Piper Wallet v2 and possible remake of v1

[DaveF]

For those of you who don't know or remember years ago (2013) there was a company that made a product called The Piper Wallet.
It was basically a RPi and a thermal printer in a case that spit out a paper wallet when you pressed a button:



It was never super popular and eventually they stopped making it.

They tried back in August to make a version 2 based off a Game Boy Advance and it didn't go far:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/piperwallet/piperwallet-easy-and-secure-bitcoin-paper-wallets

I did not even see any discussion of it here so I don't know if that was the issue for the V2. I don't reply to every thread I see but I really did not see anything about this at all.

I don't know if he will try again or what his plan is with the new version.

With that being said, adafruit has a kit with a thermal printer, case and the button for $115. The only thing missing is the switch.
https://www.adafruit.com/product/1289

I was thinking of ordering one and seeing if I could duplicate the original.

Good idea? Stupid waste of time and money? Just looking for some input. Will not have time till November / December to do any of it anyway but was wondering what people thought about it.

-Dave

[1713581794]

1713581794

[1713581794]

1713581794

[1713581794]

1713581794

[OmegaStarScream]

Duplicate them for the purpose of making something similar to Piper wallet and sell it? Paper wallets have always been considered as the cheapest option for cold storage so personally, I don't think that these devices are worth it (not for most people at least). I also don't think anyone would pay money for something that he could get for free, especially when it's something as easy as downloading an OS and running it offline. If someone wants to invest to secure his funds, he should spend them on a hardware wallet, which is a lot more convenient for spending.

[NeuroticFish]

With that being said, adafruit has a kit with a thermal printer, case and the button for $115. The only thing missing is the switch.

As @OmegaStarScream wrote, it's not worth it, at least financially. At 65$ you can already buy a hardware wallet.
Of course, I cannot argue about people's hobbies 

[DaveF]

Duplicate them for the purpose of making something similar to Piper wallet and sell it? Paper wallets have always been considered as the cheapest option for cold storage so personally, I don't think that these devices are worth it (not for most people at least). I also don't think anyone would pay money for something that he could get for free, especially when it's something as easy as downloading an OS and running it offline. If someone wants to invest to secure his funds, he should spend them on a hardware wallet, which is a lot more convenient for spending.

Not "sell it" sell it. More along the lines of a how to guide with the kit from adfruit, an updated image / apps sd card and some other tweaks.

I don't have the time or the ability to build and produce them. I have no idea how the new printer and RPi will work with some of the old apps that they put together so I am guessing that it's going to take a bit of fiddling to get it to work. Might be a little or a lot, will not know until I put one together to see what happens.

The post was more of a "would anyone be interested in it if I did get it to work".

-Dave

[DaveF]

So. I know nobody really cares and most of you think it's a waste of time. But too bad. You get to read about the project.
Expect a post here every now and then.
For today's excitement. The box came in with the parts.
Nothing else to report.




-Dave

[Kemarit]

Hey Dave, for the record though, it has been discussed here,

[ANN] Piper - A hardware-based paper wallet printer and so much more

Piper: The Raspberry Pi Paper Wallet Printer is now taking orders!

What do you think about Piper Wallet?

Piper Paper Wallet - Why are there no replies???

But if you are going to read most of the replies, almost everyone find it pretty expensive. Anyways, good luck with your experiment, if that's what you're trying to accomplished here. 

[DaveF]

Hey Dave, for the record though, it has been discussed here,

[ANN] Piper - A hardware-based paper wallet printer and so much more

Piper: The Raspberry Pi Paper Wallet Printer is now taking orders!

What do you think about Piper Wallet?

Piper Paper Wallet - Why are there no replies???

But if you are going to read most of the replies, almost everyone find it pretty expensive. Anyways, good luck with your experiment, if that's what you're trying to accomplished here. 

The v1 was discussed here. Didn't see a peep about the attempted v2 / kick starter.
As others have said it's way overpriced for what is was, and what I am attempting to put together is going to cost me more then a cheap laptop with a boot CD with bitaddress along with a old printer.

I just think it was a cool thing and want to replicate it.

-Dave

[DaCryptoRaccoon]

So. I know nobody really cares and most of you think it's a waste of time. But too bad. You get to read about the project.
Expect a post here every now and then.
For today's excitement. The box came in with the parts.
Nothing else to report.




-Dave

Great idea to revive this and I am sure this will be of use to those who enjoy building this type of thing.

It would be nice to have this be able to print various types of addresses out would be a nice touch adding some sort of interface that can select from legacy, segwit, and other types of addressing would be something interesting.

I could see this being a simple way for small retailers or tradesmen to accept crypto on site or in store.

While having a hardware wallet is cool and cheap now I still think there is a market for this type of thing now the industry has grown and more retail customers are looking at payment solutions for crypto this also helps them accept it p2p without having to lose fee's to third party services.

I look forward to seeing the build progress.

[DaveF]

I don't see any practical usage of your project, but that apply to many RPi project and regardless people would like to see such project

It would be nice to have this be able to print various types of addresses out would be a nice touch adding some sort of interface that can select from legacy, segwit, and other types of addressing would be something interesting.

Good idea, but AFAIK there aren't any SegWit (either P2SH/Bech32) paper wallet generator which have print feature.
It could be good (but realistic) challenge to modify the source code to add print feature.

https://github.com/coinables/segwitaddress
Should get me most of the way there.
But, I as I said in the 1st post, I am not even going to have time to do anything real until Nov / Dec

I have completed the following step: Taking it out of the box and taking a picture. So, yeah it's going to be a while.

-Dave

[Dabs]

Do it! Do it!

I mean, people make projects on raspberry pis and they don't make money, but the thing gets popular. Media players. Plex boxes. Arcade and Retro Game emulators with joysticks. Stake boxes. Masternode boxes.

Push a button, prints a segwit address and private key = awesome project. But since it's a pi, have more buttons. Not sure what, but maybe other types of addresses.

Since it's essentially a glorified random number generator, have a button to output unpredictable dice rolls. For fun.


Yes, you won't make money, but it will be fun.


I don't think a "kickstarter" that accepts fiat is gonna be fun.

Funding Unsuccessful
The project's funding goal was not reached on Thu, September 5 2019 4:34 PM UTC +00:00

An ICO would be more fun. LOL. (But don't call people investors, and make sure it's very clear there is no profit to be made, and no altcoins will be airdropped.) Early participants just get a pre-assembled (or easy to assemble with instructions) new type of piper wallet hardware thingie.

At the very least, you make one work, and you're a "competitor" in the space, and that's always good for everyone else.

[LoyceMobile]

I'll be following this. LoyceV merit OP!

My first concern is the thermal printer, that's terrible for long term storage.

[Dabs]

I'll be following this. LoyceV merit OP!

My first concern is the thermal printer, that's terrible for long term storage.

The original project was already looking at archival type thermal paper that would last 20 years.

Personally, I use a cheap laser printer for my paper wallets. Those seem to last at least 10 years so far. My old high school term paper was printed more than 20 years ago, and even photocopy machines made by Xerox that function today ... uh ... but that means extra hardware.

I think HP and Canon make those tiny printers that print 4x6 inch photos. Polaroid also makes cameras that print instantly.

[DaveF]

I think HP and Canon make those tiny printers that print 4x6 inch photos. Polaroid also makes cameras that print instantly.

If they have RPi drivers then they could probably be made to work.

With that being said.



And......
IT'S ALIVE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ1OSRgvZws&feature=youtu.be

-Dave

[LoyceV]

The original project was already looking at archival type thermal paper that would last 20 years.

Unless it gets warm, I assume And that's the problem with thermal paper.

Personally, I use a cheap laser printer for my paper wallets. Those seem to last at least 10 years so far. My old high school term paper was printed more than 20 years ago

I have children's books that are older than that I've never seen a book that couldn't be read anymore, no matter how old it was. As long as the paper doesn't dissolve from getting wet (or gets eaten by bugs), I expect laser prints to last for centuries. Thermal paper is great for quick use, such as ATMs.

What's so attractive about this project is the fact that one press on a button is enough to create a new paper wallet. I could of course do that on my desktop, after rebooting from a LIVE Linux CD, but it's much more impressive to have a dedicated device for it.

[Dabs]

I think the point of the device is a quick way to make a paper wallet, but it should be treated as temporary. For long term storage, you'd like to make a copy of the paper wallet anyway.

Some people have the time to prepare paper wallets in advance. Most people should. Make a few in all the typical address formats and stick it in a binder or something. When you need one, you have one.

Children's books seem to have some sort of film or laminate or something on top ... well, they are colored, sometimes even hard bound and the pages could also be the same material and extra thick, especially picture type children's books.

As for other types of paper, ... there are prayer books dated 840 AD, still intact, the Madrid Codex found in 1860 but probably created between 900 - 12 AD. The first copies of the Gutenberg Bible were printed in 1454 AD. There's a book in Scotland made 11th century. And a Buddhist holy text found in a cave in China. Ireland has the Book of Kells, created 800 AD.

And then, there's the Etruscan Gold Book (so, it's not really paper) dating 660 BC.

So that's a bunch of books 400 to 2600 years old.

[trapcoder666]

Pretty cool contraption i must say. Would be pretty darn awesome if it has a built in laminator as well.

[Dabs]

The laminator will obscure the thermal print out ...

[DaveF]

Long stream of profanity goes here.

So it does work and I was doing some more testing and am having an odd issue. Some of the QR codes do not work.
Phone flat out will not scan some them.

I have 3 thoughts (1) that since all I really did was slam in the old piper image that there is an issue with the printer driver and some of the codes are just too distorted to work or (2) similar to #1 but that the printer or paper is just a different size and that is causing the distortion or (3) the printer is just not happy.

Will do more testing, but I REALLY don't have the time and should be doing job related work. I just had to go play with something else before I went nuts on the job....

-Dave

[DaveF]

The long awaited update.

The printer does work with some setting tweaks. Just have to slow it down and it's fine. Going to have to try a different printer.

The original piper install had a switch on top that would allow you to save a copy of every wallet printed. At least with the new setup I am doing it does not work. No matter what it saves a copy. THIS IS NOT GOOD. There is a setting in the GUI that should shut it off but it does not I faked the switch with a jumper and it still saves them. I am not sure if this is a bug in the code or something in the different hardware or what. But I did spend too much time dealing with it till I moved on. I revisit it later.

I have a small touchsreen hooked up to it and I am trying to get some basic things working so you can choose the type of wallet. The original allowed a bunch of altcoins and I want to see if I can make it more touch friendly. I have a programmer friend working on that.

Speed is an issue. I increased the entropy settings and well lets face it, it's a RPi so it started to get real slow. Don't know if there is a better way. Reached out to same friend to take a look.

As of now both programming things are hold until after mid January as his kids are coming back from college and then Christmas and New Years and then getting them back to school.

So that is the small update for now. Going to play with printers and printer settings and hope to have more info in a little while.


-Dave

[Dabs]

The RPi has it's own hardware TRNG (True Random Number Generator). It outputs 1 million bits per second, so you don't need to spend a lot of time to get 1024 bits, or 512, or even just 256 bits. Then use that as seed to a faster PRNG or even SHA256 to generate private keys.