture than flashing Wi-Fi drivers into mining firmware.
More Than Networking
An external temperature sensor feeds DCENT_OS’s mining-heating mode with the room’s real temperature, and headers accept an OLED status display or a BAP-style touchscreen. It is an expansion pack in the honest sense — the miner gains senses.
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
Every piece of this board is someone else’s proven work, assembled openly. Credit where it is due.
Espressif & WIZnet
Espressif’s ESP32-C6 brings Wi-Fi 6 and a mature open SDK (ESP-IDF); WIZnet’s W5500 has been the workhorse of hobbyist wired Ethernet for a decade. The board works because these parts are boring in the best way.
The Travel-Router Pattern
Pocket routers proved that “bridge one wired device to Wi-Fi” is what home miners actually do. We are grateful for the pattern — our contribution is an open-hardware, open-firmware version purpose-built for the miner use case, with no closed blobs in the path.
Bitaxe Accessory Culture
The Bitaxe community normalized miners with accessory ports, touchscreens, and add-on boards — hardware meant to be extended by its owners. The ExpansionPack’s display and touchscreen headers follow that culture directly, including BAP-style UART compatibility.
The v0.1 Design
What the frozen design implements. Firmware is feature-complete against this list; hardware validation on fabricated boards is still ahead.
- ESP32-C6 + W5500 — Wi-Fi 6 (2.4 GHz) to wired Ethernet with an RJ45 MagJack, on a six-layer board.
- QR-code provisioning — captive portal with live credential validation; the miner never handles Wi-Fi credentials.
- Stable naming — the miner shows up as
dcent-pack-XXXX.localvia mDNS, no IP hunting. - Room-temperature sensing — external TMP102-class sensor feeds DCENT_OS mining-heating mode.
- Display headers — I²C OLED (SSD1306) and BAP-style UART touchscreen supported.
- HMAC-signed OTA updates — updates are signed and local; there is no cloud dependency to lose.
- Protected power — 12 V input with a protected buck to 3.3 V; USB-C/UART for flashing and debug.
- Fully open — KiCad hardware (CERN-OHL-S-2.0), ESP-IDF firmware (GPL-3.0), docs and tools (MIT), JLCPCB-ready fab bundle in the repo.
Requirement worth stating plainly: the ExpansionPack is designed for miners running DCENT_OS (Antminer S9, S17, S19-family, S21 supported; more ports in progress). It does not support stock Bitmain firmware, BraiinsOS, VNish, or LuxOS — the pairing protocol lives in DCENT_OS.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I buy one?
Not yet. No boards have been manufactured. The v0.1 files are fab-ready in the repository, so a determined hacker can order their own from JLCPCB today — that is what open hardware means — but first articles have not been validated, so expect to be a pioneer. Commercial availability through D-Central comes after bring-up.
Does it work with stock firmware or BraiinsOS?
No. The pairing and management protocol is implemented in DCENT_OS, so the ExpansionPack requires a miner running it. That is an honest limitation, not a fine-print surprise.
Why not just use a travel router?
A travel router works, and we have recommended them for years. The ExpansionPack exists for people who want the same convenience with open firmware, no closed blobs, a temperature sensor their heater-miner can actually use, and a QR onboarding flow where the miner never sees the Wi-Fi password.
Is anything cloud-connected?
No. Provisioning, management, and OTA updates are all local; updates are HMAC-signed and served on your network. There is no account, no telemetry, and no server of ours in the loop.
What is planned for v0.2?
Multi-SKU power input, USB-C power, and an onboard temperature/humidity sensor are on the public roadmap. v0.2 happens after v0.1 boards have been built and honestly torn apart.
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Last reviewed July 10, 2026.