Tag: doge

Pleasantly futile: Dogecoin digging on the Raspberry Pi

I don’t recommend this in any way, but cpuminer will run on the Raspberry Pi. It’s pretty easy to build:

sudo apt-get install build-essential libcurl4-openssl-dev automake git
git clone https://github.com/pooler/cpuminer.git
cd cpuminer/
./autogen.sh
./configure CFLAGS="-march=armv6 -mtune=arm1176jzf-s -mfloat-abi=hard -mfpu=vfp -ffast-math -ffast-math -O3"
make
sudo make install

I’m not convinced that the l33t funroll-l00pz CFLAGS are strictly necessary. Yes, you still only get 0.34 khash/s on a stock Raspberry Pi — which means it would take several days to earn 1Đ (or roughly 0.1¢).

I’m trying to find the most futile computer on which to dig Đ. My BeagleBone Black is (somewhat surprisingly) more than 2× as fast, once you replace the very limited Ã…ngström distribution with Debian. I’m really disappointed that I can’t build cpuminer on my Intel Galileo. Its Yocto distribution is extremely small yet confusing. As the board runs burny hot under no load, I wonder how quickly it would glow white-hot under 100% CPU load.

Introducing RAFTP — the Really Annoying File Transfer Protocol

I would like to describe a new and highly impractical method of transferring data between computers. Modern networks are getting more efficient every year. This protocol aims to reverse this trend, as RAFTP features:

  1. Slow file transfers
  2. A stubborn lack of error correction
  3. The ability to irritate neighbours while ensuring inaccurate transmission through playing the data over the air using Bell 202 tones.
doge-small-tx
Figure 1

Figure 1 shows a test image before it was converted into PGM format. This was then converted into an audio file using minimodem:

minimodem --tx -v 0.90 -f doge-small-1200.wav 1200 < doge-small-tx.pgm

This file was then transferred to an audio player. To ensure maximal palaver, the audio player was connected to a computer via a USB audio interface and a long, minimally-shielded audio cable. The output was captured as mp3 by Audacity as this file: RAFTP-demo

The mp3 file was then decoded back to an image:

madplay -o wav:- RAFTP-demo.mp3   | minimodem --rx -q -f - 1200 | rawtopgm 90 120 | pnmtopng > doge-small-rx.png

Figure 2 shows the received and decoded file:

Figure 2
Figure 2