Building this project will allow you to use a Raspberry Pi as a 'headless' controller and status monitor for your USB bitcoin mining devices. The project incorporates an LCD to display hashrate, error rate, share data, network difficulty, mining duration, & current exchange rates.
What you'll need:
- Raspberry Pi + SD Card running Raspbian configured for network access
- Adafruit 16x2 LCD + Keypad Kit (any color style will work) assembled & installed
- I2C, & Adafruit Pi Code libraries installed on Pi
- USB Bitcoin Mining Device
- Powered USB Hub (needed for USB powered miners) - most hubs can power up to 4 of these miners (others may use more or less current). You can always get more hubs, one for every 4 miners!
- Mining Pool Account (Login/Password)
- Your Computer (for configuration and setup)
For help with initial setup, check out the following tutorials:
- Lesson 1. Preparing an SD Card for your Raspberry Pi
- Lesson 2. First Time Configuration
- Lesson 3. Network Setup
- Lesson 4. GPIO Setup
- Adafruit 16x2 Character LCD + Keypad for Raspberry Pi
A note about USB mining devices
At the time of this writing, dedicated bitcoin mining hardware can be somewhat hard to find, but they are becoming more common as next generation ASIC-based devices are released. A number of open source projects and related info can be found in the BitcoinTalk forums.
For this tutorial I'll be using ASICMiner Block Erupter USB devices. Though this tutorial uses details specific to the Block Erupter USB, a few small modifications should make it work with any hardware compatible with cgminer v3.1.1