After the publications about passive income using Rasberry Pi on EarnApp and Honeygain, it’s time to talk about cryptocurrency mining. Once again, I want to emphasize that Raspberry Pi is not particularly successful in this regard 🙂 it’s not a mining farm, after all. However, it can serve as a great tool to dive into the world of cryptocurrencies with curiosity and enthusiasm.
Instead of an introduction
At first, I tried mining with xmrig on Raspbian OS (this article was helpful) on unmineable.com. It was an interesting experience, and maybe someday I’ll write about it (I tried mining Flux). However, since the datasets required around 2 GB of free RAM, and my mini-computer only had 2 GB, the results were mediocre. That’s why I decided to try something different – Duino-Coin.
Duino was founded in 2019 and is a project of a completely original entertainment-focused cryptocurrency developed by a team of young developers, with a focus on energy-efficient mining. It is designed primarily, but not exclusively, for people who are just starting their journey in the crypto world, as it does not require any expensive equipment.
To enable mining with devices of limited power, Duino utilizes a system called Kolka, which consists of several stages that assess the device’s performance, assign a difficulty level, and distribute rewards accordingly. Devices that are well-suited for this approach include Arduino (and similar AVRs), Raspberry Pi Picos (and similar ARM-based devices), ESP8266s and ESP32s, Raspberry Pi 2/3/4 (and similar SBCs), typical computers, high-performance computers, graphics cards, and so on.
Preparation
I was using Ubuntu server OS 20.04.5. In general, I did everything according to this instruction. We install the necessary dependencies:
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install python3 python3-pip git python3-pil python3-pil.imagetk -yLet’s clone the Doino-Coin repository and start the installation of the necessary dependencies:
$ git clone https://github.com/revoxhere/duino-coin
$ cd duino-coin
$ python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txtWe also need to create a wallet to store the cryptocurrency. We can use the provided Duino-Coin wallet for this. To do that, visit the website https://duinocoin.com/, choose “Get Started,” and follow the simple instructions to create a new wallet.
Enable mining on Raspberry Pi 4
In the cloned repository at the previous stage, run the PC_Miner.py script. We will be asked to enter some settings.
pi@ubuntu:~/duino-coin$ python3 PC_Miner.py
Duino-Coin basic configuration tool
Edit Duino-Coin PC Miner 3.4/Miner_config.cfg file later if you want to change it.
Don't have an Duino-Coin account yet? Use Wallet to register on server.
Enter your Duino-Coin username: ******
Enter your mining key (only required if you activated this option in the webwallet - press enter to skip):
Set mining intensity (1-100)% (recommended: 95): 95
Set mining threads (recommended for your system: 4): 4
1 - Low difficulty (for less powerful Raspberry Pis (Zero/1/2/3) and older computers)
2 - Medium difficulty (for more powerful Raspberry Pis (4/400) and typical computers)
3 - Network difficulty (for powerful computers)
Select mining difficulty you want to use (1-3): 2
Do you want to add an identifier (name) to this rig? (y/N): RPI4
Set developer donation level (0-5) (recommended: 1), this will not reduce your earnings: 1
Config saved! Launching the miner
By the way, in my case, for some reason it did not want to work without a MINING KEY, so I had to create it in my account:
During operation, there will be similar mining logs in the terminal:
Result
You can see my result in the screenshot below. This is after a little less than 5 hours of mining. However, subtract 19 coins, which I received as a bonus for some achievement 🙂
It is also evident that the processor is overheating quite significantly. I have four heat sinks installed on my Raspberry Pi, but active cooling is still necessary.
Here’s how the mining turned out 😉