Bitcoin Forum

are there any projects that run BTC mining on Raspberry PI zero with solar power?  I'm wondering if thats a worthy idea?  to decentralise bitcoin mining, one of the biggest barrier is electricity cost, but if we can have a small device that can run with solar power, effectively this can make the bitcoin network stronger.  Its not about profitability but strenthening bitcoin network

The hashrate you get for cpu (or gpu) mining is sooooo low that the income and the benefits for the network are so close to 0, that in reality you can say they are 0(both the netto hashrate, as the hashrate for every Joule of energy consumed).

The strenght from the network comes from the huge total hashrate. In order to orphan a chain, you'd need to invest millions in hardware and power to pull it off (even if you just want to orphan 1 block). So by adding an rPi, you're doing nothing for the network, an attacker wouldn't have to spend a single cent more in order to attack us if you decided to mine with your rPi...
If you want to contribute, you could potentially use your rPi as a full node, i guess that would do more than using it as a mining device.

In addition to the comment above:
You can mine on raspberry some not particularly popular cryptocurrencies. There are a lot of mining testing results on the network, look for it. The closest thing to what you suggest was once made by a manufacturer of mining equipment bitmain. They released a couple of home routers with a built-in miner a few years ago - Antrouter R1, Antrouter R3-DASH, Antrouter R3-SIA. Of course, they did not mine bitcoin, but alternative cryptocurrencies.

If you want to actually mine Bitcoin, not just waste electricity and not mining altcoins, you have to have an ASIC.
So for RasPi to make sense in the equation, you may need at last an USB miner (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5355470) too.

You're probably better off mining Monero or another CPU coin, but payback will take 5-10 years.

You would need a battery as well to store the energy when there's no sun.

Given that the Pi has almost zero hashing power (even CPU and GPU working together), the battery would die long before you get any chance to recover a tiny fraction of your investment.

It's like trying to mine gold with a teaspoon.

I admire your intention, but you can't do anything about it, in fact, you don't even need to worry about the strength of bitcoin because it's already too strong, with mining there is always a self-interest in protecting the network, the more hashrate you have means the more profit you make which also means the more you have to worry about keeping bitcoin safe.

despite the fact that bitcoin mining is on the brink of being controlled by a few large entities -- the network is more secured than ever, if we are talking about decentralization then ya that's a whole different topic, but as far as security is concerned, there is exactly nothing the average joe can do, especially not with a raspi, it's like a drop of water in the desert.

I mine BTC on Raspberry Pi. A lot of Raspberry Pis and NewPac USB ASIC miners and a lot of USB hubs.

If you got a 40 foot shipping container full of Raspberry Pis and ASICs and put at the back of a farm and put on top a ton of solar panels and satellite dishes it might work for a while.

Good luck.

R.

You must be inspired by this video
https://youtu.be/CbpfNU7oaws

I do not know if this will be helpful or not, but I think people are curious about this topic, but the question is feasibility.   Usually when people think of Solar Powering a Raspberry Pi it is just to see if it will work and how cheaply you can do it. Anyways this is what I am playing around with in my spare time.. (I usually get about half an hour to fool around with it on weekends).

I cannot speak for the person that started this thread, but that video did pique my interest. I have been curious about using Solar to power Raspberry PIs as well.  Not so much for mining BUT to just test if it could keep one running.  I am not electrically inclined so I have to hunt for what looks to be easy.  To start (about 2 weeks ago)  I purchased this cheap Solar Panel -  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07F83M356/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1   I hung it in my garage window.  It has two USB ports. I connected one to a Bluetooth Speaker (micro USB)  to charge and one to a little Sega handheld game (mini USB) console.  This panel only worked during the daylight of course. The game console had been powered off for at least 2 years, but may have had a tiny charge.  The Bluetooth speaker had been powered off for at least 1 year but had a minimal charge. With both plugged in and left, it took right at 2 days for the game console to fully charge and approx 3 days for the speaker to charge.  This was a direct charge with no battery.

I then ordered this battery kit from amazon - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07XFBN7HX/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1  this is a 2 pack Miady 10000mAh Dual USB Portable Charger, Fast Charging Power Bank with USB C Input, Backup Charger for iPhone X, Galaxy S9, Pixel 3 and etc.   Both had approx 40 - 50% charge already based on the lights that lit up.   The solar panel struggled to charge both based on the blinking light. For 1 day it seemed to trickle charge between the two ports.  So I moved one to a separate plugged in charger drawing from the home current. The one plugged in charged fully in 1.5 days.  The one plugged into the solar panel was fully charged after 2.5 days.  Given the solar charged unit was only able to charge for 50% of the time. I didn't think this was too bad.      That was where I left off last weekend.  This is where my lack of knowledge of Solar kits me.  I do not know if this will work or not, but I am thinking my next test is to is to plug one of these batteries to the solar panel, and then connect a something to the battery and leave that item on to see what happens. If that seems to work, then I am thinking i should connect something cheap that I can interact with such as an ESP32 similar with a camera to see what happens.  Maybe point the camera at the battery so I can view it remotely. 
If that test pans out then the next step would be to connect  a RaspBerry Pi Zero W to the battery and power it on and and see how it works, Then once I have it up and running, just keep an eye on it and check it to see if it loses power, maybe try to surf the web.    As for mining, I don't think mining BTC would be a starting point, maybe trying to mine DuinoCoin, then if I can get to a point where I can sustain a Pi mining Duinocoin then look at USB mining BTC at stock speed or something.

I am wondering if it makes more sense to look at something like this instead of the cell phone battery banks.  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09MTFFQG6/?coliid=IA0V6NODFLVOF&colid=1BQ3BM9DD6FR6&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it     
or this one as the first one seems too cheap, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09MTFFQG6/?coliid=IA0V6NODFLVOF&colid=1BQ3BM9DD6FR6&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it     

Please note that all the amazon links I list in this are not trying to get anyone to buy anything.  these are just intended to be visual references.

I don't want to hijack this thread, but let me know if you want to know how the above pans out.