Raspberry Pi and Bitcoin Mining - Tutorial / Experiment [Minera]

This is a basic tutorial on how to setup your Raspberry Pi for Bitcoin mining using the image for Minera

Minera is an all in one solution for Bitcoin mining on the Raspberry Pi and is relatively easy to setup.  

First you need to Download the Image file which can be found here:  http://getminera.com/, there is also an option for a Manual Install  but that is for full desktops/laptops not a Pi install.

Next using one off the Image writing instructions listed on this link, you need to write it to an SD card:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/installing-images/README.md
I would recommend a 4 GB SD card and in this case the Class of the card doesn't really matter, I used a Class 4 Kingston micro card that I hadn't done anything with in a while.  

After writing the card all you need to do is put it into your Pi, I used a B+, and connect Network, powered USB hub with your miners plugged in and either a wired or wireless network connection, then add the power plug and wait about 3-5 minutes.

Next, you need to, most likely, after you power the Pi on, go to http://minera on your home network.  I tried this on mine, but I am running a domain and the DNS hadn't propagated yet, so I just went to my router and found out the IP address of the Pi that way and just typed in 192.169.1.20.

You will be brought to a screen that requires a login, the default password is minera .  Next you should see something like this on your web browser of choice.

This screenshot was my setup after running for about 15 minutes.

 There has been an upgrade to the version of Minera, to 0.6.0, since I took this screenshot, but I have not logged into it since I am away from home right now to update this capture.  There are some updated screenshots here:  http://getminera.com/#screenshots

The next steps are to go to Settings on the left hand side and input your Pool and Miner settings that you can customize on the fly.  I don't have any more screenshots that I took because they have my BTC Wallet info in them and I didn't have a chance to clean them before posting.

For most help related inquiries answers can either be found on the GitHub project page, here: https://github.com/michelem09/minera or the Forum page here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=596620.0

Please let me know if you have any question in the comments below and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

ESP8266 Temperature and Humidity Web Server - Experiment [Part 2]

Not the Raspberry Pi Experiment as promised - But a Learning Experience!  [Part 2]

This is a continuation of this first part:

http://kurtroesener.blogspot.com/2015/06/esp8266-temperature-and-humidity-web.html

Here is the link to the wiring diagram the I used for this project: https://learn.adafruit.com/esp8266-temperature-slash-humidity-webserver/wiring

Here is a link to the INO file source code for programming this board: http://bit.ly/DHTServer

Here is the diagram that I used to build out this circuit:

Last night I started soldering this together and took some pictures along the way of my progress.

Here is the board as we saw it in the first part of this series, with an added USB port for power.

I added a USB port so I could power it from a little power pack that I have, using a USB A to USB A cable from a hard drive.

The solder side of the board isn't very pretty.

The button you see here is used to program the ESP8266.  You power on the board with the button depressed and then let go of it, program it through the Arduino IDE and power cycle the board again.

Almost done now, just a couple more connections to make.

Here we have the completed board, the pins you see in the lower left are for programming the ESP8266.

After completing the board I tested the output voltage at several locations and they all seemed to run at about 3.25V, within acceptable tolerances.

Added the missing components and tested it, and It WORKS!

I hope that this was informative and useful for you, Please Comment below if you have any questions regarding this project!

Thanks for reading!

ESP8266 Temperature and Humidity Web Server - Experiment [Part 1]

Not the Raspberry Pi Experiment as promised - But a Learning Experience!  [Part 1]

Since I just received a couple of ESP8266s I wanted to play with them right away.

This project leapt out at me: 

https://learn.adafruit.com/esp8266-temperature-slash-humidity-webserver/overview

All details about components and the code can be found there!

Also, since I had most of the parts on hand already it was, as they say, 'a no brainer'.

This will also be different than my other posts, as it will be in at least 2 parts, maybe more.

This first part, will be building the circuit on the breadboard and the start of the through-hole circuit design.

So, while my circuit on the breadboard does work, it's not pretty:

Some minor changes here are the breadboard's power, I used a specialty power board so I can power it via USB and my DHT22 already has the resistor built into it and only the 3 main pins coming out of it. 

The button is only used for programming the ESP8266 module and nothing else.  Also, not seen here is the USB to TTL wires that allows you to do the programming.

Once I did program it and shut it down and then power it on the web page came up and displayed the temp on one address by adding /temp to the IP and the /humidity to the IP for the other.

Now for the learning part; 

I wanted to get this off of a breadboard and on to a through hole circuit board:

As you can see here I started with the basics, the 2.1mm power plug, the LD1117-3.3 regulator and since I wanted to be able to remove/replace the DHT22 and the ESP8266, I used male-female sockets for those two.  

Below you can see the back of the board and my creative use of the long leads of the LD1117:

Please ask questions, should you have any!!

Next Time:  I venture into soldering this together and testing the new board.

Part 2 can be found here: 

http://kurtroesener.blogspot.com/2015/06/esp8266-temperature-and-humidity-web_19.html