My portable Raspberry Pi setup for mining

[jackg]

It's probably not too good an idea to keep your battery always charging as it drains the cells of teir power.
The raspberry pi doesn't have that feature in it's operating systems as they don't come with a battery.
It's a shame there isn't an opeating system dedicated to mining either, maybe one should be built for maimising the use of this. (can you not also get a battery monitor from the pi store built in to the raspberry pi os)?

Yeah. I'm not leaving it charging by the way, but the battery has a built in monitor in which I could see current charge level. Still, it is a feature that should be implemented on future versions of Raspbian, unless there is an app already for that. In the meantime, I have no problem with this as my battery has a monitor, but when I make the switch to the water and salt powered battery then that will be an issue in which I would need to solve.

By the way, the reason that I chose to run an ETC full node on it, it's because I've always been fascinated with smart contracts. It will be very interesting to learn how to make my own dapps on the blockchain with it, and thus be able to use them on either ETH or ETC platforms.

Sounds like a good idea! There are some complaints that running a raspberry pi as a node is counterproductive to the network, however, it helps with the decentralisation of the network so that must be a good thing.
I found this Not sure if it is of any use but looks interesting.

Do you know the price of those salt and water power generators?

[Abiky]

Sounds like a good idea! There are some complaints that running a raspberry pi as a node is counterproductive to the network, however, it helps with the decentralisation of the network so that must be a good thing.
I found this Not sure if it is of any use but looks interesting.

Do you know the price of those salt and water power generators?

It appears that there isn't a price defined yet for the water and salt generators as when I click Pre-book I get to fill out a form for them to notify me when it is ready for buy and ship to its destination. Just checked out the PiCheckVoltage and it seems that it may be pretty ideal for my little project. Once the water and salt generator comes out for purchase, I'll buy one and test it out with my Pi to see how it works. It will be pretty interesting to have one of these for practically anything from smartphones, tablets, and even SBC computers. 

[calkob]

it looks cool but what do you mean by on the go mining, surly its a novelty and cant really be in with a chance of finding anything?

[Abiky]

it looks cool but what do you mean by on the go mining, surly its a novelty and cant really be in with a chance of finding anything?

Yeah. It may not find anything yet, but it can be used for fun and learning. I will continue to experiment with different power options and portability towards making it an on-the-go mining system. I am planning into getting one of those Baikal Miners as they are multi algorithm and are pretty useful for mining a variety of alt coins. The mini miner only consumes 40w so I will figure out a way to get some good power and portability at the same time in order to mine anywhere with this thing (and also teach people about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies along the way)

Also, I am planning towards getting a mobile hotspot to be able to suit this task. 

[Betwrong]

it looks cool but what do you mean by on the go mining, surly its a novelty and cant really be in with a chance of finding anything?

Yeah. It may not find anything yet, but it can be used for fun and learning. I will continue to experiment with different power options and portability towards making it an on-the-go mining system. I am planning into getting one of those Baikal Miners as they are multi algorithm and are pretty useful for mining a variety of alt coins. The mini miner only consumes 40w so I will figure out a way to get some good power and portability at the same time in order to mine anywhere with this thing (and also teach people about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies along the way)

Also, I am planning towards getting a mobile hotspot to be able to suit this task.  

First I want to say that I liked your Raspberry Pi 3 mining setup. Yeah I know it's for fun but I would be really happy to see more people have fun with things like that.

The Baikal Miner is a more serious thing and it costs $500, which is not nothing, but if you can afford it that's great. I think those Baikal Miners are pretty good for mining DASH and I also think that among all crypos DASH is one of those who probably have the bright future. At least that's a fact that the market capitalization of DASH is around 80 millions of USD, so it's definitely something.

Good luck with your projects! I will be following the progress with big interest.

[Recoon]

nice setup man.

[Abiky]

First I want to say that I liked your Raspberry Pi 3 mining setup. Yeah I know it's for fun but I would be really happy to see more people have fun with things like that.

The Baikal Miner is a more serious thing and it costs $500, which is not nothing, but if you can afford it that's great. I think those Baikal Miners are pretty good for mining DASH and I also think that among all crypos DASH is one of those who probably have the bright future. At least that's a fact that the market capitalization of DASH is around 80 millions of USD, so it's definitely something.

Good luck with your projects! I will be following the progress with big interest.

Yes. The Baikal miner would be of great use to me for Dash mining, and also serves as a multi algorithm miner for other cryptocurrencies. This will be something that I will work on during the following months. I will share my progress from within this thread once I get at least the miner and some additional equipment (especially the water + salt battery) to keep you all updated.

By the way, do you or anyone know of a power meter that would be recommended in order to monitor the miner's power usage?   

[jackg]

First I want to say that I liked your Raspberry Pi 3 mining setup. Yeah I know it's for fun but I would be really happy to see more people have fun with things like that.

The Baikal Miner is a more serious thing and it costs $500, which is not nothing, but if you can afford it that's great. I think those Baikal Miners are pretty good for mining DASH and I also think that among all crypos DASH is one of those who probably have the bright future. At least that's a fact that the market capitalization of DASH is around 80 millions of USD, so it's definitely something.

Good luck with your projects! I will be following the progress with big interest.

Yes. The Baikal miner would be of great use to me for Dash mining, and also serves as a multi algorithm miner for other cryptocurrencies. This will be something that I will work on during the following months. I will share my progress from within this thread once I get at least the miner and some additional equipment (especially the water + salt battery) to keep you all updated.

By the way, do you or anyone know of a power meter that would be recommended in order to monitor the miner's power usage?   

It'll use a maimum of 42W if that's what you mean. I think that there's probably something you could install for the rapsberry pi to monitor it as I think that's where it's power would come from.
Compared to the price of a Pi, it's a fairly expensive piece of equipment for you to get.

[Abiky]

It'll use a maimum of 42W if that's what you mean. I think that there's probably something you could install for the rapsberry pi to monitor it as I think that's where it's power would come from.
Compared to the price of a Pi, it's a fairly expensive piece of equipment for you to get.

I guess you're right. It makes me wonder how long would it take me to reach ROI with this miner and if its worth the price. Better off, I think that I can do better with my own mining rig using Radeon GPUs. I've seen that ETH is the most profitable crypto to mine right now with GPUs, so I'll give it a try. Still, the Raspberry Pi would be spared for fun and learning only as I think that I cannot accomplish something greater than just that. 

[jackg]

It'll use a maimum of 42W if that's what you mean. I think that there's probably something you could install for the rapsberry pi to monitor it as I think that's where it's power would come from.
Compared to the price of a Pi, it's a fairly expensive piece of equipment for you to get.

I guess you're right. It makes me wonder how long would it take me to reach ROI with this miner and if its worth the price. Better off, I think that I can do better with my own mining rig using Radeon GPUs. I've seen that ETH is the most profitable crypto to mine right now with GPUs, so I'll give it a try. Still, the Raspberry Pi would be spared for fun and learning only as I think that I cannot accomplish something greater than just that. 

It would take a while to ROI unless you picked up new coins and started mining them in the hope that they go from start-to-pump-to-dump and sell during the pump.
Ethereum was a really profitable coin to mine, however, I think the network difficulty has increased by quite a lot since it has been adopted.
I've also heard that the gerater the ram on the GPUs for eth mining, the more profitable it is. So you'd need like 16GB ram gpus in order to make the best profit and they may require separate batteries/renewable energy sources.

[Abiky]

It would take a while to ROI unless you picked up new coins and started mining them in the hope that they go from start-to-pump-to-dump and sell during the pump.
Ethereum was a really profitable coin to mine, however, I think the network difficulty has increased by quite a lot since it has been adopted.
I've also heard that the gerater the ram on the GPUs for eth mining, the more profitable it is. So you'd need like 16GB ram gpus in order to make the best profit and they may require separate batteries/renewable energy sources.

Thanks for the advice. Actually, I've never thought that the more RAM a GPU has the more ETH it will mine. Right now, I'm building my GPU mining rig step by step buying the parts one at a time in order to make it the ultimate ETH/ETC mining rig. I thinking of making it one that does not require an external case or tower in order to get better cooling. Liquid cooling would be best although it is much more expensive that using fans altogether.

I'm looking into buying one of those AMD Radeon Nanos. I wonder if it is good for coin mining by the way. 

[Arkazle]

Really cool project for educational purposes IMO.

The payoff for this must be pretty low though, are you actually just mining Bitcoins? Altcoins are probably the way to go with such a low spec device. I am yet to purchase a Rasberry Pi, not for mining...this looks like a pretty interesting project though so would be good to have some additional information on how you set it up.

[jackg]

It would take a while to ROI unless you picked up new coins and started mining them in the hope that they go from start-to-pump-to-dump and sell during the pump.
Ethereum was a really profitable coin to mine, however, I think the network difficulty has increased by quite a lot since it has been adopted.
I've also heard that the gerater the ram on the GPUs for eth mining, the more profitable it is. So you'd need like 16GB ram gpus in order to make the best profit and they may require separate batteries/renewable energy sources.

Thanks for the advice. Actually, I've never thought that the more RAM a GPU has the more ETH it will mine. Right now, I'm building my GPU mining rig step by step buying the parts one at a time in order to make it the ultimate ETH/ETC mining rig. I thinking of making it one that does not require an external case or tower in order to get better cooling. Liquid cooling would be best although it is much more expensive that using fans altogether.

I'm looking into buying one of those AMD Radeon Nanos. I wonder if it is good for coin mining by the way. 

I think it was Eth that requires lots of RAM with the GPU to function better (though I may be wrong).

I think AMD radeon is one that is used often for mining.

I'd also advise you know how you could plug the GPUs into the raspberry pi (probably through research)?

[Abiky]

I think it was Eth that requires lots of RAM with the GPU to function better (though I may be wrong).

I think AMD radeon is one that is used often for mining.

I'd also advise you know how you could plug the GPUs into the raspberry pi (probably through research)?

Well I think that plugging external GPUs on the Raspberry Pi is not possible yet, but I'm going to give it a little research to see what I can achieve with this. In the meantime, I'm setting up a GPU mining rig with an ASROCK motherboard I have lying around using a single AMD Radeon Nano to see what would be the results mining ETH or ETC.

Based on what I have seen so far, it may be possible to connect a GPU to a Raspberry Pi using convertors that turn a USB port to ExpressCard and then plug in a PCI-E to ExpressCard convertor. However, I doubt that the performance if the GPU would be the same using this method 

[jackg]

I think it was Eth that requires lots of RAM with the GPU to function better (though I may be wrong).

I think AMD radeon is one that is used often for mining.

I'd also advise you know how you could plug the GPUs into the raspberry pi (probably through research)?

Well I think that plugging external GPUs on the Raspberry Pi is not possible yet, but I'm going to give it a little research to see what I can achieve with this. In the meantime, I'm setting up a GPU mining rig with an ASROCK motherboard I have lying around using a single AMD Radeon Nano to see what would be the results mining ETH or ETC.

Based on what I have seen so far, it may be possible to connect a GPU to a Raspberry Pi using convertors that turn a USB port to ExpressCard and then plug in a PCI-E to ExpressCard convertor. However, I doubt that the performance if the GPU would be the same using this method 

The GPIO pins are probably the best part of the PI for this.
I think there are live pins, neutral pins and pins to transfer data so they may be good for a connection to a GPU.
I'm not sure about this but if you research it I'm sure you can find something (BTW, the power needed to for the converters comes from one of those GPIO pins anyway).

[Abiky]

The GPIO pins are probably the best part of the PI for this.
I think there are live pins, neutral pins and pins to transfer data so they may be good for a connection to a GPU.
I'm not sure about this but if you research it I'm sure you can find something (BTW, the power needed to for the converters comes from one of those GPIO pins anyway).

Thanks for the info. But I think this requires some knowledge in electronics, right? Because I'm still a noob when it comes to working with electronics stuff such as soldering and working with the GPIO pins. However, if it is possible to have a workaround like this then it will be a blast! I will figure this out and keep you updated.

I'm still waiting for the price of the water and salt generator (battery) to be announced as I can't wait to try it with my little experiment. Now, I want to add sort of like a miniature printer onto the Pi to generate paper wallets instantly from within it. This last thing is optional, and mostly for fun. 

[jackg]

The GPIO pins are probably the best part of the PI for this.
I think there are live pins, neutral pins and pins to transfer data so they may be good for a connection to a GPU.
I'm not sure about this but if you research it I'm sure you can find something (BTW, the power needed to for the converters comes from one of those GPIO pins anyway).

Thanks for the info. But I think this requires some knowledge in electronics, right? Because I'm still a noob when it comes to working with electronics stuff such as soldering and working with the GPIO pins. However, if it is possible to have a workaround like this then it will be a blast! I will figure this out and keep you updated.

I'm still waiting for the price of the water and salt generator (battery) to be announced as I can't wait to try it with my little experiment. Now, I want to add sort of like a miniature printer onto the Pi to generate paper wallets instantly from within it. This last thing is optional, and mostly for fun. 

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).

[Cranky4u]

I have managed to make portable Raspberry Pi 3 mining setup that runs on an external battery power bank of 10,000mAh and uses an Android tablet as its screen, mouse, and keyboard.



This setup will be mainly for on the go mining, but I can also use it for staking coins if I wish. Now, all I need is a mobile hotspot and I will be complete. Also, I was thinking of changing the external power bank to a solar one (which I could buy at ebay)

What do you think about it? 

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?

[Abiky]

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

[Abiky]

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.