DCENT_Raven — D-Central Technologies
DCENT_Raven: LoRa Mesh for Any Bitaxe
A small open-hardware accessory that plugs into your Bitaxe's accessory port and puts the miner on a Meshtastic LoRa mesh — hashrate, temperature, and block-found alerts over kilometres of radio, with no internet, no ISP, and no cloud in the loop. Open hardware (CERN-OHL-S-2.0), open firmware (GPL-3.0). In design: the source is public today, but no boards have been built yet.
In Design — Source Public Today
DCENT_Raven went public on GitHub in July 2026 as a design-stage project. Here is the honest status — we would rather under-promise.
What Exists Now
A public repository with the full feasibility study, hardware spec, and firmware architecture. The pin-mux is finalized and the portable firmware test suite passes clean. You can read every decision we made and why.
What Does Not Exist Yet
Schematic capture and PCB layout are not done, and no board has been fabricated. That means no range claims, no performance claims, and nothing for sale. Until a real board proves itself on real hardware, everything here is a spec.
Follow the Build
The design work happens in the open at github.com/DCentralTech/DCENT_Raven. Join the Discord to follow along and get told the moment there is hardware to test.
What Is DCENT_Raven?
Your Bitaxe already has an accessory port (BAP) — a simple two-wire UART that speaks the miner’s telemetry. DCENT_Raven is a small board that plugs into that port and bridges it to a Meshtastic LoRa mesh: an ESP32-S3 translates the Bitaxe’s serial protocol into mesh packets, and an SX1262 radio carries them for kilometres on unlicensed spectrum. A solo miner in a shed, a cabin, or a remote site can watch hashrate and get a block-found alert without running internet to the machine — one more layer decentralized.
Off-Grid Telemetry
Hashrate, temperature, power, shares, best difficulty, and block height, broadcast over the mesh on a schedule you set. Your phone or any Meshtastic node in range becomes the monitoring dashboard — no Wi-Fi at the miner, no cloud account anywhere.
The Block-Found Bell
If your Bitaxe finds a block, that message goes out as a high-priority mesh broadcast. The one event a solo miner cannot afford to miss travels by radio, not by a push-notification service that needs your email address.
A Real Mesh Citizen
Raven is not a one-way beacon. It joins existing Meshtastic networks as a full repeater node, extending the mesh for everyone around you — your miner becomes communications infrastructure for your neighbourhood, the same layer we map in the sovereignty hub.
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
DCENT_Raven is a bridge between two open ecosystems that other people built. Our contribution is the connector; the hard work came first.
The Bitaxe & OSMU Community
Skot and the open-source miners united community didn’t just open the hardware — they gave every Bitaxe an accessory port (BAP) with a documented UART protocol. That deliberate act of extensibility is the entire reason a plug-in accessory like Raven can exist without modifying the miner.
Meshtastic
The Meshtastic project turned hobbyist LoRa radios into a real, encrypted, self-healing mesh network with a huge installed base. Raven speaks Meshtastic rather than inventing its own protocol precisely so your miner joins networks that already exist.
LoRa & Espressif
Semtech’s LoRa physical layer makes kilometre-scale, low-power radio possible on unlicensed spectrum, and Espressif’s ESP32-S3 gives the bridge an affordable, well-documented brain. Cheap, open, hackable building blocks — the same reason the Bitaxe itself exists.
The Design Brief
What the board is being designed to do. None of this is a shipping claim — the firmware logic is written and tested portably; the hardware that runs it is not built yet.
- Plug-and-play on the BAP port — works with any Bitaxe that has an accessory port; no soldering, no firmware mod on the miner.
- ESP32-S3 + SX1262 — the SX1262 radio needs SPI, which the two-wire BAP can’t provide, so a small MCU bridges serial to radio. That’s the whole trick.
- Miner telemetry over mesh — hashrate, temps, power, shares, best difficulty, block height.
- Block-found alerts — high-priority broadcast the moment it happens.
- Optional remote control, off by default — authenticated start/stop, retune, and pool-change commands exist in the design, and ship disabled. Telemetry-only is the default posture.
- Full Meshtastic repeater — extends any existing mesh; plays nicely with nodes you already run.
- Open end to end — firmware GPL-3.0, hardware CERN-OHL-S-2.0; build your own from the files when they land.
- Built-in sibling — DCENT_axe boards carry this same mesh radio onboard; Raven retrofits the ones you already own.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I buy or build one today?
No. The schematic and PCB layout are not finished, and no board has been fabricated. The repository is public so you can follow and critique the design before it exists — that is the point of designing in the open.
Which miners does it work with?
Any Bitaxe with an accessory port (BAP), which covers the current open-hardware lineup. It also interoperates with DCENT_axe boards, which carry the same mesh radio built in — Raven is the retrofit path for hardware you already own.
How far does the mesh reach?
We are not publishing a range number until a fabricated board proves one on real hardware. LoRa meshes routinely span kilometres with line of sight, but terrain, antennas, and enclosures dominate — any figure we quoted today would be marketing, not measurement.
Can someone control my miner over the mesh?
Not unless you turn that on. Remote control is designed as an authenticated, opt-in feature and ships disabled; the default posture is telemetry out, nothing in. The code is GPL-3.0, so you can verify that yourself.
Do I need a Meshtastic network already?
No — two nodes make a mesh, and a Raven plus a cheap Meshtastic handheld or phone-paired node is enough to monitor a miner. If there is already a mesh in your area, Raven joins it and strengthens it as a repeater.
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Last reviewed July 10, 2026.