Guide for Raspberry Pi
Setup for "Bookworm"64/32bit, "Bullseye" 64/32bit and legacy "Buster" 32bit
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Setup for "Bookworm"64/32bit, "Bullseye" 64/32bit and legacy "Buster" 32bit
Last updated
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The Raspberry Pi is a single board computer, which is very popular today. It is reliable and user friendly. It's electricity consumption is 5~7W depending on the setup and model. For staking is recommended to use the latest model Pi 5 or Pi 4b with at least 4GB RAM. Of course the previous Pi 3b+ still can be used, but in light of the upgrade of HYDRA blockchain to decreased block times a more powerful device will work much better.
What is more important, the native Operating System for the Pi is well supported and maintained by the Raspberry Pi Foundation and there are lots of materials online explaining how to setup the Pi and make different projects.
Here is the link where you can get the official Raspberry Pi Operating Systems:
You can burn an image with the OS on a SD card (at least 32GB) using the .
In case you plan to stake HYDRA, it is recommended to use the HYDRA Staking Wallet with GUI. Even advanced users can benefit from the GUI, because it is light and has useful features unavailable on the daemon version. If you intend to use the Staking Wallet with GUI then you will need a Raspberry Pi OS with desktop. The desktop can be viewed remotely using RealVNC server, which is installed on the Pi OS by default. RealVNC viewer can be downloaded from .
If you are a developer and need to run a node for your app or you are a very experienced user, then you might want the daemon version of the HYDRA Staking Wallet, for which the Rapberry Pi Os Lite is appropriate.
Adding a SSD for Bookworm OS installations is a bit more complicated. Here is a good guide how to do that:
RaspberryPi OS Bookworm and Bullseye, 64 bit and 32 bit.
You may need to add the Berkeley database v4.8 libraries:
Now skip the rest and go directly to Step 3 below.
RaspberryPi OS Buster 32 bit.
It is necessary to add some missing dependencies, just follow the lines of code below:
First, add these libraries with this one single line:
Second, add the Berkeley DB ver 4.8 which is the recommended database to run for the wallet:
Add the missing repository using the nano editor:
The last command from above will open the nano editor. Paste the following line inside the editor:
Now save the file with Ctrl-O and exit the nano editor with Ctrl-X
Add the Berkeley database v4.8 libraries:
Alternative way to add the Berkeley DB without using nano editor:
The latest release of the HYDRA Staking Wallets can be found on github here:
Create a directory called Hydra and download the zip file to it:
Replace the above link with the correct version for the Pi OS you use.
Extract the archive
Your file may be named differently, depending on the OS version you use.
The binaries will then be in ~/Hydra/bin/
where you can cd into with
Either run the command-line daemon (add '-testnet' if you wish to connect to testnet):
Call the daemon using (add '-testnet' if you are connected to testnet):
Or you can run the wallet with GUI (add '-testnet' if you are connecting to testnet):
Please follow these steps:
Close the wallet (./hydra-cli stop
or clicking X in the Hydra gui)
Ensure that you have a backup copy of your wallet.dat file and data folder (.hydra) before you proceed. Updating the client generally does not touch the wallet or blockchain data but it is good practise to always have the latest backup in case something goes wrong.
Voila! you've updated Hydra to the latest version available!
If you are updating your node and experience issues try starting with these flags to rebuild:
The legacy file hydra-0.20.xx-raspberry-pi-legacy-32bit.zip for "Buster" 32 bit is not provided anymore. It's recommended to switch to the newest "Bookworm" 64bit or Bullseye" 64 bit Pi OS and use the correspinding HYDRA Staking Wallet file from above. More on the legacy OS version - .
The node runs on port TCP 13333 for testnet and TCP 3338 for mainnet. You may need to open these ports on the router and operating system firewall. For additional information please see this about how to use the UFW (Uncomplicated Firewall) for Raspberry Pi.
Download the latest version for your operating system from and replace the files in the corresponding folders.
The Webwallet can be found at:
The Testnet Explorer can be viewed at:
The Testnet Faucet is at:
The Mainnet Explorer can be viewed at: