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Create a Bitcoin/Litecoin ticker with your Raspberry Pi!

Not that long ago I ran across this post on Reddit that showed a guy's version of the Raspberry Pi Bitcoin ticker. Luckily I at least saved the link to his "how-to" (Thanks Stig!). Since I had a Raspberry Pi already, I figured I'd give it a shot.

The first thing you're going to need is obviously a Raspberry Pi. I picked up the CanaKit Complete Starter Kit from Amazon. While you're at it, Edimax EW-7811 Wireless N USB adapter. That way you can connect to your wireless network and not have to use a network cable.  You're also going to need the screen. The screen I used is also the same screen that Stig used in his, and it comes from eBay. The drivers and everything that come with the zip file you'll be downloading soon work on that screen. I do not know if they work with any other screen, so I HIGHLY suggest you spend the $29.99 and get that particular screen. Once you have all your parts, you're ready to go!

Step 1: Setting up your Raspberry Pi

I'm not a Linux expert by any means of the imagination, but I've done some tinkering with it in the past. I got my Raspberry Pi because I wanted a small Linux box to mess with and this thing is perfect. The Edimax has drivers built in to the latest OS on the Raspberry Pi, so you shouldn't have any problems with that. Connect to it and get it connected to your home network. Once you have that setup, you're going to need some files before we move forward...

Step 2: Setting up the ticker

DOWNLOAD THIS FILE FIRST. That zip file contains all the files you'll need to make this work. Put them in a directory called lcdscreen. Since I was using the 'pi' login on my pi, the full directory was /home/pi/lcdscreen/. If you decide to use a different directory, you'll have to edit the ticker.sh file later on.

The working part of this thing is the file 'ticker.py'. It's Stig's code that's been edited down to display only the Mt. Gox info. If you want to make any changes to what's displayed, that's the file you'll need to edit. The file 'ticker.sh' is the script that's run to make the screen refresh every 60 seconds. If you want to change the refresh rate (say, to every 5 minutes), you just nano ticker.sh and change the sleep number to however many seconds you want it to wait to refresh. 2 minutes = 120 seconds, 5 minutes = 300 seconds, and so on.

If you use the files as they sit, your finished product will look like this:

Mt. Gox Ticker

Once you have the files in the lcdscreen directory, you run the following command:

pi@raspberrypi ~/lcdscreen $ nohup ./ticker.sh &

This will allow you to run the ticker.sh script in the background. Ticker.sh calls ticker.py to get the info. Keep in mind that you have to be connected to the internet because it connects to Mt. Gox in order to pull the pricing info.

Step 3: Profit?

That's all there is to setting this thing up. **Note:** You may need to copy the provided `99-lcdsysinfo.rules` file into`/etc/udev/rules.d/` in order to grant pylcdsysinfo permission to claim the device without running as root. If you're still having issues, leave a comment below and I'll do what I can to help you out.

EDIT: I have added Litecoin as well. You can download the python file that shows both Litecoin and Bitcoin here. If you would like to have both the Bitcoin screen and the Litecoin screen go through the rotation, add it to the ticker.sh file. You can do this with however many things you want to add to the rotation. Change the "sleep 60" to the number of seconds you want to take between screens. It would look like this:

#!/bin/bash
while true
do
 /home/pi/lcdscreen/ticker.py
 sleep 60
 /home/pi/lcdscreen/litecoin.py
 sleep 60
done

If you feel like it, feel free to leave a donation: 14Tkp7U4UArLaKTB6g95xvgHoQNUtWvcy7

Stig's donations for the original code: 1CG67w37G5mte1bSiveKvXqk27buPn67KR

Litecoin Donations: LKiWx5V8NWJgAZFSMAuD6EhFSsrmeYquGQ