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DIY Hardware Bitcoin Workshop: Later this afternoon, Kim Neunert together with Stepan Snigirev of Cryptoadvance Inc. gave a workshop. Topic was to introduce the audience to building a DIY Bitcoin Hardware Wallet. In particular, the hands on workshop had a goal for the interested to get a DIY platform to work and create transactions of the crypto-currency. The hardware platform is based on an STM Micro based development board, the STM32F469I-DISCO. The hardware is capable of running MicroPython, making it a convenient environment to develop new application. Specs for the device include a ARM® Cortex®-M4 32 bit processor, 4M of SDRAM. Essential to make it a usable device is the four inches 800×480 touch display. On board USB connectivity serves development purposes.

Throughout the DIY Hardware Bitcoin Workshop, participants had the opportunity to work with Cryptoadvance’s “Spectre” software. The software comes in two flavours: one in shape of a firmware for the device. The other comes in form of a desktop application, that’s wrapping bitcoind.

After successful installation, these two instances were be leveraged to create transactions from and to the air-gapped device. Verifying actual transactions is done through the devices display and an additional QR-Scanner attached to the development board.

Bitcoin still is a technology intensive topic, that I personally found difficult to follow, in particular because most dependencies failed to work during the workshop. Nevertheless, it’s just the beginning and the technology is offering plenty of interesting use-cases that are worth investigating.