BOINC on Raspbery Pi

[DrPop]

Now that Kat's robot science fair project is done, we're slowly turning our attention to the Raspberry Pi and Beaglebone Black boards she has. I'm actually installing Raspbian on the Pi right now, it's about 50% complete.

Kat really wants to try crunching with it, so for those that know more about this than I do: what would be the best project to run on this thing? Not sure what kind of math the little ARM CPU does best, but here's our options it looks like:
Asteroids
Collatz
Einstein
Enigma
YoYo

Which do you think would be most suited to the Pi and its [limited] crunching capabilities? Thanks!

[Bryan]

There was a fairly "nasty" thread on SRBase where a guy asked if he could use a Pi. One smart mouthed guys really climbed on the guy asking the question. The following discussion went through some of the capabilities (or lack of) of the Pi. IIRC it doesn't do double precision.

[DrPop]

That's unfortunate. I've never figured out why anyone with knowledge thinks they should slam other people who are asking a question. They should be glad the person is asking the question and that they know the answer!

I got the list of projects above from BOINC's main home page, and they all have the little Raspberry Pi symbol next to them. I'm just trying to figure out which would be the most credits per watt kind of a thing - which one of those projects uses math that the Pi's little CPU is actually "good" at (if it's powerful enough to be good at anything at all of course!) ;)

[Bryan]

Yes, it is unfortunate! Someone with knowledge can take an opportunity like that and "teach" rather than being an overbearing smart a$$.

[nanoprobe]

I tried using the instructions on the BU forum to get BU running on an RP. Never could get it going. Frustration deluxe but it's more than likely an EBCAK issue. :rolleyes:

[DrPop]

OK, so far I've got BOINC running and starting an Enigma WU on the Pi. BOINC benchmarks returned a whopping 217 Floating Point and 897 Integer MIPS. :P LoL...I'm not even sure this will be worth the 1.5W it must be sucking down, but we'll see. Kat is insisting we try, so here goes. :D :))

[shiva]

OK, so far I've got BOINC running and starting an Enigma WU on the Pi. BOINC benchmarks returned a whopping 217 Floating Point and 897 Integer MIPS. :P LoL...I'm not even sure this will be worth the 1.5W it must be sucking down, but we'll see. Kat is insisting we try, so here goes. :D :))Well really the only value you are looking at here is Kat's option, :) so suck it up DP and pay the bill!!! :) :) it's not like she wants a new car. :)

[Bryan]

it's not like she wants a new car. :)

Yet! =))

[Duke of Buckingham]

I can see DP didnt ask Kat if she wants a car.
Yeha, my man they grow up so fast. :((

Hey Z, I found a car for you. :)
http://www.hotcarszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Sunnyyoungcarwashgirlphotos3.jpg

[zombie67]

Now that Kat's robot science fair project is done, we're slowly turning our attention to the Raspberry Pi and Beaglebone Black boards she has. I'm actually installing Raspbian on the Pi right now, it's about 50% complete.

Kat really wants to try crunching with it, so for those that know more about this than I do: what would be the best project to run on this thing? Not sure what kind of math the little ARM CPU does best, but here's our options it looks like:
Asteroids
Collatz
Einstein
Enigma
YoYo

Which do you think would be most suited to the Pi and its [limited] crunching capabilities? Thanks!


There are some more projects listed here. Some require installing the app + app_info.

http://burdeview.blogspot.co.uk/p/raspberry-pi-boinc-project-ive-created.html

[DrPop]

Wow, thanks - that blog is a wealth of R-Pi BOINC info! :) At the current run rate, it will take about 18 hours for a single Enigma WU. Hmmmm...this got me to thinking. Maybe I should figure out how to make it crunch SETI@Home and then the Credit New might take over and give it a million credits because it's SO SLOW! :P

Yeah, Kat is really growing up. Man, I'm telling you the last 6 months...wow. Losing the baby face and looks (acting too?) like a big kid now. No more little one...guess she should change her name on here from "DrPop's Daughter" to "11 yr old Kat going on 16" :))

[Duke of Buckingham]

I know that feeling. :((

The real problem is when they start treating us as old man, they are not anymore our young children and we are our old parents.

Suddenly they look so old and for a moment, we are much younger.

No more responsbility for someone that is ready to take care of his own life and we know we didnt fail as fathers.

We keep on looking at them as our children forever and just turn old again so that is life ...

Very old and Crazy Duke.
http://i1135.photobucket.com/albums/m632/Mayrolis/24New.jpg

[Bryan]

"11 yr old Kat going on 16" :))

Enjoy every minute of it. In 2 more years it will be "13 going on 21" =))

[pinhodecarlos]

Raspberry Pi 2 is six times faster than Pi 1, supports Windows 10

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2878612/raspberry-pi-2-is-six-times-faster-than-pi-1-supports-windows-10.html

[DrPop]

Raspberry Pi 2 is six times faster than Pi 1, supports Windows 10

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2878612/raspberry-pi-2-is-six-times-faster-than-pi-1-supports-windows-10.html

Good deal! That might actually be worth running. I wonder how much the power draw increased for the 6x CPU performance? There are a few mini-computer boards out there that certainly smoke the Pi - I'd love to figure out how to make the Intel Edison work for crunching. Amazing what that thing can do per watt considering how tiny it is.

[pinhodecarlos]

What linux distribution are you running on your PI? Is it straight forward to run enigma?

[DrPop]

What linux distribution are you running on your PI? Is it straight forward to run enigma?

Yes, believe me, if I could do it, it's simple! ;) I just downloaded NOOBS from the Raspberry Pi website, copied it to the SD card, and installed Raspian from it. Then I just installed BOINC - you could follow the directions to install BOINC from that blog that Zombie linked us to a few posts back, and then attached to Enigma. Since Enigma is setup for supporting the Pi, it was really that simple - no need to reconfigure stuff. If you want to crunch other projects that aren't setup for it, like SETI for example, that's when you have to do the re-configuring of all that like that blog explains.

[pinhodecarlos]

Thank you.

Also:

"When booting to a Raspbian desktop, the Raspberry Pi 1 draws about 290mA, dropping to about 250mA once the desktop is loaded. The Raspberry Pi 2 draws about 340mA at boot, dropping to about 270mA once the desktop is loaded. There is a slight increase in current draw from the Raspi 1 to the Raspi 2.

With a few experiments, I did determine the Raspberry Pi 2 will draw up to 500mA under heavy load. That’s the max spec for USB. If your current USB power adapter isn’t great, you might want to get a better one for the Raspi 2."

Source: http://hackaday.com/2015/02/02/introducing-the-raspberry-pi-2/

[DrPop]

Thanks! Sounds like a big improvement for crunching. :) Only bummer is, I can't find it in stock anywhere. I went to Element 14, linked from the Raspberrypi.org website and no dice...out of stock. :(

[cineon_lut]

I hear they run Windows. Is it the desktop or tablet version? I wouldn't mind a little project with my kids on this.

EDIT: nm answered my own question: customized windows embedded.

[John P. Myers]

Noticed Win10 for the Pi 2 was mentioned, but what wasn't mentioned is that it's free, as long as it's for non-commercial use http://dev.windows.com/en-us/featured/raspberrypi2support

[denim]

We should do a group buy. Would just need someone to install the OS, and then a number of us could have a bunch of mini-crunchers on the cheap.

[DrPop]

Be nice to see a CPU benchmark comparison between the new Raspberry Pi 2.0 and the Odroid C1 here: http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G141578608433

It would be interesting to compare crunching power and watts used to do the work as well.

Same price - $35.

[zombie67]

I think the issue would be compatible BOINC apps. Or do they use the came CPU?

[zombie67]

I just bought a Raspberry Pi 3, and it is running ubuntu, crunching SETI for now. It is supposed to be 3x faster then the 1st version. It has 4 threads, and built in wifi and BT. $35

Is there an up to date list somewhere of RP projects? I think the list here (http://burdeview.blogspot.com/p/raspberry-pi-boinc-project-ive-created.html) is out of date.

[Al]

I'm running Micro Collatz on 3 of mine and they just crossed 8000 wuprop hours.

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php)

[zombie67]

I'm running Micro Collatz on 3 of mine and they just crossed 8000 wuprop hours.

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php)

There we go! Much better use of my time. I will crank up my star from 5k to 10k. Thanks!

[denim]

Who is still doing BOINC on RPi?

[somanyroads]

Who is still doing BOINC on RPi?

RPi 3's have run:

Asteroids
Distributed Hardware Evolution Project
Einstein
Goofyxgrid NCI
RakeSearch (neon opti app)
SETI v8
TN-Grid gene@home PC-IM
Universe at Home BHspin v2
wuprop
Yoyo Cruncher ogr
Yoyo ECM [may need to increase swap file size: sudo nano /etc/dphys-swapfile ]

Ran these once upon a time, but a RPi application now seems to be gone:

Micro Collatz
Drug Discover Smina for mol2

[Al]

+1 I have 4 running.