Bitcoin Forum

Im a bit new to mining but let me say ive been seeing alot of people buy stupid things you dont need for mining... correct me if im wrong.

Rasberry pi= i see videos and pictures of people buying these things that cost around 60 bucks and they just run 4 block erupters on them... just use a usb hub you guys have computers right? waste of money unless your running a big rig of usb asics

Buying overpriced usb block erupters= ive been seeing this on the web alot stores like bitcoinrigs.org or ebay selling block erupters for 35$, 50$ even 65$ each! and people are buying them! Go on amazon they sell block erupters brand new sealed for 18-20 a piece and btcguild sells them for .18 btc and when you buy them you get coupons for them .03 btc off...

GPU= Gpu mining is basically outdated now pretty much. along with the high prices of a gpu that cost 500$ and runs at 300 mh/s


please stop wasting your money, money is valuable i cry everytime i see these things  :'( whishing i had that much money to spendBTC

ok gpu mining is $200 for 630 hash. which is the only thing that can mine alt coins. rasp i is all about electricity cost less to run one than a pc.

Why would you care? More people mining, no matter what they pay is a good thing. Do you complain when people buy expensive clothes or waste money on movie tickets instead of waiting for the DVD release? Pointless.

I had 60+ GPU systems mining, I had Samsung SATA SSD drives for all my miners. Never had one fail either.

Does that count as wasting money?

Here is my perspective:

As for the raspberry pi, well it uses a lot less electricity compared to my gaming laptop.  Heck, just the power supply for my laptop is as big as 6 raspberry pi's.

As for the block eruptors, well people are willing to pay what they pay because of the value they perceive.  Remember, this value doesn't have to be counted just in terms of money returned from mining.  For some, perhaps it is the ease with which a vendor/reseller makes the process that justifies the added expense. For others, they might do it to support their favorite pool.  At this stage, I think the majority of the people buying ASIC Miner block eruptors are doing so either for fun or educational purposes.  When it comes to fun and learning, most of us have a hard time not wasting money when we have it.

As for the GPUs, I keep mine for two reasons.  The first is to support alt coins in the hope that they will be a source of future innovation in the cryptocurrency space.  The second, is just in case bitcoin ever did have to move away from sha256 on to something like scrypt.  I'd want to be ready.   

I bought a raspberry pi for three reasons:

• I don't have a desktop PC I want to run 24/7
• Power consumption is very minimal
• Doubles as a passable NAS (see first point)
• Gnu tools! My other local machines run Windows. It comes in handy sometimes.

Some people mine as a hobby believe it or not.  People are into a ton of different expensive hobbies.  Cycling, Saltwater Aquariums, Collecting watches etc...

For me it's collecting GPUs.  I love setting up mining rigs... to the point of disassembling them and doing it over again including the OS installation.  Does that make me crazy? mmm... maybe.  But I guess it doesn't matter as long as I'm enjoying myself.  That and I'm hoarding litecoins.  

Because one day, computers will take over the world.  And they won't take physical currency.

When the temprature now goes below 0c outside, it`s nice to know my 3 "heaters" is actually making money.
And when everybody said that the scrypt coins would be flooded with gpu`s when the asics took over sha256,
they where all wrong. Ofcource you can`t make much money now days, but my gpu`s still make a profit. And
heating my house. ;) And another thing, today i belive AMD will release som info on their new R9 series. It may
be a gamechanger in a short period of time, or not.  :P

Maybe if you mined, you'd have some money? 

Well, my RPi was just sitting there not being used and chews very minimal power compared to my desktop or laptop, plus it's good to have separate in case I need to reboot etc.

Why not?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_YUjXHGsoU

you can't prove that people are buying up BEs at that price....those who are initiated have become hip to that price rate and are waiting for the prices to drop further ... down to like the 5-7 dollar price range.  Only fools who were to part ways with their money will be quick to buybuybuy before analyzing profitability (like paying 3 btc for 10 BE with a usb hub for sales as a 'rig' on amazon.


the raspberry pi will pay for itself in the amount of power you no longer consume from having a pc on mining constantly (there are limits though, like i have heard that a limit of 50 Block erupters can be utilized.  Will pay for itself even faster when you consider that it is quick to setup and can be configured to run stable for extended periods of time including being able to be easily setup to mine on Start.  (windows in theory could be scheduled to do this as well, but again, we are talking about an entire PC used to run devices as opposed to a small unit that could also do the same task.  Also, its much easier to design a solar powered setup with Uninteruptible power supply especially with BE's and a Raspberry Pi. 


Also, I'm endorsing mining alt-coins when bitcoin is no longer profitable so that the remainder of roi can be generated from your hardware.

If money not used, then it is completely wasted as you don't use that. Consider today's business. If you have some ideas about the Q3, then you know the problem is.  People support the mining as, the being is bounded, monitored by all people.

In Equipment view, Many people are fell into supplier's misconceptions.  There are many things to check. If you typical equipment, Then PCI-E x1M to x16f is the portal to build a dual-GPU mining system with normal board like AMD A55, Intel P43 varies.

Additionally is USB 2.0 PCI card
Last thing is PCI-E x1 USB 3.0 card

Software is *nix, always. I have found equipment runs with *nix, better than Windows.


Also, More than 100Gh/s, in 28nm, must be extremely careful as the being has little chance to be released. Remember the BFL.

I think people like to drop the phrase "My pi" in casual conversation. It places them a notch above the Apple store guru. An RPi + 4 Eruptors also costs much less than a new iPhone, so it is not really a waste of money in the grand scheme of things.

rPi is about the worst possible example of "waste of money".

Say your home PC uses 120 watts idle.  The pi uses 4.  Keeping both on 24/7 means the PC in a year that is more than 1,000 kWh.  At $0.10 per kWh that is $100 in wasted electricity.  When you consider that for most people that means 500 kWh of additional heat for half the year and the AC costs to cool that it is probable closer to $120 in wasted cost.

PC is just about the worst possible platform for mining.  It just happened that there is no good/easy way to access GPUs without one.  Now that the GPU era is over there is really no reason to ever use a general purpose PC for mining.

yes i know some idiots buy used rigs that are 3x the price and outdated but i actually have bought block erupters of amazon for 17$ and they are working great

This is great troll bait, which I think was the original intention.

My first response was going to be 'how do you type with all that drool on your keyboard?'

However, I've decided to feed the troll with 'I have more money than I know what to do with so I amuse myself with watching shares accepted all day', its like watching the old windows defrag program, hypnotic.

Fess up, how many people just used to sit and watch that defrag moving stuff around?

staring ad the defrag???? you just dated yourself buddy - my generation couldnt be bothered and went into the adjacent room to whip out some mario brothers 3 on the square NES

I buy them because they are blue, of course.  If they're shiney, too, that makes them even cooler.

And to make poor people cry.  That's an extra added benefit....

Plus I constantly defrag my SSDs, just to watch the NAND burn

I like blinking lights.

Lol.  While currently I don't have a Pi I am getting one sooner or later.  Why?  Cause I'm a gadget freak!  Yes I have a computer that stay's on 24/7 anyway which is what is currently running part of my mining at least the bitcoin parts.  Why would I run another setup on top of that?  Cause I can and its fun to setup.  This to me is same as asking why I setup my own home survelence with zoneminder instead of buying a cheap camera box they sell for that.  Or why I run LMCE media center with dumb terminals getting their os over netboot.  Cause I'm a geek and its fun to setup once its setup I gets boring so I build something else!

Lol I used amazon gift cards I had gotten from some various sites to fund my first purchase as well.  hehe  Gotta love amazon!

Since this thread is about buying useless things for mining, I figured I'd mention the little gadget I bought to use monitor my Raspberry Pi mining setup. Yes, I have a Pi, AND a tiny LCD display to show my miner status...

I already had a Pi mining, saw this little display, bought one, and wrote some software for it. Actually, it's FAR from useless, and I don't think it was a waste of money at all :)

http://cardcomm.github.io/cgminerLCDStats/

https://raw.github.com/cardcomm/cgminerLCDStats/master/lcd_and_pi-small.jpg

Too bad you can't get one with an Amazon gift card...  LOL

Dude, this is awesome!

^^ Wow, that is pretty awesome. I feel left out now.

Yeah I bought one of those screens for another use, but decided after seeing cardcomms stuff that I would give it at try with minepeon...now to figure out why it cannot be seen on my hub :/

dude you know this lol , man its like visual CRACK. i stopped doing that when i actualy got some real crack now i stare at the shadow people who come out of the walls .

Thats great man , how do i set one up and how much dose that cost

Just looked on your page (nice page by the way). How does that plug into rpi? do you need an adapter for the rpi hdmi connection?

Since beginning of August, the difficulty has risen 30 % in every adjustment. Assuming it stays that way, you can easily compute an upper bound for the lifetime earnings of any mining device: Take the weekly earnings at the current difficulty and multiply them by 6.7. 330 MH/s should make BTC 0.00781 in a week, so the upper bound formula gives BTC 0.052327.

If you mine solely for profit, since the block eruptors cost at least twice that much, the Raspberry Pi isn't wasted money; the block eruptors are.

I like geek toys.  I think these tiny computers are cool, and mining happens to be a fun and useful thing to do with them.

I have a BeagleBone Black, several Pis, and a WR703N all mining right now.

Bug report: That screen is reporting MtGox on it. Don't waste pixels on useless information.

Same here.  I love having that £10 box run my miners, despite there being an i5 machine running 24/7 right beside it.  ;D 

Lulz +1

This is awesome!  Too bad my units are in a datacenter, I'd love an excuse to build one of these.

You see people pay crazy prices for items, I don't try to understand it.  In my case I paid the following.
Pi $35
Pi case $8
Pi PSU $5
2 Roswell 10 port 4 amp hubs $40
1 D-Link 7 port 3.5 amp hub $15
16 asic rev3 miners $300

uses 42 watts of power
5.3 Ghs

That's about $80 a Ghs, not good.  But I already had the Pi, only cost was the miners, still that's $56 a Ghs. Not good.  I'm looking at a used BFL 60 GH/s miner for $2200 or about $35 a Ghs.  

It's a hobby!

It is just fun, that is why we buy this shit.

And BTW, why not? You'd need 50K and the miners right now to even make a living out this these days.

In 2010, you had to buy 10 medium end GFX's and make buckloads of money. (Maybe not that time, but 1 year later the price skyrockets.

I'd like to point out that in another thread the OP started he asks about cooling his 20 USB block erupters. :o

Maybe he wants to learn more about himself?

Thanks ;) It's pretty much just the page that github generates for you, with a few customizations.

Anyway, it's USB device, so it can plug into a hub, or directly into the Pi. No adapter needed. Keep in mind it's not really a "monitor", just a limited resolution LCD display.

As for where to get one, information is on my github page here:
http://cardcomm.github.io/cgminerLCDStats/ (http://cardcomm.github.io/cgminerLCDStats/)

Or the direct link to get one from the vendors ebay store is here:
(I DO NOT WORK FOR the seller of this display or endorse them in any way. I just thought it was cool, so I bought one. They are about $30 US)
http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-2-8-TFT-LCD-module-LCD-sys-info-display-temperature-fan-AIDA64-LCD-Smartie-/121004607232?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c2c6fc700 (http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-2-8-TFT-LCD-module-LCD-sys-info-display-temperature-fan-AIDA64-LCD-Smartie-/121004607232?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c2c6fc700)

I've been sitting here looking at it, and I'd already realized an MtGox ticker is no longer relevant. Except that quite a few places that trade USD for BTC still use mtgox as a reference point. At any rate, I'm considering adding support for a different exchange if I can find a suitable API.

Thanks for all the comments, everyone ;)

Looks great and really not expensive to add on raspi.

If it costs 200$ then we could say it's waste of money.

WHAT?  ;D

you guys can be happy... costs 0.20€ here
a modern office pc takes 30W, a gaming machine can waste easily above 50W just idle, thats 60-100€ only power cost

but the rPi is not the optimum even. needs SD card, case, Wifi dongle if you dont have a LAN.
i use a TP Link MR3020 aka european WR703N - 0.5W and has everything above already on board ;)

Hehe my Gaming PC uses 160W idle, it's fucking retarded... Gaming load on the other hand is only 300W and another retarded number: 550W On full load.
So be happy with your energy efficient mashines, and power here is easily 0.25 EURO cents, so 0,30$

No body want to waste money, everyone is thinking that it would make them big money. But in the end, everyone lose and BFL wins.