In the good ole days, you could be a pretty successful Bitcoin (cryptography based currency for geeks) miner simply by running a program on your desktop computer. But with the way the algorithms work and the increasing complexity of the cryptography, these days you need dedicated hardware to be successful.
I'm too late to this game to make any significant coin, but I figured that since I am both a computer geek and a financial type, I should at least be able to say that I have mined a Bitcoin.
So I bought a couple of ASIC usb miners and gave it a try.
First I used an old Windows XP laptop to get the mining software, pooled mining account, and bitcoin wallet all set up since I don't necessarily trust all of the programmers and participants in all of these operations. Downloading these kinds of things always makes me a little nervous.
Once I had everything all sorted out, I switched out the relatively power hungry laptop for the versatile, trendy/nerdy $35 computer-the Raspberry Pi. The powered usb hub is powering the 2 miners, the Raspberry Pi, and the cooling fan. The whole operation is running off the hub's 3 amp power supply. This makes for a very low power consumption rig. I can log into the Pi from another computer/tablet/phone to see how things are going.
I found a space for the rig next to my printer and wireless router. Now I just wait and watch the Bitcoins roll in.
No comments:
Post a Comment