DUCO - the coin for Arduino & Co.

The Duinocoin has arrived in the established media. On Heise+ there is (m)one article on the DUCO, the cryptocurrency for microcontrollers - and as a tip: the Heise-typical troll platform for discussions with sometimes but also valuable comments. **

I (Michael Plura, DUCO name: ElJalapeno) have been writing for over 30 years as a freelance author for DATA BECKER (RIP), Linux News Media, Springer and above all Heise-Verlag from Hanover. More than a thousand articles and about two metres of books on all exciting topics have already been published there - of course there had to be something about the Duinocoin. The Heise+ editorial team gladly accepted my suggestion for a DUCO guidebook - and now the article is ready. Thanks not only to Robert (revoxhere) for the Duinocoin itself, but also to the great guys at Heise (Marvin, Martin and Volker) and their professional polishing of the text.

Nearly two months after version 3.18, the developers around Robert Piotrowski (revoxhere) have finished the Duinocoin miner version 3.2.

Version 3.2 of the Duinocoin software brings some small fixes. On the Raspberry Pi, the LED now flashes on demand to indicate successful mining. At the first start the miner software checks from version 3.2 if wallet and minig key are correct.

The Duinocoin (DUCO) can be mined not only on the Arduino UNO, but also on various Espressif ESP8266 boards. Thanks to integrated WLAN, the boards only need a power supply and access to a WiFi AccessPoint, but no PC as a bridge computer.

Probably the cheapest way to mine Duinocoin (DOCU) is with an ESP8266-based microcontroller. Once programmed, an ESP8266 only needs a 3.3V power supply thanks to integrated WLAN - and it works.

The Duinocoin (DUCO) was originally developed for the Arduino UNO. Therefore, mining with the Arduino UNO is the ideal introduction to DUCO mining with microcontrollers..

In addition to an Arduino UNO or Nano, a PC, a notebook or a Raspberry Pi (for the Arduino development environment (IDE) and as a communication computer) is sufficient to get started with DUCO mining.

As in the early Bitcoin days, the CPU of a PC can be used to mine the Duinocoin. The official PC_Miner.py looks fancy and uses multiple CPU cores if desired.

As with the minimal PC miner (Minimal_PC_Miner.py), the "big" PC miner only requires Python3. However, PC_Miner.py installs a lot of additional Python libraries - especially for a colourful status output.

Those who only have a PC available and don't want to install anything can still mine Duinocoin (DUCO): with the "Minimal_PC_Miner.py".

No microcontroller, no Arduino IDE, no installation of any software. If you have a computer system with a Python3 interpreter, you can start mining DUCO right away with a single command line.

No microcontroller, no PC, no Raspberry Pi, no installation: just with a JavaScript-enabled web browser you can already mine Duinocoin (DUCO).

If you don't have the possibility to install Python3 and don't own or want to buy a microcontroller, you can still mine Duinocoin (DUCO). All you need is JavaScript in a web browser.

Round three and a half months after the major release 3.0, Robert Piotrowski (revoxhere) and his development team have completed version 3.18 of the Duinocoin miner.

Version 3.18 of the Duinocoin software is said to increase the hashrate on ESP8266 boards by up to 10%. An ESP32 memory leak was fixed, plus there are many small improvements like the possibility to switch off flashing LEDs.

If the access rights to device files (serial ports, USB) are not set appropriately under GNU/Linux, the user can neither program a microcontroller nor use the mining software 'AVR_Miner.py'.

If you want to program an Arduino UNO with the Arduino IDE for the first time, you will almost always run into the problem under GNU/Linux that the IDE does not have access to the serial port (i.e. USB) and thus cannot find the microcontroller. The solution: Correct group membership (and not release device files for all/everyone as often described!).

In the video "Duino-Coin News, Changes & Updates - April 2022" Youtuber "Karl's Electronics" shows how Duinocoin and sensors (IoT) work together talks about DucoPay.

Karl's Electronics regularly shows news worth watching about Duinocoin. This video is about the new IoT connection of sensors to the mining process and there are hints about DucoPay, which could be compared (quite far) to PayPal.

• Length: 5 minutes
• Language: English
• Rating: very interesting