[Jako]

Just read the news here in the forums that the XBMC project now can take donations via Flattr, in addition to just donation via PayPal as before
http://forum.xbmc.org/newreply.php?tid=109510

http://flattr.com/profile/xbmc should be enabled by now

That got me wondering the if the XBMC Foundation / Team-XBMC would also consider taking donations in Bitcoin too?

http://bitcoin.org


Would then be cool to maybe write a screensaver / visualization for XBMC that also did Bitcoin mining in the background when your HTPC is idle?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_pro...oin_mining

If so then maybe could call that screensaver / visualization "XBMC Bitcoin Mining" and let the user choose to mine for themselves for for XBMC?

[da-anda]

I'm personally not a fan of bitcoin. Used it once and figured it was a huge PITA to get going. And wtf, a miner as screensaver?

[Jako]

miner as screensaver?

Yes I was thinking a screensaver that looked and worked kind of like the Folding@Home and SETI@Home BOINC screensavers, which uses the GPU's GPGPU and Floating-Point capabilities via OpenCL or CUDA, but the screensaver would be used in XBMC to Bitcoin mine for donations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI@home#Software

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home#Client

There are many Bitcoin open source clients out there and even already several Bitcoin screensaver clients, so having a Bitcoin miner as a screensaver is not an original idea that I just made up


Some charities also accept Bitcoin, so perhaps have an option in the screensaver to mine Bitcoins for a specific charity instead, like for example the Free Software Foundation http://bitcoinsforcharity.org/charities

And yeah using Bitcoin used to be huge PITA but it have made huge improvements over the past years.


[EDIT]: Oh, hey have you seen that OpenELEC accepts donations via Bitcoin now http://openelec.tv/donate

[da-anda]

I think once we have binary addons in place such screensaver could be submitted by the community. And the PITA I experience was last year. It is/was already quite a journey to pick the correct software to manage your wallets. But it's the XBMC foundation to decide and setup, not me

[Jako]

I think once we have binary addons in place such screensaver could be submitted by the community.

Is a application binary interface being worked on then? If so will that make it into XBMC 14?

XBMC otherwise already have an API for screensaver and visualization binaries made for it?

[Geowuff]

I'm also interested to send donation via bitcoin. So will the XBMCF please add an BTC payment address?

[dogefort]

Seconded. Just put up an address and see how it goes?

It's about 5 minutes of work, and Mozilla is already on it.

[spinmaster]

I started to get more into bitcoin recently and would love to see an option for bitcoin donations as well!

Would then be cool to maybe write a screensaver / visualization for XBMC that also did Bitcoin mining in the background when your HTPC is idle?

The idea of using the Kodi screensaver for profitable, local mining is nonsense. Mining is pretty CPU intensive and I don't want to hammer my HTPC during idling (I built my HTPC for low power/resource consumption). Also as of today, a single, "standard" CPU for bitcoin mining is pretty useless. You would need special CPUs dedicated for mining as it requires solving extremely complex, specific mathematical problems to be able to "find" bitcoins in a reasonable amount of time. No one uses these types of CPUs in a device built for media playback.

[natethomas]

I honestly don't think any of us has any idea how to accept bitcoins. Perhaps you could provide some kind of simple guide explaining the process?

[Ned Scott]

Accepting them is fairly easy. Spending them for anything we need is another matter.

[da-anda]

AFAIK you have to chose an bitcoin app and from then on stick with it because your wallet can't be transferd. In our case it would either mean that we need an app that is cross platform so that other team members could access the wallet if one is not available or use an online service (so they exist). As I've written above - I tried it once because it sounded nice, but didn't like the overall handling (and complexity) at all. It's sort of bittorrent for money and your wallet needs to sync all transactions in order to find out if you got money (which might take ages if you hadn't opened the wallet app for some time). Maybe that changed by now, but I doubt it.

[spinmaster]

I honestly don't think any of us has any idea how to accept bitcoins. Perhaps you could provide some kind of simple guide explaining the process?

Maybe have a look at a bitcoin payment provider such as BitPay (https://bitpay.com/). By using BitPay you can accept bitcoins and cash out in US$ or EUR€.

I've made bitcoin donations for other Open Source projects (e.g. Tor, OpenELEC, etc.) and some of them use BitPay for processing.

[Hedda]

miner as screensaver?

Yes I was thinking a screensaver that looked and worked kind of like the Folding@Home and SETI@Home BOINC screensavers, which uses the GPU's GPGPU and Floating-Point capabilities via OpenCL or CUDA, but the screensaver would be used in XBMC to Bitcoin mine for donations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI@home#Software

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home#Client

There are many Bitcoin open source clients out there and even already several Bitcoin screensaver clients, so having a Bitcoin miner as a screensaver is not an original idea that I just made up

Maybe this could now be achieved simpler than before with CF4OCL (C Framework for OpenCL) which is a open source and licensed cross-platform library for developing OpenCL projects in C or C++

http://fakenmc.github.io/cf4ocl/
https://github.com/FakenMC/cf4ocl/

CF4OCL allows the rapid development of OpenCL host programs in C/C++ while making it easier to provide OpenCL, simplify the analysis of OpenCL environments, etc.

CF4OCL library could possible also be reused to accelerate other processes in Kodi using OpenCL as well

Summary

The C Framework for OpenCL, cf4ocl, is a cross-platform pure C object-oriented framework for developing and benchmarking OpenCL projects in C. It aims to:

• 1. Promote the rapid development of OpenCL host programs in C (with support for C++) and avoid the tedious and error-prone boilerplate code usually required.
  
• 2. Assist in the benchmarking of OpenCL events, such as kernel execution and data transfers. Profiling comes for free with cf4ocl.
  
• 3. Simplify the analysis of the OpenCL environment and of kernel requirements.
  
• 4. Allow for all levels of integration with existing OpenCL code: use as much or as few of cf4ocl required for your project, with full access to the underlying OpenCL objects and functions at all times.

Features

• Object-oriented interface to the OpenCL API
  
• New/destroy functions, no direct memory alloc/free
  
• Easy (and extensible) device selection
  
• Simple event dependency mechanism
  
• User-friendly error management
  
• OpenCL version independent
  
• Integrated profiling
  
• Tested on Linux, OSX and Windows

[spinmaster]

I can recommend the following (very interesting and well made!) video, in case somebody thinks that mining with a "home pc" might be a great idea. This is how bitcoin mining is done in real life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8kua5B5K3I

I would rather stick with BitPay.

[Kib]

It costs more power than it generates in bitcoin to do mining on home rigs, and it has for a long time.
Letting people 'mine' on their home rigs will take money from their heightened electrical bill and give it to us.

I am very much against it.

I might look into BitPay though. Receiving money is ok with me.
I pretty much think it will be like Flattr though, we have a grand total of almost 15 dollar there in a few years.