Bitcoin Forum

Thanks to all who responded to my previous post. Here is where I am now. Any comments, suggestions, or recommendations appreciated.

My grandson bought some ASIC mining hardware that he attached to his computer. But it has a noisy fan and gets in the way of his game playing. Also he keeps downloading viruses.
 To help him learn some security and computer science while supporting his mining interest.

My idea is to attach his hardware to a Udoo Quad which could be left running off in a corner somewhere. I need to learn a lot about bitcoin or he will get frustrated and give up. So far I've gotten bitcoin core to build and bitcoin-qt to run with the following results :
a) It uses all the RAM and an additional 750+ Mb swap;
b) It uses about 26% of one core;
c) It might work for managing one wallet, but is too slow for anything else.
d) Power consumption is minimal

The next step for me is to join the Udoo up with some mining hardware and get that running.  This go-around the hardware should be cheap, but good enough to keep the kid interested. He can spend his own money to buy expensive hardware ;)

Any suggestions?

Honest answer is from your information he is unreliable and not really interested in bitcoins. If you want him to learn computer security let him think he got hacked and lost all of his video game characters or in game money lol. You will get his attention faster that way.


Steve

Done that. It got his attention. The problem now is to keep his attention long enough for him to learn something. He came up with the bitcoin idea so I'm trying to seize the opportunity!

Alternatively, you can try some online courses. Here's a cryptography course: https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-science/cryptography
There are some really good ones out there, that really grab a kid's attention.