My portable Raspberry Pi setup for mining

[jackg]

Mining Bitcoin with that, might as well mine with your watch. But I understand it's for fun. I saw something with a solar panel for one of those Pos coins.

Found it, here it goes. https://twitter.com/AvdiuSazan/status/756816182632734720

I have a similar setup, to avoid weather issues and possible 18650 cells exploding and burning they are in an ammo box and locked down. My only issue is getting the software to run, I may switch to an nxt node though.

Sounds like a great little setup you got there. Care to share a few pics about it? A NXT node would be great too as it is a really good coin with very cool features.  I'm planning on setting up a swap partition for my Pi in order to increase virtual RAM capacity.  Also,  it would be best to use an external HDD with the Pi for all the blockchain data files. 

I am at work but sure I will take some pictures later today, I would suggest against the external hdd incase you decide to switch over to solar and with the extremely cheap prices of microsd currently.

128gb microsd by samsung for $38 https://goo.gl/mz6Mdq

Kingston are the best drives to get (In my optinion), you can usually get a good class 10 128GB micro sd for a cometative rate.
Hard drives are cheaper but do require lots more power and also require mounting on the raspberry pi with specific commands.
You could always get something like a USB stick an backup the information on the SD to it and put that onto a hard drive so you don't have to do the re-initialization of the blockchain once the (micro sd) drive fails each time.

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[Abiky]

I am at work but sure I will take some pictures later today, I would suggest against the external hdd incase you decide to switch over to solar and with the extremely cheap prices of microsd currently.

128gb microsd by samsung for $38 https://goo.gl/mz6Mdq

Yeah. I wouldn't risk myself putting the external hdd without case when using it solar. That Samsung microsd is certainly a deal, although I think that the Raspberry Pi 3 supports up to 32gb microsd card? (or maybe I'm wrong) Still, this could be used as an external drive by putting the microsd card into an USB adapter for use with my Pi. Looking forward for those pictures of your setup.

Kingston are the best drives to get (In my optinion), you can usually get a good class 10 128GB micro sd for a cometative rate.
Hard drives are cheaper but do require lots more power and also require mounting on the raspberry pi with specific commands.
You could always get something like a USB stick an backup the information on the SD to it and put that onto a hard drive so you don't have to do the re-initialization of the blockchain once the (micro sd) drive fails each time.

Thanks for the tip. Kingston is one of the best drives out there, as well as SanDisk for high performance, and reliability. Right now, I would look for cheap solutions in order to have all my blockchain files into that external drive and at the same time protect the lifespan of the Pi's microsd card being used for the Raspbian OS.

I think that at least a 64GB to 128GB HDD or SSD would be ideal for this operation. 

[jackg]

I am at work but sure I will take some pictures later today, I would suggest against the external hdd incase you decide to switch over to solar and with the extremely cheap prices of microsd currently.

128gb microsd by samsung for $38 https://goo.gl/mz6Mdq

Yeah. I wouldn't risk myself putting the external hdd without case when using it solar. That Samsung microsd is certainly a deal, although I think that the Raspberry Pi 3 supports up to 32gb microsd card? (or maybe I'm wrong) Still, this could be used as an external drive by putting the microsd card into an USB adapter for use with my Pi. Looking forward for those pictures of your setup.

Kingston are the best drives to get (In my optinion), you can usually get a good class 10 128GB micro sd for a cometative rate.
Hard drives are cheaper but do require lots more power and also require mounting on the raspberry pi with specific commands.
You could always get something like a USB stick an backup the information on the SD to it and put that onto a hard drive so you don't have to do the re-initialization of the blockchain once the (micro sd) drive fails each time.

Thanks for the tip. Kingston is one of the best drives out there, as well as SanDisk for high performance, and reliability. Right now, I would look for cheap solutions in order to have all my blockchain files into that external drive and at the same time protect the lifespan of the Pi's microsd card being used for the Raspbian OS.

I think that at least a 64GB to 128GB HDD or SSD would be ideal for this operation. 

HDD use a lot of power so sad is probably best!
Kingston are a great company to use and I personally prefer them to SanDisk. My phone has been using a 32gb micro SD card from them and it's lasted for over 2 years with intense daily use.
Also, if the raspberry pi says it only supports up to 32GB it means that 32 GB or less is optimal. But adding more than 32GB may mean it takes slightly longer, but shouldn't cause too many bad effects.

[Abiky]

HDD use a lot of power so sad is probably best!
Kingston are a great company to use and I personally prefer them to SanDisk. My phone has been using a 32gb micro SD card from them and it's lasted for over 2 years with intense daily use.
Also, if the raspberry pi says it only supports up to 32GB it means that 32 GB or less is optimal. But adding more than 32GB may mean it takes slightly longer, but shouldn't cause too many bad effects.

Yeah. I currently have a Kingston 32GB microsd card on the Pi being used for the loading of the OS. This microsd has been used before for my smartphones and it has 3 years since purchase. Up to this date, it works perfectly fine and continues to serve its task on my Raspberry Pi 3. Now, I'm not sure if the Pi could really support the 128GB microsd card but if it does, they it will be very suitable for my little project. I have the cheap Samsung 128GB on my watch list, to purchase it later and try it with my Pi. If it doesn't work, then I'll just use a USB adapter for the microsd card connected to the Pi externally.

For the moment, the Pi is very efficient for coin staking where it requires very minimal power for you to earn coins. I am testing this now with OKCash. 

[BurtW]

Hmm, what does that produce?
H₂O + NaCl → H₂ + Na₃OCl?
It must be something like that to produce a solution. They are correct that hydrogen gs can be produced and it's probably ignited to produce the charge so that is quite a good idea (Once hydrogen is ignited, it reacts with oxygen in the air and produces water)! Meaning that was is left in the container is an base solution (which is probably harmless).

Let me know if it works if you get one as it looks an interesting and good buy!

On the ubuntu idea, you can easily get into tablets and change the SD card, but it's probably not worth it!

Interesting.  Here is the real reaction from their web site  http://www.myfcpower.com/pages/faq

The PowerTrekk uses a fuel cell to convert hydrogen gas and oxygen into usable energy. The hydrogen needed for this process is generated within the Puck. Each Puck contains two water reactive materials —sodium silicide (NaSi) and sodium borohydride (NaBH4). The mixture that is stored within the Puck is a solid powder; when water is delivered into the Puck, it initiates a chemical reaction that produces the hydrogen needed by the fuel cell.

While both of these materials will individually generate hydrogen, each generates the hydrogen differently. Sodium silicide extracts the hydrogen externally from the water (H2O), while the sodium borohydride breaks the hydrogen bonds that are internal to the compound (BH4). When the hydrogen generation process begins within a Puck, the sodium silicide is the first material to produce hydrogen. Sodium silicide generates hydrogen according to the following chemical reaction:

2 NaSi (solid) + 5 H2O (liquid) → 5 H2 (gas) + Na2Si2O5 (aqueous) + Heat

The heat that is generated by the sodium silicide reaction is then used to initiate the sodium borohydride reaction process according to the following chemical reaction:

Heat + NaBH4 (solid) + 2 H2O (liquid) → 4 H2 (gas) + NaBO2 (aqueous)

The two materials generate hydrogen simultaneously until the mixture is fully depleted. If the delivery of water is halted during this process, the hydrogen generation process will stop.

The big question is:

How much does each puck cost ($) and how much energy is release (KWh).

Given those two numbers you can find out how much the electricity from these pucks is costing you in $/KWh and compare it to your normal electricity costs (residential rates usually between $0.05/KWh and $0.12/KWh in the US).

I am betting you will find this to be a very expensive source of energy because you buy the pucks, use them once, then throw them away.  There is no way this process can compete with burning dirt (coal) or better yet hydroelectric.

[Abiky]

Interesting.  Here is the real reaction from their web site  http://www.myfcpower.com/pages/faq

The big question is:

How much does each puck cost ($) and how much energy is release (KWh).

Given those two numbers you can find out how much the electricity from these pucks is costing you in $/KWh and compare it to your normal electricity costs (residential rates usually between $0.05/KWh and $0.12/KWh in the US).

I am betting you will find this to be a very expensive source of energy because you buy the pucks, use them once, then throw them away.  There is no way this process can compete with burning dirt (coal) or better yet hydroelectric.

Actually I was thinking about the same thing as you. This solution wouldn't be worth it at all, since you would need to buy pucks each time to use the water and salt generator thus making it practically about the same expense as using electricity. As of now, there is no price announced yet but once it becomes available for purchase, we will be able to see the price in order to calculate the costs. Better yet, I think that it would be great to make a hydroelectric solution for the pi. I'm going to research more about this. 

[jackg]

Interesting.  Here is the real reaction from their web site  http://www.myfcpower.com/pages/faq

The big question is:

How much does each puck cost ($) and how much energy is release (KWh).

Given those two numbers you can find out how much the electricity from these pucks is costing you in $/KWh and compare it to your normal electricity costs (residential rates usually between $0.05/KWh and $0.12/KWh in the US).

I am betting you will find this to be a very expensive source of energy because you buy the pucks, use them once, then throw them away.  There is no way this process can compete with burning dirt (coal) or better yet hydroelectric.

Actually I was thinking about the same thing as you. This solution wouldn't be worth it at all, since you would need to buy pucks each time to use the water and salt generator thus making it practically about the same expense as using electricity. As of now, there is no price announced yet but once it becomes available for purchase, we will be able to see the price in order to calculate the costs. Better yet, I think that it would be great to make a hydroelectric solution for the pi. I'm going to research more about this. 

Be interesting if you could use that water as a cooler for the miner (the same water used to power that miner)!
I thought the puck was for the older models and not the newer ones?

(Also, the contents of the "puck" would not be too expensive to buy individually - I don't think)

(silicon, water and boron are probably really cheap as there is lots of them. Not sure about sodium though, that might be slightly more expensive).

[Abiky]

Be interesting if you could use that water as a cooler for the miner (the same water used to power that miner)!
I thought the puck was for the older models and not the newer ones?

(Also, the contents of the "puck" would not be too expensive to buy individually - I don't think)

(silicon, water and boron are probably really cheap as there is lots of them. Not sure about sodium though, that might be slightly more expensive).

Yeah that would be great for maximum coolness of the miner. Maybe the pucks won't be that expensive after all, but we will know once its price is announced. One thing that has gone though my mind, is the ability to make a hand crank powered Raspberry Pi. 

[BurtW]

Be interesting if you could use that water as a cooler for the miner (the same water used to power that miner)!
I thought the puck was for the older models and not the newer ones?

(Also, the contents of the "puck" would not be too expensive to buy individually - I don't think)

(silicon, water and boron are probably really cheap as there is lots of them. Not sure about sodium though, that might be slightly more expensive).

Yeah that would be great for maximum coolness of the miner. Maybe the pucks won't be that expensive after all, but we will know once its price is announced. One thing that has gone though my mind, is the ability to make a hand crank powered Raspberry Pi. 

Better yet tie the output of all the exercise bikes, stair climbers, treadmills, etc. to a generator.  I have always thought the energy output of all that cardio workout equipment around the world should be harnessed to do something...

[Abiky]

Better yet tie the output of all the exercise bikes, stair climbers, treadmills, etc. to a generator.  I have always thought the energy output of all that cardio workout equipment around the world should be harnessed to do something...

Great idea mate. By doing that you can rest assured to have a better healthy life, while at the same time producing energy for all your devices. In addition to this, I was thinking of producing power with your sweat as well. There are so many ideas out there in order to create a cost effective energy solution to power your devices like, in my case, the Pi. 

[jackg]

Better yet tie the output of all the exercise bikes, stair climbers, treadmills, etc. to a generator.  I have always thought the energy output of all that cardio workout equipment around the world should be harnessed to do something...

Great idea mate. By doing that you can rest assured to have a better healthy life, while at the same time producing energy for all your devices. In addition to this, I was thinking of producing power with your sweat as well. There are so many ideas out there in order to create a cost effective energy solution to power your devices like, in my case, the Pi. 

I was thinking that as well. Gymns could power their tread mills from energy produced from things like rowing machines and exercise bikes.
Also, I'm not sure hand crank raspberry PI would be a good idea as so much effort would be needed just to power it. You may also be sat there for around 8 hours a day just spinning the thing to charge it (Trust me, it does get boring doing it for more than 5 minutes)!

Are the pucks definitely needed for the newer models of the power generator? Older models did need on, but I thought the new one were just salt and water and nothing else?

[Abiky]

I was thinking that as well. Gymns could power their tread mills from energy produced from things like rowing machines and exercise bikes.
Also, I'm not sure hand crank raspberry PI would be a good idea as so much effort would be needed just to power it. You may also be sat there for around 8 hours a day just spinning the thing to charge it (Trust me, it does get boring doing it for more than 5 minutes)!

Are the pucks definitely needed for the newer models of the power generator? Older models did need on, but I thought the new one were just salt and water and nothing else?

Yeah the new models need the puck too (as stated on their website) so it is one time use and then you will have to replace it with another puck. Depending on the price of each puck, it will be determined whenever you will save more energy by using this method or not. Still, once I finish my college courses this semester, I will have time to experiment even more with my Raspberry Pi. First, I will try the solar charger, then the water and salt generator, and finally figure out a way how to make a GPU to work with the Pi via GPIO or USB.

I have so many ideas and perhaps if I put them all together, I can come up with something big. Just wait and see. 

[steven20222]

some mr robot shit going on here

[Cranky4u]

That would be quite an interesting concept to do to print a paper wallet once a certain amount of coins has been received. And would reduce the amount of money lost from hacking once the node and mining hardware is operational.
However, again, that printer would require more electricity which may then make it less portable.

I also have beenunable to get the GPIO pins to work as well (apart from redirecting the power of oneof te pins to the USB sockets).

True, but maybe if I use one of those small printers used for receipts then it may use very little amount of power. I was thinking about using one of these: http://www.ebay.com/itm/58mm-Mini-Portable-Bluetooth-4-0-Wireless-Receipt-Thermal-Printer-for-Android-EA-/262163057371?hash=item3d0a22cadb:g:nw4AAOSwHQ9WWCKO

It is a very small printer that uses its own battery for power. Basically, it is mainly used for printing receipts but I could make it to print small paper wallets in the form of a receipt containing both public and private keys. As for GPIOs, I think that it would be of no luck to try getting a GPU to work with it, which is why I think that it is best to stick onto external ASIC miners (or coin staking) at the moment on the Pi.

I have been looking at this concept for a few months to utilise some old mining gear, some minor solar panels (~200W in total) and establish some nodes (especially PoS wallets I have had for a few years).

Mind if I get some more data of you such as Pi OS & miner you are using?

The OS I'm using is the default Raspbian OS. It has been operating under default settings, using a 32GB microSD card as its storage. The Pi is powered via an external 10,000mah power bank and the connection to the Android tablet is done via USB tethering using a VNC app to connect to the Pi with an assigned static IP address (make sure to setup tightvncserver on your Pi for this) With the VNC, I can use the tablet as both display and input (mouse, keyboard) for the Pi.

I've only been using the Pi with ASIC miners that have very low hashrate, which only serves the purpose for fun and learning. CGMiner is the mining software I've been using for my block erupter miner, and now most recently an Antminer U3 I've bought used from ebay.

Just in case, here are the instructions to setup CGMiner on the Pi:

Code:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Install dependencies:
sudo apt-get install libusb-1.0-0-dev libusb-1.0-0 libcurl4-openssl-dev libncurses5-dev libudev-dev screen libtool automake pkg-config libjansson-dev screen

Clone cgminer from here:
git clone https://github.com/bitmaintech/cgminer

type the following (input your own pool, username and password):
sudo ./cgminer -o POOL -u USERNAME -p PASSWORD

cheers

[notabeliever]

How long does it run on the battery.

Second I think you should mine Burstcoin instead of bitcoin. The miner is built into the app now.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=burstcoin.com.burst

[Abiky]

How long does it run on the battery.

Second I think you should mine Burstcoin instead of bitcoin. The miner is built into the app now.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=burstcoin.com.burst

Yeah. I own some BURST and have been mining it with my laptop's HDD. However, I wouldn't risk myself doing it with the Raspberry Pi's microsd card as it will shorten its lifespan (and also they are not designed for constant read/write like HDD) I'm looking into setting up an external HDD connected to the Pi for this task.

The Pi runs almost all day with the 10,000mah battery so I can leave it for a couple of hours and mine some coins. But, I think that this depends on the processing power being used at the Pi, which will cause even greater power consumption. Imagine running the Pi with a 20,000mah battery. It will last even longer! 

[Vindicate]

I have a few raspberry pi's I should try something like this. Thanks

[jackg]

How long does it run on the battery.

Second I think you should mine Burstcoin instead of bitcoin. The miner is built into the app now.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=burstcoin.com.burst

Yeah. I own some BURST and have been mining it with my laptop's HDD. However, I wouldn't risk myself doing it with the Raspberry Pi's microsd card as it will shorten its lifespan (and also they are not designed for constant read/write like HDD) I'm looking into setting up an external HDD connected to the Pi for this task.

The Pi runs almost all day with the 10,000mah battery so I can leave it for a couple of hours and mine some coins. But, I think that this depends on the processing power being used at the Pi, which will cause even greater power consumption. Imagine running the Pi with a 20,000mah battery. It will last even longer! 

It'd be interesting ty try to mine burst with that definitely.
It isn't good to mine burst on an SD/micro sd card. It is probably also good to use NAS specific hard drives as this task is quite intensive on them.
A bigger battery does mean more power! However, i this currently profitable or are you just charging the battery from your home and paying for the power?

[Shiroslullaby]

Definitely a cool project.
While you can't really get a lot of value mining Bitcoin on a CPU,
you could use it for some other things like a controller you could remote into and manage your hardware miners.
Or, as mentioned, running some kind of node server with very little space/ power consumption.
Very cool to see projects involving Raspberry Pi! I need to think of something I can build so I have an excuse to finally buy one! 

[Abiky]

It'd be interesting ty try to mine burst with that definitely.
It isn't good to mine burst on an SD/micro sd card. It is probably also good to use NAS specific hard drives as this task is quite intensive on them.
A bigger battery does mean more power! However, i this currently profitable or are you just charging the battery from your home and paying for the power?

Well, it is not very profitable at all since you would pay more for an HDD and take quite some time to reach ROI. There is a BURST calculator around which tells you how much BURST you would earn with your current space, but since I have only a 128GB external SSD then I will use it to mine BURST only for fun.

Currently, I do not pay for power usage at my home since I live with my parents and they're the ones who pay it but once I plan to have my own place for this, then I should consider all ways possible in order to save electricity.

NAS is a pretty good idea to earn lots of BURST.