bitcoin-ticker

bitcoin-ticker is a E-ink ticker that shows usefull information about bitcoin. Due to the limited refresh lifetime, new information is currently shown every 5 minutes and whenever a new block arrives.

Hardware

• waveshare 2.7 e-Paper HAT (e.g. from berrybase)
• rasberry pi zero WH (e.g. from berrybase)
• Power supply Micro USB 5V (e.g. from berrybase)
• micro SD card with 16 GB or more (e.g. from berrybase)
• Printed Case (e.g. Typ B from ebay)

Usage

Ticker view

The Tickers the following information:

• Block height, Mean block intervall in minutes, Time
• Minimal Block fee for the first 7 blocks in mempool
• Dollar price of a bitcoin
• Satoshi per Dollar (also know as moskow time)
• Sotoshi per Euro
• Euro price of a bitcoin

Whenever a new block has arrived on the blockchain, the following information is shown for 120 seconds (can be disabled in the config.ini):

• Euro price of a bitcoin, mean block intervall in minutes, Time
• Minimal Block fee for the first 7 blocks in mempool
• Blocks in mempook, Number of transaction in mempool
• Blocks until next difficulty retargeting, est. difficulty multiplier, est. retarget time
• Block height

Due to the limited lifetime of 1000000 refreshes and an expected lifetime of 5 years, the refresh period has been set to 216 seconds.

Buttons

There are four buttons which the following behaviour (Please be patient after pressing, the e-ink is quite slow):

1. Switch through different ticker views
2. Switch BTC/fiat graph through 1, 7 and 30 days
3. Switch the layout of the ticker
4. Show new block screen (is also shown everytime a new block is created)

Config.ini

It possible to personalize the ticker to your needs. After logging into your raspi with SSH, the config can be edited with

nano config.ini

After writing the change to the ini file, a restart of the btc-ticker service is needed:

sudo systemctl restart btcticker

Update btc-ticker without reflashing the sdcard

After logging into the btc-ticker with SSH, the update can be started with

./99updateMenu.sh

Select now:

• PATCH
• Patch menu
• PATCH to update the ticker to the newest updates from git.

Flash SDcard

• Downlad version 0.3.1 from btc-ticker-0_3_1.img.gz
• Verify SHA256 checksum. It should be: C614031C9B7F9DF693D60B57A9B730053F86AE31CDFADDCAFC219E8069057FA6
• add wpa_supplicant.conf to the boot partition when mounted on PC

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
country=[COUNTRY_CODE]
network={
  ssid="[WIFI_SSID]"
  psk="[WIFI_PASSWORD]"
}

• replace [COUNTRY_CODE] with the ISO2 code (e.g. DE)
• Set [WIFI_SSID] and [WIFI_PASSWORD]

Build SDcard from scratch

The SDcard build process is inspired by the great raspiblitz.

• Download lastest raspios image
• Write the Image to a SD card Tutorial
• Add a ssh file to the boot partition when mounted on PC
• Add a wpa_supplicant.conf file, as shown in the section before. More information are also available here
• Login via SSH to ssh pi@[IP-OF-YOUR-RASPI] using password raspberry

The image can now be build with:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/btc-ticker/btc-ticker/main/build_sdcard.sh && sudo bash build_sdcard.sh

After everything run through, it is possible to login with the password btcticker In order to prepare everyting for release, run /home/admin/XXprepareRelease.sh. When you just want to use it for yourself, you do not need to run /home/admin/XXprepareRelease.sh.

Changing the ssh password

In order to secure your btc-ticker in your local network, you should change the SSH password after setting up everything.

• Login via SSH to ssh admin@[IP-OF-YOUR-RASPI] using the password btcticker
• Change the password (this will be improved in the next release)

echo "pi:NEWPASSWORD" | sudo chpasswd
echo "root:NEWPASSWORD" | sudo chpasswd
echo "admin:NEWPASSWORD" | sudo chpasswd

Replace NEWPASSWORD with the new password.

Used APIs

btc-ticker is using the following APIs:

• mempool.space/api, which can also be run locally in e.g. raspiblitz
• coingecko api
• blockchain API v1