This award-winning space heater can also make you money
Using a space heater can cost you dollars a day, so the idea of one that can actually run for free or even make you money sounds pretty innovative. What's more innovative is what such a device could do beyond being a space heater.
That's the idea behind the Heatbit Mini, a sleekly designed space heater and air purifier that just won a CES Innovation Award because of what's inside of it: Instead of resistance coils, the Heatbit has silicon chips that heat up by running trillions of computations per second.
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These computations can mine Bitcoin or train AI models, helping users earn money back. Doing computational work and heating simultaneously could also cut down CO2 emissions significantly.
Though the Heatbit Mini is a plug-and-play multifunctional device that's easy for anyone to use now, this wasn't the case when the company was started in 2020 by Alex Busarov. ZDNET spoke to Siranush Sharoyan, marketing director at Heatbit, to learn more about the company and what such a device means for consumers.
We all know what took over the world in 2020, and Busarov experienced this in China, one of the countries with the strictest COVID-19 lockdown regulations. During the lockdown, Sharoyan says, Busarov tinkered with different tech toys, including a Bitcoin miner.
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"As he started playing around with a Bitcoin miner, he realized it could be a great heater as well, and that if he used it as a heater, he could actually save a lot of energy because if you're heating by these devices, you kind of use a single energy unit to do two jobs," Sharoyan said.
Bitcoin mining rigs generate a significant amount of heat because the computational processes happening inside are intensive. This work consumes a lot of electrical power, which produces heat as a byproduct.
Bitcoin mining is mostly done in data centers, but Busarov's realization inspired in him the idea of taking all of these computations out of data centers and putting them in people's homes in the form of heaters. This could save a lot of energy and reduce CO2 emissions.
"The most important thing is probably that it makes the whole computation system more energy efficient because I don't want whole data centers to just give up the heat as a byproduct -- this is the most important part for me, this is rewarding itself," Sharoyan added.
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The Heatbit Mini now uses 1kWh of energy by simultaneously computing, heating, and purifying. The company claims it is favoring green energy with the device, as Bitcoin mining with data centers plus household heating consumes about 2.5kWh in total, including 1kWh for computations, 0.5kWh to cool equipment, and how people use 1kWh to heat their homes.
Busarov followed up on the idea with a Reddit post to get a feel for what people thought about it, followed by a successful Indiegogo campaign that raised enough to start building the prototype.
The initial Heatbit models, though large and imperfect, demonstrated the concept's market potential and led to sales surpassing a million dollars. This ushered in a redesign and the launch of the sleeker CES-Innovation-Award recipient, the Heatbit Mini.
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The Heatbit Mini is powered by 5 nm chips and 20 billion transistors and has a computational power of 10 TH/s, yet it operates silently at under 40 dB (miners can range from 50-90 dB). Unlike the first-generation device, Heatbit opted to give the Heatbit Mini year-round utility with built-in air purification with a HEPA filter; however, the device doesn't make users money when used in the air purification function only.
The Heatbit Mini can heat a room of up to 400 square feet; its HEPA filter captures 0.3-micron-sized particles, has a touchscreen display, and can make users up to $23 per month.
Built with aviation-grade aluminum with a natural leather handle, Sharoyan explained the Heatbit Mini is designed to look and feel premium. The air is pulled in at the device's base, heated as it works through the system, and then pushed out through the top. The aluminum housing helps dissipate heat efficiently into the surrounding air without getting hot to the touch.
The Heatbit Mini consumes the same amount of energy as a traditional space heater but can potentially make users money in cash rewards for Bitcoin mining. Heatbit's computational power could be used to train AI models, render video, and play games.
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As for how the Heatbit mining benefit works, the buyers have options. Consumers can buy a $799 Heatbit Mini unit and fully own all the Bitcoin mined from day one or pay a lower price for a bargain agreement.
An "Equal split" costs $419 for the Heatbit Mini, and users can get 50% of the earnings while Heatbit gets the other 50%.
"From the user perspective, it works as a heater, so you don't have to think about what the device is doing," Sharoyan said. While Heatbit is still figuring out the details of AI training, users must navigate the Heatbit app to see how much income their device generates.