Mining on the RK3188 (Android TV Box MK809 III): How Many Kilohashes It Gets
An Android TV Box MK809 III came into my hands — a small TV set-top box with a quad-core Rockchip RK3188 processor.
As an experiment I installed Linux Xubuntu on it, and then I had an idea: compile a miner and see how many kilohashes the RK3188 would produce :-)
In short: about 0.8 kH/s per core, about 3 kH/s in total on four cores mining Litecoin (the scrypt algorithm). That’s next to nothing for mining — the experiment was purely for fun.
How I ran the miner
I downloaded the minerd (cpuminer) source, compiled it right on the box under Xubuntu and ran it:
The launch is standard — pool address, worker login and the scrypt algorithm:
POOL=stratum+tcp://pool.example.com:3333 minerd --url $POOL --userpass worker:password --algo scrypt
Replace worker:password with your worker’s login and password on your pool.
The result
It came to about 0.8 kH/s per core, with four cores — about 3 kH/s in total (the screenshot shows a share accepted at 3.06 kH/s). Blazing mining performance :-D
For comparison, GPUs mining scrypt produce hundreds of kH/s. So mining on a TV box doesn’t pay: the electricity costs more than it earns.
What the RK3188 is good for
On the other hand, such a box running Linux makes a decent little server. One reader hosts his Drupal websites on an RK3188 — quiet, efficient and almost free in terms of electricity.
If you can’t flash the box and your computer stops detecting it, see how to revive the MK809 III.