Raspberry Pi Bitcoin Mining

[Fishbones78]

Hi!
I have been wondering for a while now, is it possible to mine with a pi? Of course it would be extremely slow but I think it would be quite interesting to see how it does. I can't find anywhere that someone has tried this, I've only seen people running ASICs with Pi.

Would the Raspberry Pi be powerful enough to pool mine anything at all, it doesnt have to be profitable (it's my experiment)?

The reason I ask is I am trying to get myself a few pennies of BTC to mess around with, It doesn't have to be profitable to my wallet, just my intelligence.

Thanks.

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[Reynaldo]

well.. its not gonna be profitable, it might burn your pi and its not worth the time.
If you want to roll up with some btc go at primedice w/e and you'll get around 0.0000000500 btc that you can use betting etc, after you loose it all you can take another faucet as they call it..

or go services on market and rent some equipments (people that is mining but they will sell you their hashing power)

[daddyfatsax]

A Pi is only the controller for an actual BTC miner. There is 0 point in trying to use the Pi as an actual miner.

[crocko]

You can use a PI only as controller for your SHA56/scrypt ASIC miner.
Of course you can do the same using a PC too, but your PC must run 24/7.
The PI has some advantages:
- don't consume to much power as your PC (just couple W)
- is small and compact
The people usually prefer the PI. Even the ASIC producers put inside the "big box" a PI as controller.

[MaxDZ8]

Would the Raspberry Pi be powerful enough to pool mine anything at all, it doesnt have to be profitable (it's my experiment)?

Hello Fishbones. I experimented with some BTC GPU mining at the end of last year. Now, desktop GPUs are real powerhouses compared to Pi yet to see something appear on the pool balance I had to mine about an hundred hours, it was in the order of ... I think 5 nBTC at the end.

I suggest trying some altcoin. MYR and DGB use the same algos and they're still on a very reasonable difficulty. Granted, you still don't get a profit but at least you don't go crazy on decimals (especially for DGB)... and who knows what the future might hold for them.

[Fishbones78]

Would the Raspberry Pi be powerful enough to pool mine anything at all, it doesnt have to be profitable (it's my experiment)?

Hello Fishbones. I experimented with some BTC GPU mining at the end of last year. Now, desktop GPUs are real powerhouses compared to Pi yet to see something appear on the pool balance I had to mine about an hundred hours, it was in the order of ... I think 5 nBTC at the end.

I suggest trying some altcoin. MYR and DGB use the same algos and they're still on a very reasonable difficulty. Granted, you still don't get a profit but at least you don't go crazy on decimals (especially for DGB)... and who knows what the future might hold for them.

Hi,
This was the answer I was looking for. I didn't mean to use a Pi as a controller but to actually use it to mine alone. I know it wouldn't be profitable at all but I would be interested in the results.

I will try some alt coins also.

Thanks everybody for the replies.

[2112]

Raspbery Pi actually has a very efficient parallel processor available on chip: AlphaMosaic VideoCore. The problem is that its architecture and toolchain are secret and can only be obtained after signing a very expensive NDA with Broadcom.

Programming AmVc would certainly be very stimulating intellectual experience, but you won't be able to share it here.

[Razerglass]

hashra uses it for their  controller with a special linux os. nice interface

[homm88]

Worthwhile to the fun and chance to learn.
Mining to make money is only really feasible in the old times of the coin system ( those days are gone on bitcoin)

[Koontas]

Worthwhile to the fun and chance to learn.
Mining to make money is only really feasible in the old times of the coin system ( those days are gone on bitcoin)

That is such bullshit...  Do your research, there are MANY people, including myself, who ROI consistently on hardware purchased.

[SikoSoft]

As a couple others have indicated, typically you use the Pi as a controller for a miner that it is attached to.

The Pi's computing power is incredibly limited. I'm not just talking a "low" hash rate, I'm talking so low it would be negligibly next to 0 hashes a second.

Don't get me wrong: I love the Pi. I have several myself, but it's obvious from experience that they are not designed to be used for any serious number crunching. Even installing libraries in Raspbian can put a major strain on the hardware.

Buy an ASIC, hook it up to the Pi and that's the best you'll be able to use it for in terms of mining.