Check out my $85 Raspberry Pi Bitcoin full node

[rogerver]

My Bitcoin Classic Node:

Raspberry Pi 2 $28.39
128GB Micro SD card $29.79
HDMI Cable $4.09
Cat 6 3ft Cable $1.48
Micro USB cable and power supply $9.67
Amazon basics keyboard and mouse $11.17

Total: $84.59

In another year, when the 128GB SD card is full, I'll spend $100 on an external hard drive, and this hardware will likely be good to go for the next decade.

Special thanks to Purse.io for lopping off close to 30% of the price on all the hardware.
https://twitter.com/rogerkver/status/696104060311613440

[Chris]

awesome

[arnoudk]

Haha good job!

I am building the exact same project at the moment. Also with a 128 GB micro SD card and the same Raspberry Pi.

I'm installing the bitcoin classic dependencies right now.

[rogerver]

The build and install was a really fun learning experience for me.
It looks like it will take about 3 to 4 days to download the whole block chain and get in sync though.

I'm about half way there now. (1 year and 26 weeks behind)

[rogerver]

I found some cool stats here: http://raspi.tv/2014/how-much-less-powe ... ld-model-b

It looks like my setup uses about 1kWh of power per month, so the monthly electricity cost is somewhere between $0.05 and $0.20 per month depending on where you live.

[grnqrtr]

Bye Bye

[coinableS]

I think 1GB of RAM will not be enough for another decade. Even now some of these pi nodes have issues when their mempool grows. Personally I'd recommend getting a refurb PC off amazon for $60 with 4 GB RAM and 3GHZ processor. More power will cost more power, but at least you won't have to worry about it crashing.

[rogerver]

Just to give you a heads up, I had a lot of problems syncing the blockchain on my RPi2. It downloaded the first 50-60% just fine, but then it started crashing every few minutes. I eventually set up a temporary node on my laptop and finished syncing the blockchain on my Pi's 128GB flash drive. Now that the blockchain is up to date, it's been running great on my Pi!

I was having this problem initially too.
I also had it overclocked to 1000 Mhz, but when I set it back to the stock speed of 900 Mhz, it hasn't crashed since.
I'm wondering what you had your clock speed set at.

[arnoudk]

I think 1GB of RAM will not be enough for another decade. Even now some of these pi nodes have issues when their mempool grows. Personally I'd recommend getting a refurb PC off amazon for $60 with 4 GB RAM and 3GHZ processor. More power will cost more power, but at least you won't have to worry about it crashing.

That's what I would use a mempool limiter for. Bitcoin XT has one that worked well, and the E version is 2 MB blocks compatible. I'm sure that it can run classic for now with these specs without limiters.

In a decade, though, imagine what $30 dollars will buy you then!

[arnoudk]

Just to give you a heads up, I had a lot of problems syncing the blockchain on my RPi2. It downloaded the first 50-60% just fine, but then it started crashing every few minutes. I eventually set up a temporary node on my laptop and finished syncing the blockchain on my Pi's 128GB flash drive. Now that the blockchain is up to date, it's been running great on my Pi!

I was having this problem initially too.
I also had it overclocked to 1000 Mhz, but when I set it back to the stock speed of 900 Mhz, it hasn't crashed since.
I'm wondering what you had your clock speed set at.

Is this related to cooling issues? The case I bought for it had some cooling bricks that I stuck on the chips. I noticed your setup does not have this. Crashes due to overheating are probably nasty crashes in that they cannot be intercepted using software.

If the bitcoind itself crashes, it would be possible to restart it. I personally prefer daemontools by D.J. Bernstein (http://cr.yp.to) and use that on all my servers / computers. It compiles effortlessly on the Pi. My default bitcoind startup script has two bitcoind launching lines. One starts bitcoind 'regularly' - this should never complete and thus the second line is never launched. Except for when bitcoind shuts down by itself. The second line launches bitcoind in the exact same configuration, but with the reindex command. Yes that takes some time on a Pi, so it may be worthwhile to change that on a Pi with a check to see if the log complains about a reindex need. On a more powerful PC, that works just fine. Using this logic, I never have to look if a node is up. It is almost impossible to crash it in such a way that it needs manual attention.

[Acidyo]

I found some cool stats here: http://raspi.tv/2014/how-much-less-powe ... ld-model-b

It looks like my setup uses about 1kWh of power per month, so the monthly electricity cost is somewhere between $0.05 and $0.20 per month depending on where you live.

Wow, that's like nothing.. like one transaction fee.

[grnqrtr]

Bye Bye

[rogerver]

Now that I've set the clock speed back to stock, I haven't had a single crash. (about 24 hours later now)

[iFixBTCmemoryIssues]

My Bitcoin Classic Node:

Raspberry Pi 2 $28.39
128GB Micro SD card $29.79
HDMI Cable $4.09
Cat 6 3ft Cable $1.48
Micro USB cable and power supply $9.67
Amazon basics keyboard and mouse $11.17

Total: $84.59

In another year, when the 128GB SD card is full, I'll spend $100 on an external hard drive, and this hardware will likely be good to go for the next decade.

Special thanks to Purse.io for lopping off close to 30% of the price on all the hardware.
https://twitter.com/rogerkver/status/696104060311613440

This thread is awesome, like a wired article!

The real question is, are you rich from mining bitcoin yet?

[arnoudk]

Cross-post to another forum thread: post16564.html#p16563

Here, I detail step-by-step how I installed bitcoin classic as a background service. I installed it exactly like this on my Raspberry Pi with the latest version of raspbian lite (Raspbian Jessie Lite).

It assumes a running Raspberry. There is a small learning curve in setting up the SD card, formatting it, putting the image on it, and then resizing the data partition to the full size of the card.

If anyone likes, I'll retrace my steps and post what I have done here. Just let me know.

Unlike Roger, I have not used (or needed) a keyboard/mouse/monitor so it is a little cheaper but also a bit more technical I think.

[arnoudk]

After "only" 17 days, my Raspberry Pi has synched 99% of the blockchain. It is incredibly stable, it has not crashed once. (It is more stable than the grid power here - the UPS kicked in twice during this same period )

Slow sync times are not due to my internet connectivity - it is retrieving the blocks from a PC on the local network here.

I'm noticing that the memory is a limiting factor. I have not enabled swap (I didn't want it to use the microSD as a swap disk). I wonder if enabling swap on an external USB drive will make it faster. Has anyone tried this?

Roger - how's the speed on your Pi? If it is any different, let's compare to see where our setup differs.

Even if it takes 18 days for an initial sync, it is still incredible that a $35 device is powerful enough to process the transactions of a global financial network. Bitcoin can scale beyond Raspberry Pis, if it needs to, but for the moment it is fast enough.

It will also be faster when libsecp256k1 is used (bitcoin XT 0.11E, or Classic 0.12 when released).

[bitkilo]

With the small size of these it would be great to get some cheap plastic cases made up and sold via the bitcoin.com shop or forum with bitcoin.com full node stickers on them.

Most people would think running a full node will just waste most of their download and slow their computer.

With this it is easy for anyone.
Was there any/much assembly needed?

Could they be sent out with blockchain already downloaded if requested?

[rogerver]

Roger - how's the speed on your Pi? If it is any different, let's compare to see where our setup differs.

Mine was able to sync in under a week, but I've been traveling for the last 10 days or so, so I haven't been able to check on it since then. I'll be home to Check on it again on Monday. I bought some other fun accessories for it that I will post some stats for soon.

[arnoudk]

Great! Let's compare the difference in setup as these differences are quite big.

Enjoy travelling. If you are ever in Belize.... you're more than welcome.