Archive for the ‘Mining Hardware’ Category

Is BLU View 2 a Good Smartphone for Crypto Mining – Unfortunately No

23, Oct 2023

If you are looking for a good deal on a smartphone that you can use for crypto mining a coin such as VerusCoin (VRSC) then you might’ve stumbled on a really great looking, price-wise at least, offer for the Total by Verizon BLU View 2, 32GB, Black – Prepaid Smartphone (Locked) for just $29.99 USD (Ad). The offer at that price for the BLU View 2 (Tracfone inside) locked for Verizon does seem very good after a quick look at the specifications of the device as listed on Amazon’s website, so good, that in fact you will probably be tempted getting one just like we did. A 5.5-inch smartphone with 32GB internal memory (expandable via micro-SD card), 3000 mAh removable battery, 3GB RAM, 2.0 GHz Octa-Core CPU, 64 Bit, USB-C connector and even a charger included and that for just 30 bucks, seems like a very sweet deal mind you that it is locked even though you should not care if you are going to use it for mining only.

A qucik look at the smartphone’s specs over at GSM Arena confirms that the processor should be an “Octa-core 2.0 GHz Cortex-A53” (8-core), even though there is a bit of discrepancy there saying 2GB of RAM only and not 3 GB as Amazon’s description mentions. There is however a tiny bit of a problem here, both the product page of Total by Verizon on Amazon and GSM Arena’s specifications of this device are wrong as it turns out that Mediatek MT6761 Helio A22 (12 nm) chipset used in this device is actually only a quad-core CPU and not an octa-core as both websites claim and we actually had verified that personally after ordering one of these smartphones expecting it to do great for mining VRSC with it. You can always make a mistake, but when the mistake is multiplied it gets confusing even for people that usually double-check things…

Not that it is such a big issue when you can easily return the smartphone for a refund, but what remains is the disappointment from something that might’ve been a great deal ending as just a simple mistake and the BLU View 2 had the potential if it was really with an 8-core CPU. However, not only that it is a quad-core A53 ARM CPU inside, but the Architecture reported is armv7l and that is the second huge disappointment here essentially making this device unsuitable at all for crypto mining as even with a decent 4-core 64-bit CPU you should be getting decent hashrate… or at least be able to run the mining software. Essentially, while the CPU itself should be 64-bit, the operating system (Android 11) comes with a 32-bit kernel, so you are not able to run 64-bit applications and most miners (at least the ones that are worth using) do require both 64-bit CPU hardware as well as 64-bit operating system to properly install and run and in order to provide you with a decent hashrate while mining.

The situation with the 32-bit software here is very similar to what we have seen with the Verizon Samsung Galaxy A13 5G that is also a no go for crypto mining. And while the BLU View 2 is much more budget option, with a bit older and lower-end hardware and with a 4-core processor apparently, here the 32-bit software won’t come as that much of a surprise like it is on the A13 5G from Samsung that we really did not expect to come with 32-bit Android support only. Anyway, the BLU View 2 comes very attractively priced (the locked model), but is not such a great deal with the wrong specifications listed and considering the correct ones and the fact it is with a 32-bit Android 11 operating system. It is indeed with a 4-core ARM CPU, 2GB of RAM and a 32-bit Android OS. The result is essentially an unusable device for crypto mining!

Do Not Buy Samsung Galaxy A13 5G Smartphone for Crypto Mining

16, Oct 2023

If you are getting into crypto mining using a smartphone for coins such as VerusCoin (VRSC) you should be extra careful what “mining hardware” or a smartphone you are picking up to use. One would normally assume that nowadays even the cheap smartphones would do just fine for crypto mining provided that they do come with recent Android OS versions (mining on Apple iOS devices is pretty much a no go) and decent 64-bit hardware in terms of ARM-based processors with 4 or even 8 cores available. Even sub $100 USD phones nowadays normally do manage to give you at least that, but it is not always the case as you should get to understand now…

As far as smartphones that will be used for mining you don’t really need expensive hardware and even a locked phone will do as you will not need to use it for phone calls and the Samsung Galaxy A03s locked phones can usually be relatively easily found in the $50-$60 USD range. Although often there are offers for these Tracfone Samsung Galaxy A03s, 32GB, Black – Prepaid Smartphone (Locked) for $29.99 USD (Ad) and it doesn’t get cheaper than that for a mining smartphone. With such good deals for lower-end models one would assume that a slightly more expensive device such as the Total by Verizon Samsung Galaxy A13 5G, 64GB, Black – Prepaid Smartphone (Locked) for $80 USD (Ad) would still work just fine for mining and will be able to offer better performance thanks to the improved hardware it comes equipped with. Well, you would think so, but the harsh reality would be much different and in fact you should avoid buying the Samsung Galaxy A13 5G if you are planning to use the device for crypto mining and you will know exactly why in a moment.

The Samsung Galaxy A13 5G smartphone has been released at the end of 2011, while the Galaxy A03s was released earlier the same year. Both devices feature 8-core 64-bit ARM processors, though they are slightly different models. While the mor affordable A03s is equipped with a Mediatek MT6765 Helio P35 (12nm) chipset utilizing 4x 2.35 GHz Cortex-A53 and 4x 1.8 GHz Cortex-A53 CPU cores, the more powerful A13 5G relies on a Mediatek MT6833 Dimensity 700 (7 nm) chipset using 2x 2.2 GHz Cortex-A76 and 6x 2.0 GHz Cortex-A55 CPU cores. The Galaxy A13 5G has the faster and more power efficient hardware inside, but that goes only as far as the hardware is concerned. The problem with this particular device is that it does not use the right kernel and operating system version and that is what essentially makes it unsuitable for crypto mining and in general making it unusable with some applications that you might normally use on other smartphones that require an operating system running in 64-bit mode.

The issue with the Samsung Galaxy A13 5G is that when queried with lscpu it reports that the Architecture is armv8l and while the CPU hardware itself is a 64-bit ARMv8 and supports 64-bit operating system, what you are getting on this device is a kernel that is built to run on an ARMv8 chip in its 32-bit mode. That essentially means that while you do have 64-bit hardware, you are not able to use it with 64-bit applications (like crypto miners) as they will either not run at all (they are compiled to run on 64-bit hardware) or they may run with significantly reduced performance in 32-bit mode if they are built like that. In either case – the A13 5G is not good for crypto mining… and it is not because of the hardware of the device, but it is because of the decision from Samsung to use 32-bit software on the device for some reason, while the lower-end and less expensive Galaxy A03s for example is utilizing the proper 64-bit software.

Here is what will happen if you try to install the VerusMiner.apk on the Samsung Galaxy A13 5G smartphone, you will get an error message saying that “App not installed as app isn’t compatible with your phone”. The reason for that is that the VerusMiner application for Android does require you to have a 64-bit OS to install and run and on the A13 5G you do not meet this requirement and there is nothing you can do to update your Samsung phone from 32-bit Android to 64-bit Android even though the hardware inside does support 64-bit software.

Pretty much the same thing is expected going the longer way. Installing UserLand, Debian and trying to get the optimized ARM version of ccminer from Oink70 to run will result in the compiled miner not able to start at all as it also does require 64-bit software along with the 64-bit hardware you have and you do not have a 64-bit kernel/OS available on the Samsung Galaxy A13 5G.

Trying some other miners, you actually might get lucky if they are compatible with 32-bit Android, but even if you do manage to run the mining software in this mode on the Galaxy A13 5G the hashrate you will be getting on it is at least a few times lower than what the same hardware should be capable of providing in a 64-bit OS environment. This essentially makes the Galaxy A13 5G as a very inefficient miner power wise and again makes it pointless to try and use the device for crypto mining. So, again, do not buy Samsung Galaxy A13 5G smartphones for crypto mining purposes as they will only waste your time, go for an alternative like the A03s or another model that is verified to supports aarch64 or arm64 architecture for both hardware and software!

Setting Up and Using Orange Pi 5 for Mining VerusCoin (VRSC)

8, Oct 2023

VerusCoin (VRSC) is an interesting project that has been available for a while already, but has more recently been generating attention among miners this year thanks to its ability to efficiently mine it with power efficient ARM-based devices such as smartphones and microcomputers. The focus of this article is how to set up VerusCoin (VRSC) mining on an Orange Pi 5 device (similar to Raspberry Pi, but more powerful) thanks to the use of a Rockchip RK3588S 8-core 64-bit processor that is capable of quite decent performance with a low power usage, making it one of the best options for efficiently mining VRSC or other similar crypto coins. We are going to be doing a separate guide on how to mine VRSC on an Android-based mobile device, so stay tuned for that as well… You can now also read how to Easily Start Mining VerusCoin (VRSC) With an Android-Based Smartphone.

So, what do we need to get started? Obviously, we first need to acquire an Orange Pi 5 board, a 5V USB-C power adapter capable of at least 10 Watts (2 Amps), along with an additional cooling as the CPU gets hot while mining as you should already know, then we also need a 16GB/32GB micro-SD flash card with a card reader. Do note that we don’t need the more complex, feature rich and expensive Orange Pi 5 Plus variant for mining or the 5B wit WiFi module, nor do we need more than the cheapest 4GB RAM version of the Orange Pi 5 board (it is available with up to 32 GB RAM). The official white power adapter capable of 5V 4A is fine for the purposes we are going to use the device, so you can get that one or skip the extra cost if you already have a 5V capable of 2A or more USB-C power adapter sitting unused. As for cooling, there are a number of options available, though the GeeekPi Orange Pi 5/5B Cooling Fan with Heatsink does seem to be a popular solution for active cooling that does the job well, even though it could’ve been made even better and more efficient. You would also need an ethernet cable to connect the Orange Pi 5 to a router or a switch for Internet connectivity, since we are not using the more expensive 5B versions that has an extra WiFi adapter, although you might want to go for that one and ditch the cables as well and go the wireless way.

Summary of what we need:
– Orange Pi 5 4GB with Rockchip RK3588S @ $79.99 USD
– Orange Pi 5 4GB with Rockchip RK3588S + PSU @ $89.99 USD
– GeeekPi Orange Pi 5/5B Cooling Fan with Heatsink @ $17.99 USD
– SanDisk 32GB Ultra MicroSDHC UHS-I Memory Card with Adapter @ $9.95 USD

After we have all the available hardware for our mining setup we need to prepare the software, the first thing is to download the latest Ubuntu Server image for the Orange Pi 5 board we are using, you can do so from the official Oange Pi 5 Ubuntu repository here, make sure you download the Orangepi5b_1.0.2_ubuntu_jammy_server_linux5.10.110.7z image from there as we don’t really need to use the desktop versions for our mining purposes. The image is archived with 7-Zip (7z), so you need to decompress it first and extract the Orangepi5b_1.0.2_ubuntu_jammy_server_linux5.10.110.img file from the archive that you will then proceed to write on the micro-SD flash card. There are a number of tools available for writing image files to flash cards, but one of the easiest and straightforward ones we like is the Balena Etcher, you can go for the portable version that does not need to be installed first and can directly be run and go to flash the Ubuntu IMG file on the micro-SD flash card.

While the image is being written on the SD flash card you can proceed and install the GeeekPi Orange Pi 5/5B Cooling Fan with Heatsink on the Orange Pi 5 board, it is a straightforward and easy to do so, even though the manual you get with the cooler can be a not so user friendly. There is quite a bit of a gap between the CPU of the board and the cooler when you are assembling it and it is covered with the included thermal pad that ensures thermal transfer, though less space and good thermal paste would probably make for much better thermal conductivity resulting in further lowering the operating temperature while mining. That is something that needs some extra work, but it is not necessary for the normal mining operation of the Orange Pi 5 as even with the default setup of the cooler when you plug in the fan the operating temperature under load sits at around 65 degrees Celsius (it quickly hits 85 without the cooling) while the idle temperature we have measured after an hour of being plugged in was in the 40s. You need to be careful when plugging in the power pins of the cooling fan in the board’s header pins. You need to use the second and third pin on the side near the edge of the board closer to the flash card slot, the second pin is for the red (power) cable and the third is for the black (ground) cable. Connecting them right should result in the RGB lighted fans to start spinning (why the need for RGB here?) when you plug in the power cable and turn on the Orange Pi.

After you flash the Ubuntu server image on the micro-SD card, insert the card in the Orange Pi 5 slot, attach the cooler and fans, connect the Ethernet cable to your router or switch and the board you need to plug in the USB-C power adapter and everything should work just fine. Now you need to figure out what is the IP of the Orange Pi 5 in your local network as the device will utilize DHCP to get an IP address assigned automatically (unless you do not have active DHCP service in the local network). An easy way to see the IP address is to use an IP scanner and scan the IP range that your router uses (usually either 10.X.X.X or 192.168.X.X). We like the ease of use of the Angry IP Scanner especially the Legacy version that we’ve been using for ages, though feel free to use any IP scanner you like. Alternatively, you can also check if your router has a page reporting all the connected devices and their IPs, that could also work, the Orange Pi 5 should report itself with a hostname orangepi5b.lan. In our case the IP address of the Orange Pi 5 board we’ve had was 192.168.1.73 as you can see from the screenshot above, you’ll need this address in the next step where you will actually connect to the Orange Pi 5 via SSH with the help of PuTTY or your favourite SSH client.

The default username of the Orange Pi 5 Ubuntu Server Linux distribution is root and the default password is orangepi, so you’ll be using these to login and you can change the user and or password should you wish to make things more secure etc. The next step you need to do is to install the VerusCoin (VRSC) miner that you will be running on the Orange Pi 5 and for that we are going to be using the optimized ARM version of ccminer from Oink70. What you need to run now over the SSH connection to your Orange Pi 5 board is the following command:

curl -o- -k https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Oink70/Android-Mining/main/install.sh | bash

It is an installation script that will update your Ubuntu Linux and make sure it has all the needed libraries installed for the miner to work and then also download the latest ccminer, so you would be able to start mining after this procedure is finished, it could take a bit to download and install everything, so be patient. If there are no error messages when the installation script finishes you are good to continue, if you encounter some errors you might want to restart (literally type restart) the Orange Pi 5 and then reconnect and run the installation script to finish properly with the updates this time.

The next step is to edit the configuration file where you will enter your pool address and wallet address, there are already default ones set in the config, so make sure you change them, so that the miner will mine to your own VRSC wallet. You can check to confirm everything is working properly in the statistics of the pool you choose when you finish setting up everything and actually start mining. To edit the configuration file first enter the folder where the miner has been setup using cd ccminer and then just type:

nano config.json

Make the changes for the pool address (url) and the wallet address (user), the default config has a main pool and a backup pool set, you can actually use these pools too, although we like to go for Luckpool, but you must change the wallet address to your own. After you finish changing hit Ctrl + X and confirm with Y that you want to write the changes. For easier editing you can alternatively use SCP connection with a software such as WinSCP for example that can make it easier to make changes, especially copy and pasting.

You can now do a test run with ./ccminer -c config.json in order to see that everything will be running just fine, before you configure the Orange Pi 5 to automatically start the miner on every start by taking advantage of the crontab functionality of Linux. If running the miner manually results in normal operation, then you can proceed to configuring crontab by running:

crontab -e

Then selecting 1 for the Nano text editor we’ve used in the previous step for the config file for the editing, go to the end of the file and type the following:

@reboot ~/ccminer/start.sh

Hit Ctrl + X and confirm with Y to save the changes you’ve made, then you can just type reboot to restart the Orange Pi 5 and when the device starts up again it will automatically run the ccminer and it will start mining VRSC. In order to check the current status of the miner you will need to login via SSH again and type screen -x CCminer to see the output of the miner, otherwise you will be presented with juts the normal command line after you login even though ccminer will still be running in the background.

What can you expect from the Orange Pi 5 mining VRSC in terms of hahsrate, well the latest ccminer does manage to provide you with around 6.6 MH/s to 6.7 MH/s hashrate with a power usage measured at the wall at 9W (using the official Orange Pi 5 white power adapter). Efficiency wise very good, especially when compared to what you can get from a desktop CPU that although might provide more hashrate will do so with significantly higher power usage compared to the Orange Pi 5. The hashrate and efficiency of the Orange Pi 5 mining VRSC is also generally better than what you’d normally get while using an Android-based smartphone to mine, though that could depend on a lot of factors.

In the end, a quick word about VRSC mining profitability on the Orange Pi 5. At the moment the price of VRSC is around $0.40 USD per coin and the current block reward is 6 coins and what you can expect to mine for a day with a single Orange Pi 5 device is around 0.08-0.1 VRSC at the moment. So, let us say you will be making around 4 US cents per day with something like half of that going for the electricity used as a rough estimate… it will take quite a while to even just pay off for the Orange Pi 5 itself. Profitability wise doesn’t make much sense to go for it at the moment, but if you like to play around and experiment with mining, then you are more than welcome to do so with Orange Pi 5 and VRSC mining. Just make sure not to blindly invest into a large-scale mining setups as the daily trading volume of VerusCoin is low and it might not be able to handle it very well and VRSC is already at over 89% of its total supply of coins. So, just be mindful of these things and do have a backup plan for what you can use an Orange Pi 5 for should you decide to stop mining VRSC, the good news is that this device actually has a lot of other possible uses aside from mining VRSC… unfortunately not a lot of viable alternatives in other things to mine with it besides VerusCoin though.


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