Topic: Piper Wallet v2 and possible remake of v1 (Read 571 times)

I don't let someone else make it for me.

How is that different from the bitaddress program?

This doesn't solve the trust problem: the consumer still has to trust that whoever built the "black box" doesn't know the private keys.

Wish I could tell you that there was progress made with redoing this. But, he kept running into issues and then the unit that I using for testing died.
Once RPi 4 stock starts showing up again and prices get back to normal, I will push Ted to see if he can make some progress on the programming side.

-Dave

I am exploring the possibilities of physical bitcoin for El Salvador, the Central African Republic, and any upcoming countries using bitcoin as legal tender -
with large population segments that have limited access to the internet:

Piper Wallet technology seems to be a great start because paper wallets can be generated locally without any record of the private key other than the one printed on the wallet. Check out the discussion at https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/physical-bitcoin-for-the-3rd-world-5399679 

Adding a coin hopper (i.e. 10¢ or 25¢ per wallet) could make this profitable. The possibilities are infinite.

The Piper Wallet device itself does not (and should not) store any bitcoins or private keys. It generates them and prints it out for you. Then you can store that paper wallet somewhere safe.

actually this is a very good idea and breakthrough sir. I also just found out that there is a tool like this. and I also don't know how it works. but can this piper wallet be able to store our bitcoins very safely? and if this is really good, it can be developed again. thanks

I found this:
https://www.americanpartisan.org/2020/01/r-pi-otp-dryad-true-hardware-rng-how-to/

It talks about using a RPi2 to make one time pads. Not the same, but can be adapted.

For the moment the project is on indefinite hold.
The programmer I am using is sill under tremendous load from work / life stuff and has not even looked at it since a few weeks after my last post in April.
And he is a friend / programmer I use for other stuff so I know it's not BS.
Since it's a free side thing with no possibility of ever generating a profit for any of us, I am not going to push him till things get a bit more normal.
Once they do, if he can pick it up again great, if not, I'll go hunting for someone else.

That is kind of the issue with things you want to release under the GPL. It gets pushed to the back of the to do list now and then.....

-Dave

edit: the other issue is that the git that he setup for it is a disaster at the moment, I can't even make it public till he cleans it. There are things in there that should not be that have no relation to this project but were put in place for testing, and some drivers that are commercial software that would have to be removed.

As an owner of the piper I still see use cases for it today.

there is nothing better to use the snippets for wallet apps like bluewallet.io - you can watch or spend by only scanning the private or public key and you have a secure backup if your device fail.

the problem with piper v1 is, that it uses the oldschool keygeneration - with them there a higher transaction fees as needed today.

I would would be a dream to have the following feature in v2:

• A setting to generate HD wallet keypairs from a given BIP39 mnemonic seed and optional BIP39 passphrase.
• Access to the seed over a USB-Stick.
  
• manage an optional passphrase and printing over the gui on an attached monitor or Raspi Touchscreen.

This gives more security in case a piper snippet gets lost and options for new use cases.

What do you think about this feature?

At the moment programming has stalled because of Corona.
He is has been under pressure to get a lot of work done for his real job but is having issues working from home so other projects have fallen off the "to do" list.

I just wanted to post an update that no it's not forgotten. I got an email from him just now letting me know his situation.

Wanted to be done by now, but it's still in the barely started stage

Stay Safe.

-Dave

Bit of a delayed update:

1) Programmer is re-doing most of the back end work on making the button work and some other changes. As he put it "I'm sure there is a worse way of doing what they did in the way that they did it, I'm just not sure how" No real ETA on it as it's being done during his free time which is why this update was so long in coming.

2) Printer settings are tweaked. Seems to be 100% now.

3) I have the wallet generating working faster thanks to the advice of Dabs.

4) Once it's finished he will post all the work to his public git but, since there are a lot of notes and comments in the code now that are not for public consumption it's going to be a while before that happens.

-Dave

Well, if you want history, you'd use google. But yeah, I stopped using google for almost all web searches, so ... that's the flip side of being private ... all my relatives and friends and classmates are complaining why I don't have a facebook account. My answer "I refuse." hehehe... (yes, I don't have a facebook account, never have. Not sure but maybe in the future I may create one and mark it all private as much as possible.)

BTW, my search terms were "raspberry pi RNG" or something like that.

I have no idea what I searched for that none of that came up.
Doing it again a lot came up.

Would love to know what I actually put in the search bar, that's the problem with duck duck go, no history.

Will take a look after work to see if it helps.

Thanks,
Dave

I just found them by doing a search:

https://www.nico-maas.de/?p=1562
http://scruss.com/blog/2013/06/07/well-that-was-unexpected-the-raspberry-pis-hardware-random-number-generator/
https://sites.google.com/site/astudyofentropy/project-definition/raspberry-pi-internal-hardware-random-number-generator
https://blog.webernetz.net/true-random-psk-generator-on-a-raspi/
https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/61888/how-to-know-if-dev-hwrng-is-working
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=32407
https://vk5tu.livejournal.com/43059.html

Installing haveged worked before all this.

I think this is what you're looking for:


this will install rngd, which gets entropy from /dev/hwrng and feeds it to /dev/random where it is mixed into the kernel's entropy pool.

Let me know what worked for you. Maybe it's already on by default.

Since I'm stupid and can't find it. Can you point to any docs on how to use that instead of the CPU, which I assume it's doing now.

As I said I my friend who does programming taking a look at it in a month or so, but if it's simple I should be able to do it.

Thanks,
Dave

The RPi has it's own hardware TRNG (True Random Number Generator). It outputs 1 million bits per second, so you don't need to spend a lot of time to get 1024 bits, or 512, or even just 256 bits. Then use that as seed to a faster PRNG or even SHA256 to generate private keys.

The long awaited update.

The printer does work with some setting tweaks. Just have to slow it down and it's fine. Going to have to try a different printer.

The original piper install had a switch on top that would allow you to save a copy of every wallet printed. At least with the new setup I am doing it does not work. No matter what it saves a copy. THIS IS NOT GOOD. There is a setting in the GUI that should shut it off but it does not I faked the switch with a jumper and it still saves them. I am not sure if this is a bug in the code or something in the different hardware or what. But I did spend too much time dealing with it till I moved on. I revisit it later.

I have a small touchsreen hooked up to it and I am trying to get some basic things working so you can choose the type of wallet. The original allowed a bunch of altcoins and I want to see if I can make it more touch friendly. I have a programmer friend working on that.

Speed is an issue. I increased the entropy settings and well lets face it, it's a RPi so it started to get real slow. Don't know if there is a better way. Reached out to same friend to take a look.

As of now both programming things are hold until after mid January as his kids are coming back from college and then Christmas and New Years and then getting them back to school.

So that is the small update for now. Going to play with printers and printer settings and hope to have more info in a little while.


-Dave

Long stream of profanity goes here.

So it does work and I was doing some more testing and am having an odd issue. Some of the QR codes do not work.
Phone flat out will not scan some them.

I have 3 thoughts (1) that since all I really did was slam in the old piper image that there is an issue with the printer driver and some of the codes are just too distorted to work or (2) similar to #1 but that the printer or paper is just a different size and that is causing the distortion or (3) the printer is just not happy.

Will do more testing, but I REALLY don't have the time and should be doing job related work. I just had to go play with something else before I went nuts on the job....

-Dave

The laminator will obscure the thermal print out ...

Pretty cool contraption i must say. Would be pretty darn awesome if it has a built in laminator as well.

I think the point of the device is a quick way to make a paper wallet, but it should be treated as temporary. For long term storage, you'd like to make a copy of the paper wallet anyway.

Some people have the time to prepare paper wallets in advance. Most people should. Make a few in all the typical address formats and stick it in a binder or something. When you need one, you have one.

Children's books seem to have some sort of film or laminate or something on top ... well, they are colored, sometimes even hard bound and the pages could also be the same material and extra thick, especially picture type children's books.

As for other types of paper, ... there are prayer books dated 840 AD, still intact, the Madrid Codex found in 1860 but probably created between 900 - 12 AD. The first copies of the Gutenberg Bible were printed in 1454 AD. There's a book in Scotland made 11th century. And a Buddhist holy text found in a cave in China. Ireland has the Book of Kells, created 800 AD.

And then, there's the Etruscan Gold Book (so, it's not really paper) dating 660 BC.

So that's a bunch of books 400 to 2600 years old.

Unless it gets warm, I assume And that's the problem with thermal paper.

I have children's books that are older than that I've never seen a book that couldn't be read anymore, no matter how old it was. As long as the paper doesn't dissolve from getting wet (or gets eaten by bugs), I expect laser prints to last for centuries. Thermal paper is great for quick use, such as ATMs.

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What's so attractive about this project is the fact that one press on a button is enough to create a new paper wallet. I could of course do that on my desktop, after rebooting from a LIVE Linux CD, but it's much more impressive to have a dedicated device for it.

If they have RPi drivers then they could probably be made to work.

With that being said.



And......
IT'S ALIVE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ1OSRgvZws&feature=youtu.be

-Dave

The original project was already looking at archival type thermal paper that would last 20 years.

Personally, I use a cheap laser printer for my paper wallets. Those seem to last at least 10 years so far. My old high school term paper was printed more than 20 years ago, and even photocopy machines made by Xerox that function today ... uh ... but that means extra hardware.

I think HP and Canon make those tiny printers that print 4x6 inch photos. Polaroid also makes cameras that print instantly.

I'll be following this. LoyceV merit OP!

My first concern is the thermal printer, that's terrible for long term storage.

Do it! Do it!

I mean, people make projects on raspberry pis and they don't make money, but the thing gets popular. Media players. Plex boxes. Arcade and Retro Game emulators with joysticks. Stake boxes. Masternode boxes.

Push a button, prints a segwit address and private key = awesome project. But since it's a pi, have more buttons. Not sure what, but maybe other types of addresses.

Since it's essentially a glorified random number generator, have a button to output unpredictable dice rolls. For fun.


Yes, you won't make money, but it will be fun.


I don't think a "kickstarter" that accepts fiat is gonna be fun.


An ICO would be more fun. LOL. (But don't call people investors, and make sure it's very clear there is no profit to be made, and no altcoins will be airdropped.) Early participants just get a pre-assembled (or easy to assemble with instructions) new type of piper wallet hardware thingie.

At the very least, you make one work, and you're a "competitor" in the space, and that's always good for everyone else.

https://github.com/coinables/segwitaddress
Should get me most of the way there.
But, I as I said in the 1st post, I am not even going to have time to do anything real until Nov / Dec

I have completed the following step: Taking it out of the box and taking a picture. So, yeah it's going to be a while.

-Dave

Great idea to revive this and I am sure this will be of use to those who enjoy building this type of thing.

It would be nice to have this be able to print various types of addresses out would be a nice touch adding some sort of interface that can select from legacy, segwit, and other types of addressing would be something interesting.

I could see this being a simple way for small retailers or tradesmen to accept crypto on site or in store.

While having a hardware wallet is cool and cheap now I still think there is a market for this type of thing now the industry has grown and more retail customers are looking at payment solutions for crypto this also helps them accept it p2p without having to lose fee's to third party services.

I look forward to seeing the build progress.

The v1 was discussed here. Didn't see a peep about the attempted v2 / kick starter.
As others have said it's way overpriced for what is was, and what I am attempting to put together is going to cost me more then a cheap laptop with a boot CD with bitaddress along with a old printer.

I just think it was a cool thing and want to replicate it.

-Dave

Hey Dave, for the record though, it has been discussed here,

[ANN] Piper - A hardware-based paper wallet printer and so much more

Piper: The Raspberry Pi Paper Wallet Printer is now taking orders!

What do you think about Piper Wallet?

Piper Paper Wallet - Why are there no replies???

But if you are going to read most of the replies, almost everyone find it pretty expensive. Anyways, good luck with your experiment, if that's what you're trying to accomplished here. 

So. I know nobody really cares and most of you think it's a waste of time. But too bad. You get to read about the project.
Expect a post here every now and then.
For today's excitement. The box came in with the parts.
Nothing else to report.




-Dave

Not "sell it" sell it. More along the lines of a how to guide with the kit from adfruit, an updated image / apps sd card and some other tweaks.

I don't have the time or the ability to build and produce them. I have no idea how the new printer and RPi will work with some of the old apps that they put together so I am guessing that it's going to take a bit of fiddling to get it to work. Might be a little or a lot, will not know until I put one together to see what happens.

The post was more of a "would anyone be interested in it if I did get it to work".

-Dave

As @OmegaStarScream wrote, it's not worth it, at least financially. At 65$ you can already buy a hardware wallet.
Of course, I cannot argue about people's hobbies 

Duplicate them for the purpose of making something similar to Piper wallet and sell it? Paper wallets have always been considered as the cheapest option for cold storage so personally, I don't think that these devices are worth it (not for most people at least). I also don't think anyone would pay money for something that he could get for free, especially when it's something as easy as downloading an OS and running it offline. If someone wants to invest to secure his funds, he should spend them on a hardware wallet, which is a lot more convenient for spending.

For those of you who don't know or remember years ago (2013) there was a company that made a product called The Piper Wallet.
It was basically a RPi and a thermal printer in a case that spit out a paper wallet when you pressed a button:



It was never super popular and eventually they stopped making it.

They tried back in August to make a version 2 based off a Game Boy Advance and it didn't go far:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/piperwallet/piperwallet-easy-and-secure-bitcoin-paper-wallets

I did not even see any discussion of it here so I don't know if that was the issue for the V2. I don't reply to every thread I see but I really did not see anything about this at all.

I don't know if he will try again or what his plan is with the new version.

With that being said, adafruit has a kit with a thermal printer, case and the button for $115. The only thing missing is the switch.
https://www.adafruit.com/product/1289

I was thinking of ordering one and seeing if I could duplicate the original.

Good idea? Stupid waste of time and money? Just looking for some input. Will not have time till November / December to do any of it anyway but was wondering what people thought about it.

-Dave