SUPPORT, FEEDBACK and SUGGESTIONS

I have personally loaded and tested all of these nodes using the hardware stated on the 'hardware' page. However, I don't expect everyone to have the same hardware, and I also expect the software used in these guides will be updated out of my control and it will cause some bugs.

In order to try and keep guides maintained and become a known pool of current information I have started a subreddit which can be found here at

PiNode.

Please use that link for asking questions/support concerning the guides here. I hope that soon it will be full of answered questions to help others. Also as I become aware of errors/bugs I will update the guides here for the benefit of everyone.
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It would be great to build this into a friendly, helpful community with up-to-date information. This will be a challenge due to the fast pace of the technology, and the more hands I have to help the easier it will be. This could be writing guides, updating guides, answering questions at the reddit page or submitting new builds and content for here. I can give author privileges and issue you pages to this site to upload and maintain your own guides and projects if you wish (for relevant content). No HTML or coding experience required, this site is managed by a drag and drop wizard.

We'll see where the next couple of months take us.
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If you would like to support these projects with a small donation of a cryptocurrency used within this site, rather than submitting content, I have left some addresses at the bottom of this page. This website uses free web hosting, all donations will be used to upgrade the site to gain access to more  features.



This site is run as a hobby of mine, if would like to show support financially there are some addresses below. It's the spare crypto that makes these projects happen!
Donation addresses:

Bitcoin:           1PiNodezERskPzM6iWDfepPxdEWhiKvwm1
Litecoin:         LPiNodej1YHuGqcuWiuEueLvLpWPPHnzaH
DogeCoin:     DPiNodexm7Q9q3Lw1BucaswAoqLDZnmhvy
​​Ethereum:      0x9Fd151BB268D355B227C7fc3294E3761B6a4e986
GMC:              GXqJp6SL32vTYpNAsYDKzj9jRbGQD16f8V
SiaCoin:         881db6b6ef4cf70a0b16a4fa84fd04e9176ab1cf07869751fc315be76e1506744b6f0b894186
​Monero:        4BAbwt75aiV46ntopaip71jMffp6mDR1q8PbvZz4WwPNWmM84yq8AEXNxhk5Bah8wHAAbdpUywUNTNgKc8ruDXBVBGLwZX8

FAQ:

This list should grow with time
(1) Why should I run a node? and does it make me bitcoin/money?
So some people want to support the network but don't want to run their electricity bills through the roof mining. So they run a node instead. Miners create blocks from the transactions following rules. The nodes send the miners transactions to make the blocks with and check the created blocks they send back to make sure they've followed the rules and not cheated somehow.
You do not benefit financially from a node (unless you enable mining on it too - Monero node only). But these built on the Raspberry Pi use tiny amounts of power. Very cheap to run, Cheap and interesting to build as a project too. Nodes, because they hold the entire blockchain can add wallet functionality too.

(2) How much data does it use?

https://bitcoin.org/en/full-node#minimum-requirements
Gives a pretty accurate list of requirements regarding data.
  • 140Gb initial download of blockchain
  • A further 20Gb download per month
  • Up to 200Gb upload per month
The upload is the most intensive. This is the node broadcasting transactions and maintaining the mempool. This can be capped in several ways listed in FAQ(3):
(3) Network and internet speed very slow/unusable at times

The Bitcoin daemon, when it has multiple connections to other nodes can be very upload heavy. I have found (UK Sky broadband connection) that my upload speed of 1023 kbps is taken up entirely by the node. This leads to 100% packet loss by my sky router and is very disruptive if I am trying to use other devices like my PC to browse the internet.

There are two methods to prevent this. Either cap the maximum upload from the Raspberry Pi, or cap the max number of connections to bitcoin-cli. For most people I recommend capping the upload speed of the Pi.
(Method 1) Capping the upload speed
You'll need the name of your Pi calls your internet connection. In every case it should be eth0 for wired (ethernet) connected Pis or wlan0 for WiFi connected Pis. To check you can type               ifconfig               and it'll be the connection that shows data transfer.
Remember that connection name.


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Then type:
                              nano tc.sh
to open this page -->
Change
IF=            to represent the name of your connection
LIMIT=     to your max upload speed to want to permit. Typically 80%-90% of your max upload speed is recommended here. that spare 10%-20% or usually sufficient for web browsing, Youtube and streaming services without noticing any connection issues.

Use CTRL+O to save the changes to the file
Then CTRL+X to exit

Finally type
                            sudo ./tc.sh

To start the limiting. It will limit the speed until you restart the Pi.
​To autorun tc.sh on boot add it to the 
                                          sudo nano ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE/autostart
as shown in the screenshot below                         @tc.sh
(Method 2) Capping the Max connections
The following limits the maximum number of connections the node has. It is the outgoing /uploads that causes the issue,of which by default there can be over 100 permitted.
​For Nodes with displays:

Use
                      sudo nano ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE/autostart

And add -maxconnections=<number> to the @bitcoind line, as shown to the left.

On the next reboot the changes will take effect.

I will experiment if this number can be higher and still have a stable connection.
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For Nodes without displays:

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Go back to the autorun file:

                                                    sudo nano /etc/rc.local

and add -maxconnections=<number> to the line shown on the left.

​25 should be a sufficient limit.