How to set up a curation bot on raspberry pi

Introduction

If you feel like trusting your keys to external sites is not a great way to curate content, I've got a 35 dollar lifetime solution for you. Not that many people know that steemit curation bots can even be built on your mobile phones, since singing transactions takes little to no computational power.

In this tutorial, I'll be showing you how to set up a curation bot on a small arm processor machine, that takes up little to no power, so you can run it with almost no running costs. The specific machine that I'm going to use is Raspberry Pi 2 Model B however the same process applies to any other Raspberry Pi models, Arduino, BeagleBone or any other device that can run linux.

Needed programs/files/accessories

Raspberry Pi - https://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-Pi-RASP-PI-3-Model-Motherboard/dp/B01CD5VC92

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Wifi dongle - https://www.amazon.com/FotoFo-USB-WiFi-Adapter-Raspberry/dp/B01I191N48

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Micro SD card - https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-microSD-High-Capacity-microSDHC/dp/B00488G6P8

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Micro SD card reader - https://www.amazon.com/IOGEAR-MicroSD-Reader-Writer-GFR204SD/dp/B0046TJG1U

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A copy of raspian(any other linux based operating system will work as well) - https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/
Make sure to download the pixel version.
If you have larger than 8gb sd card I'd reccommend Ubuntu mate located here - https://ubuntu-mate.org/raspberry-pi/
You might even consider rokos OS if you want to stake your favorite altcoins meantime - http://rokos.space/core.html

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SDFormatter - https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/index.html

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etcher - https://etcher.io/

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Bitwise SSH client - https://www.bitvise.com/ssh-client-download

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Step by step tutorial

1. Format the Micro SD card

Get and install SDFormatter, when that is done insert your Micro SD card to the reader, open up SDFormatter and make sure format size adjustment is swiched on. Then format the SD card.

2. Burn raspbian on the SD card

We're going to use Etcher for this process. Burning the image on the SD card is fairly simple and straight forward.

3. Install raspbian on your raspberry pi and log into your wifi

Installing rasbian is done automatically, you just have to wait until it boots up. After it's done booting, just log into your wifi and write down your local ip for the device. You'll be using this ip to ssh into the device.

4. SSH into your raspberry with bitvise

The default username is : pi
The default password is: raspberry

6. Install piston and all other prerequisites

bitvise will open up a terminal along with a ftp tunnel, paste the following commands into the terminal to install piston

Install screen

sudo apt-get install screen

Install python with all piston the prerequisites

sudo apt-get install python3
sudo apt-get install python3-dev
sudo apt-get install python3-pip

sudo apt-get install git make automake cmake g++ libssl-dev autoconf libtool
sudo apt-get install libboost-thread-dev libboost-date-time-dev libboost-system-dev libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-program-options-dev libboost-signals-dev libboost-serialization-dev libboost-chrono-dev libboost-test-dev libboost-context-dev libboost-locale-dev libboost-coroutine-dev libboost-iostreams-dev
sudo apt-get install doxygen perl libreadline-dev libncurses5-dev

install piston

sudo pip3 install steem-piston

Just paste all of theese commands into your terminal one by one to intsall piston with all of the prerequisites

7. Compile the curation bot script

Make a new folder on your desktop called bot, then create 2 files in that folder called bot.py and votelist.txt
so it would look like this

You can just create 2 text files and rename the extensions to get the .py extension.

Edit the bot.py file and paste the following code inside:

from steem.steem import Steem
from steem.steem import BroadcastingError
import threading
import time
import random
import csv
 
my_subscriptions = []

 
with open('votelist.txt', mode='r') as infile:
    reader = csv.reader(infile)
    for rows in reader:
        v = rows[0]
        my_subscriptions.append(v)
 
# accounts and passwords
account = ["account_goes_here"]
posting_key = ["password_goes_here"]
# delay in seconds when the bot votes
vote_delay = random.randrange(1200,1800)

upvote_history = []
 
def feed():
    print("Waiting for new posts by %s\n\n\nGo Oprah!\nGo Winfrey!" % my_subscriptions)
    steem = Steem(wif=posting_key[0])
    for comment in steem.stream_comments():
 
        if comment.author in my_subscriptions:
            # Comments don't have titles. This is how we can know if we have a post or a comment.
            if len(comment.title) > 0:
 
                # check if we already upvoted this. Sometimes the feed will give duplicates.
                if comment.identifier in upvote_history:
                    continue
 
                print("New post by @%s %s" % (comment.author, url_builder(comment)))
                workerThread = threading.Thread(name=comment.identifier, target=worker, args=(comment,))
                workerThread.start()
 

def url_builder(comment):
    return "https://steemit.com/%s/%s" % (comment.category, comment.identifier)
 
def worker(worker_comment):
     time.sleep(vote_delay)
     try:
       for (k,v) in enumerate(account):
         worker_steem = Steem(wif=posting_key[k])
         upvote_comment = worker_steem.get_content(worker_comment.identifier)
         # vote weight 100 full power vote -100 full power flag
         upvote_comment.vote(100, v)
         print("@%s====> ^Upvoted^" % upvote_comment.author)
         upvote_history.append(upvote_comment.identifier)
     except BroadcastingError as e:
       print("@%s<- failed" % upvote_comment.author)
       print(str(e))

 
if __name__ == "__main__":
    while True:
        try:
            feed()
        except (KeyboardInterrupt, SystemExit):
            print("Quitting...")
            break
        except Exception as e:
            traceback.print_exc()
            print("### Exception Occurred: Restarting...")

8. Add your account to the curation bot, also modify the the settings

add your account to "your_account_goes_here"
add your password to "your_password_goes_here"

you can also add multiple account by seperating the accounts and keys with a comma like so:

account = ["account1", "account2"]
posting_key = ["key1", "key2"]

You can modify the delay when the bot votes by altering this line (in seconds)

vote_delay = random.randrange(1200,1800)

You can also modify the vote weight by altering this line (100 being full power and -100 being full power flag)

upvote_comment.vote(100, v) 

9. Add users to the curation list

open up your votelist.txt and add users you want to vote on, each line contains a new user for the bot to vote on

So the list would go like so

ubg
fyrstikken
furion
contentjunkie
xeroc
steempowertwins

10. Move the files from your desktop to raspberry

After you're done adding accounts to your curation list just via bitvise ftp tunnel like so

11. Run your bot

To run your bot, you first need to navigate to the bots folder

you do that by typing

cd bot

then you need to run your bot

screen python3 bot.py

By using that command you're attaching the python script to a screen. So you can close your terminal and log out.

Each time you want to know how the bot is doing you type

screen -r

If you want to detach the screen use keyboard shortcut ctrl+a+d
If you want to close the script use keyboard shortcut ctrl+c

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Big thanks to @fyrstikken for releasing the source code for the winfrey bot.
You can find the original code for the winfrey bot here: https://steemit.com/socialist-bot/@fyrstikken/the-anonymous-winfrey-bot-upvotes-for-everyone-download-here-easy-steps-for-n00bs
Also if you have any questions regarding setting up your own bot, just ask in the comments or contact @ubg in rocket chat. Also a huge thanks to @noganoo for providing me the piston prerequisites.