Bitcoin Forum

Hello! I’m rather new to the whole crypto space, I’ve read crypto for dummies and crypto mining for dummies so I got the basics down.

But my main question is if it’s possible to create your own bitcoin miner and I’ve seen raspberry pi’s and usb sticks turned into miners but could a proper miner be made, obviously not to compete against modern consumer based miners but just enough to make a buck or two.

Note: I have a 3d printer and i tinker with tech in my spare time and though this might be a cool project to try out for fun let me know if there’s any info on projects similar to this or someone else is actually already developing this!!

They are not 'turned into miners'
The Pi's are running cgminer and act as controllers for the ASIC-based miners. The usb sticks are custom built to provide power and coms to ASIC's mounted on them.
That said, yes you can build a DIY miner - that is using existing ASIC mining chips and runs cgminer. There are at least 2 current threads on that in the Hardware area. They both use an onboard micro to run cgminer to directly talk to the chips vs using a Pi, Beaglebone, whatever to talk via a usb connection.

There's a guide here that you can follow if you want to run a compact F USB miner check this one below to get some idea.

- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1764803.0

One compact F is not enough to make a quick buck I think 10 or more with a hub will make you $1+ weekly.

As far as I know this Raspberry pi and usb stick you are talking about cannot be used for bitcoin mining. Because it doesn't have the ability to solve a math problem to mine Bitcoin. Although you can create your own Bitcoin miner. There is only the GPU that you will need and then you also need a motherboard and a power supply unit in my idea that I know.

The raspberry pi only use to run the software the USB stick miner we talking about is Compact F it is an ASIC miner in USB stick that support SHA256 meaning you can still mine Bitcoin using this USB miner.

Actually, about solving a block I heard the news who mine solo with this miner and luckily mine a 6.5BTC on ckpool minus 2% fees.

You should have a look on this project : https://github.com/skot/bitaxe
Here is the topic dedicated to the project Bitaxe on Bitcointalk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5400851.0
Bitaxe was created by Skot. which is an active member of this forum, and very helpful. You could join his Discord server, a lot of people are on it to talk about and discuss DIY Bitcoin ASICs

But as you can imagine, you won't be able to compete with companies in the sector with this. It's more of a hobby project than something to do if you're looking for absolute efficiency. Consider it a DIY alternative to the ASICs produced by Gekkoscience, for example.