Hammer Miner: BC01, BC04 & Thor X1 Technical Specs, Chips & Firmware Options

Hammer Miner (AltairTech.io) is a line of ESP32-class, single-board SHA-256 solo/lottery Bitcoin miners in the Bitaxe-derivative class. D-Central’s GPL-3.0 DCENT_axe firmware now ships factory images for the Hammer SHA-256 lineup — the BC01, BC01-Pro, BC02 and BC04/Thor — and they are flashable right now from your browser at /flash/ (public beta; the images are experimental). Stock firmware (“Thor OS”) is vendor-controlled, but these boards run Bitmain BM1370- and BM1373-class silicon that DCENT_axe targets — so owners can verify and reclaim control of their own hardware rather than trust a vendor binary.

What is Hammer Miner?

Hammer Miner is a hardware brand sold under AltairTech.io (also hammerminer.com; organization at github.com/HammerMiner). Its Bitcoin models are compact, single-board miners that pair an ESP32-class microcontroller — which handles WiFi, the web dashboard, pool/Stratum communication and job dispatch — with one or more Bitmain SHA-256 ASICs that do the actual hashing. This is the same architecture the open-source Bitaxe project popularized: a low-power, plug-in solo/lottery miner you run at home to mine directly against a pool or your own node, rather than an industrial rack unit.

Across the current SHA-256 lineup the ASICs are Bitmain’s 5 nm and 3 nm parts:

• BM1370 — the 5 nm chip from the S21 Pro generation (also the ASIC on the Bitaxe Gamma reference board). Used by the single-chip BC01, the two-chip BC02 and the four-chip BC04/Thor.
• BM1373 — a 3 nm, S23-generation chip used by the single-chip BC01-Pro (sold at retail as the “Thor X1” and “BC01 Pro”).

All of these mine SHA-256 (Bitcoin) over 2.4 GHz WiFi. AltairTech also sells Scrypt (Litecoin/Dogecoin) Hammer hardware under DC-series model numbers — a separate product family covered briefly below, not conflated with the Bitcoin models.

Hammer Miner SHA-256 models (DCENT_axe flasher + manufacturer specs)

DCENT_axe factory images (v0.3.0, experimental): dcentaxe-hammer-bc01, dcentaxe-hammer-bc01-pro, dcentaxe-hammer-bc02 and dcentaxe-hammer-bc04 (all -0.3.0-factory.bin).

On the “Thor” name: AltairTech applies “Thor” branding to two different boards. The single-chip BM1373 unit is sold at retail as the Thor X1 (and, on some stores, as the BC01 Pro); the flasher lists that board as BC01-Pro, and its DCENT_axe image is dcentaxe-hammer-bc01-pro. The four-chip BM1370 flagship is listed in the flasher as BC04 / Thor (image dcentaxe-hammer-bc04). Pick the model that matches your actual board — DCENT_axe does not read the board’s identity strap, so a wrong pick gives you the wrong pin map.

Scrypt DC-series (separate, not Bitcoin): AltairTech also sells Scrypt (Litecoin/Dogecoin-merged) Hammer hardware — the DC02 (2×), DC04 (4×) and DC06 (6×), all built on the MSBT0501 Scrypt ASIC. DCENT_axe ships experimental factory images for these too (dcentaxe-hammer-dc02/dc04/dc06-0.3.0-factory.bin), but they mine a different algorithm, and the MSBT0501 driver does not yet enumerate — so flashing gets you a booting, reachable device, not hashrate. Do not conflate the DC-series with the SHA-256/Bitcoin models above.

Open-source firmware & DCENT_axe

Hammer Miner’s stock firmware is branded Thor OS (some resellers call it “HammerOS”) and is vendor-controlled in practice. The device architecture — an ESP32-class controller running an APP firmware plus a WWW web-UI, driving one or more Bitmain ASICs — closely mirrors the open ESP-Miner + AxeOS stack. But whether Thor OS is genuinely an ESP-Miner/AxeOS derivative cannot be verified: no firmware source is published to inspect. We do not claim a lineage we cannot confirm.

The github.com/HammerMiner organization does exist (14 public repos, with an APP/WWW naming split that echoes ESP-Miner and AxeOS). As of the last push in mid-July 2026, however, the Bitcoin-mining repositories — BC01-APP, BC04-APP, BC04-WWW and BC04 — are effectively empty placeholders: each contains only a README and a small version file, the whole BC04 repo is a few kilobytes, and none declares an open-source license. So despite the open-looking repo names, no actual firmware or UI source is currently published and no OSS license is granted. The honest framing is neither “Hammer publishes open firmware” nor “fully closed” — it is vendor-controlled stock firmware, with GitHub repos present but unpopulated and unlicensed.

Unlike Lucky Miner — where independent community developers have published GPL-3.0 ESP-Miner forks for specific boards (mrbonkerz/ESP-Miner-LVXX, r3mko/ESP-Miner-LV07, matlen67/ESP-Miner-LV08) — we found no independent community ESP-Miner fork specific to Hammer devices at this time. That gap is exactly what DCENT_axe now fills for this hardware.

DCENT_axe is D-Central’s answer: DCENT_axe — an ESP-Miner-derived, GPL-3.0 build of DCENT_OS, offered as a first-party, verifiable firmware option for this class of hardware (public beta). As of DCENT_axe 0.3.0 it ships factory images for the Hammer SHA-256 models directly — BM1370-based (BC01, BC02, BC04/Thor) and the BM1373-based BC01-Pro — and you can flash them right now from your browser at /flash/, no toolchain required. This is a real change from the earlier position, when only the BM1370 boards were assumed supportable and the BM1373 (Thor X1 / BC01 Pro) was left as “not yet listed”: BM1373 is now supported, as the BC01-Pro image.

We keep the framing honest, because the principle is the point:

• The images are experimental. D-Central owns no Hammer hardware, so they are reverse-engineered from vendor firmware and host-tested only — they have not been proven on a physical Hammer board, and there are no code signatures on them yet. We won’t pretend otherwise.
• DCENT_OS does not yet read the board’s identity strap, so it trusts the model you select. Choose the model that matches your board (BC01 vs BC02 vs BC04 vs the DC-series use different pin maps).
• The BC01-Pro is the least-evidenced image on the flasher: with no BC01-Pro firmware available to reverse-engineer, its parameters come from the vendor’s own web UI.
• The Scrypt DC-series will boot but not mine yet (the MSBT0501 driver does not enumerate).

The accurate claim is not that Hammer or AltairTech blesses this, but that DCENT_axe is a verifiable, first-party firmware you can inspect, build and flash yourself for hardware whose stock firmware is closed. If you would rather verify your own miner than trust a vendor binary, that is the path. See the web flasher and the DCENT_OS documentation.

Shoulders of giants

None of this exists without the open-source builders who came before. The ESP32 + Bitmain-ASIC solo-miner class originates with Bitaxe and its creator skot (@skot9000) / bitaxeorg; the open firmware and web-UI stack this hardware architecture mirrors is ESP-Miner / AxeOS (GPL-3.0); and the broader open-source Bitcoin-mining ecosystem is stewarded by the 256 Foundation. Credit is also due the independent community developers keeping this class open — including the Lucky Miner ESP-Miner forks by mrbonkerz, r3mko and matlen67. DCENT_axe stands on their work.

Frequently asked questions

Can I flash open-source firmware on a Hammer Miner?

Yes. D-Central’s GPL-3.0 DCENT_axe (public beta) now ships factory images for the Hammer SHA-256 models — BC01, BC01-Pro, BC02 and BC04/Thor — and you can flash them straight from your browser at /flash/, no toolchain needed. The images are experimental: D-Central owns no Hammer hardware, so they are reverse-engineered from vendor firmware and host-tested rather than proven on a physical board, and they carry no code signatures yet. Hammer’s own GitHub repos are empty, unlicensed stubs and no Hammer-specific community fork exists, so there is no vendor-published open firmware to flash — DCENT_axe is the first-party, verifiable option.

What chip does Hammer Miner use?

The BC01, BC02 and BC04/Thor use Bitmain’s BM1370 (5 nm, S21 Pro generation) — one chip on the BC01, two on the BC02, four on the BC04/Thor. The BC01-Pro (sold at retail as the “Thor X1” and “BC01 Pro”) uses a single BM1373 (3 nm, S23 generation). Both chip families are in the DCENT_axe supported set.

Is Hammer Miner good for solo mining?

These are purpose-built solo/lottery miners: low-power, single-board, WiFi-connected units meant to mine directly to a pool or your own node. At roughly 1.5–6.5 TH/s they contribute a very small share of total network hashrate, so block finds are probabilistic and rare — the appeal is running your own hardware and, ideally, your own verifiable firmware, not guaranteed yield. Manufacturer-stated efficiency is roughly 11–16 J/TH across the lineup.

What is the difference between the BC01, BC01-Pro, BC02 and BC04/Thor?

The BC01 is the entry single-chip model (BM1370, ~1.6 TH/s, ~23 W, USB-C, no Ethernet). The BC01-Pro is a single-chip board on the newer 3 nm BM1373 (~4 TH/s per the flasher; retail Thor X1 / BC01 Pro list ~3.2–3.3 TH/s at ~34–38 W, ~11 J/TH, with an AMOLED display). The BC02 is a two-chip BM1370 board (~3.25 TH/s). The BC04/Thor is the four-chip BM1370 flagship (~6.5 TH/s, ~96–110 W stock, adds RJ45 Ethernet and an OLED display). Note that “Thor” is a vendor name applied to two different boards — the single-chip BM1373 unit (Thor X1) and the four-chip BM1370 flagship (BC04 / Thor); match the flasher model to the board in front of you.

Is Hammer’s stock firmware open source?

No. The stock “Thor OS” firmware is vendor-controlled. While the github.com/HammerMiner organization exists with APP/WWW repo names that echo the open AxeOS stack, those Bitcoin-mining repos are empty placeholders with no published source and no open-source license as of mid-2026. That is precisely why a first-party, verifiable option like DCENT_axe — now flashable for the Hammer SHA-256 models at /flash/ — matters for these boards.