Raspberry Pi is a Low-Power, Credit-Card Sized Computer

My B+ enters BOINC. The power of BAM!: just adding the accountmanager and the work flows in, projects are automatically attached.

Mon 06 Apr 2015 22:18:01 CEST | | Starting BOINC client version 7.0.27 for arm-unknown-linux-gnueabihf
Mon 06 Apr 2015 22:18:01 CEST | | log flags: file_xfer, sched_ops, task
Mon 06 Apr 2015 22:18:01 CEST | | Libraries: libcurl/7.26.0 OpenSSL/1.0.1e zlib/1.2.7 libidn/1.25 libssh2/1.4.2 librtmp/2.3
Mon 06 Apr 2015 22:18:01 CEST | | Data directory: /var/lib/boinc-client
Mon 06 Apr 2015 22:18:01 CEST | | Processor: 1 ARMv6-compatible processor rev 7 (v6l)
Mon 06 Apr 2015 22:18:01 CEST | | Processor features:
Mon 06 Apr 2015 22:18:01 CEST | | OS: Linux: 3.18.5+
Mon 06 Apr 2015 22:18:01 CEST | | Memory: 435.29 MB physical, 100.00 MB virtual
Mon 06 Apr 2015 22:18:01 CEST | | Disk: 13.32 GB total, 10.20 GB free
Mon 06 Apr 2015 22:18:01 CEST | | Local time is UTC +2 hours
Mon 06 Apr 2015 22:18:01 CEST | | No usable GPUs found
Mon 06 Apr 2015 22:18:01 CEST | | Config: GUI RPC allowed from:
Mon 06 Apr 2015 22:18:01 CEST | | No general preferences found - using defaults
Mon 06 Apr 2015 22:18:01 CEST | | Reading preferences override file
Mon 06 Apr 2015 22:18:01 CEST | | Preferences:
Mon 06 Apr 2015 22:18:01 CEST | | max memory usage when active: 217.65MB
Mon 06 Apr 2015 22:18:01 CEST | | max memory usage when idle: 391.76MB
Mon 06 Apr 2015 22:18:01 CEST | | max disk usage: 6.66GB
Mon 06 Apr 2015 22:18:01 CEST | | don't use GPU while active
Mon 06 Apr 2015 22:18:01 CEST | | suspend work if non-BOINC CPU load exceeds 25 %
Mon 06 Apr 2015 22:18:01 CEST | | (to change preferences, visit the web site of an attached project, or select Preferences in the Manager)
Mon 06 Apr 2015 22:18:01 CEST | | Not using a proxy

Tue 07 Apr 2015 00:17:37 CEST | | Fetching configuration file from http://bam.boincstats.com/get_project_config.php
Tue 07 Apr 2015 00:18:02 CEST | | Contacting account manager at http://bam.boincstats.com/
Tue 07 Apr 2015 00:18:03 CEST | | Account manager contact succeeded
Tue 07 Apr 2015 00:18:03 CEST | | Attaching to http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/
Tue 07 Apr 2015 00:18:04 CEST | | Running CPU benchmarks
Tue 07 Apr 2015 00:18:04 CEST | | Suspending computation - CPU benchmarks in progress
Tue 07 Apr 2015 00:18:36 CEST | | Benchmark results:
Tue 07 Apr 2015 00:18:36 CEST | | Number of CPUs: 1
Tue 07 Apr 2015 00:18:36 CEST | | 222 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU
Tue 07 Apr 2015 00:18:36 CEST | | 926 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU
Tue 07 Apr 2015 00:18:37 CEST | | Resuming computation
Tue 07 Apr 2015 00:18:39 CEST | http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/ | Master file download succeeded
Tue 07 Apr 2015 00:18:44 CEST | http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/ | Sending scheduler request: Project initialization.
Tue 07 Apr 2015 00:18:44 CEST | http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/ | Requesting new tasks for CPU
Tue 07 Apr 2015 00:18:46 CEST | SETI@home | Scheduler request completed: got 1 new tasks

Have you found any info on getting android to run on a pi?

There is no official support for Android on Pi and the B+, being a ARMv6 -architecture- ARM11 -model-, is not very well suited for it too. Raspbian is just fine for it.
I reserve Android for my Banana Pi's and the Beaglebone Black (working now!) - though I was slowly going nuts by the latter's refusal to boot from SD card when connected to a PC.
I may yet try and install Android on my Raspi2 though...

It has been a week or so since I got my first SBC (Single Board Computer, it has Mobo, RAM and CPU all on one SOC, System-On a-Chip) on BOINC.
It went all very smooth: load the Noobs that you can download from the Raspberry website on a SD card of at least 8GB (I use 16GB just to be sure), insert the SD card,
apply power, let the system start up, install BOINC

Code:

---

# sudo apt-get install boinc

---

-and off you go.

As I use BAM!, all projects that I have defaulted there were made active on the Raspi, which included projects without applications for the Raspi. So I had to divide my boxen/hosts into groups. It will come as no surprise to e.g. vaughan that BAM! had some nasty surprises here when more than one box/host was in a group, luckily this did not affect the workings of the Raspi as it is the sole member of my group 'ARM11 on Raspbian'.

What is in that group?

• A Raspberry Pi Model B+, running a Linux 3.18.7+ kernel (Debian Wheezy)
• CPU : A Broadcom ARMv6-compatible processor ARM11, rev 7 (v6l), in short ARM1176JZF-S aka BCM2835 (for the full SOC)
• Features : swp, half, thumb, fastmult, VFP, edsp, java/jazelle, tls

I tried these settings:

Speed in MHz	Floating Point MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU	Integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU
700	222	926
800	266	1073
950	323	1275
1000	338	1355

At 1000MHz it is more responsive and, due to its nice red Lego casing, not hot at all. Attachment 344

My Raspi2 is the sole member of my group 'ARM Cortex-A7 on Raspbian'.

What is in the group?

• A Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, running a Linux 3.18.7+ kernel (Debian Jessie)
• CPU : A Broadcom ARMv7A-compatible processor ARM Cortex-A7, rev 5 (v7l), aka BCM2836 (for the full SOC)
• Features : half, thumb, fastmult, VFP, edsp, NEON, VFPv3, tls, VFPv4, idiva, idivt, VFPd32, lpae, evtstrm

For the Raspberry Pi 2 i got these values (before and after armhf update, and later integer update):

Speed in MHz	Floating Point MIPS (Whetstone) per CPU	Integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per CPU
1000	293	1163
1000	489	1448
1000	489	1944

Though the MIPS values originally were less than the single-core Raspberry Pi B+ @1000 MHz, having four -more modern- cores certainly gives an advantage.
Updating the armhf (hardware floating point) and integer files gave a tremendous boost to the benchmarks, now to see what it offers in real life...
It is not just MHz and MIPS what counts when it comes to real-life performance!

Project	Avg. running time in hours	Avg. credit	Green light?	Orange light?	Red light?
Albert@Home	25	100	Yes	-	-
Asteroids@Home	gets stuck at 7% (Raspi B+) 100 (Raspi 2)	480	Yes	-	-
Collatz@Home	tbd	tbd	Yes	-	-
Einstein@Home	25	63	Yes	-	-
Enigma@Home	5	30	Yes	-	-
FiND@Home	tbd	tbd	Yes	-	-
MilkyWay@Home	tbd	tbd	RasPi 2	Raspi B+	-
QCN (Quake Catcher Network)	tbd	tbd	RasPi B+*	-	RasPi 2**
Radioactive@Home	tbd	tbd	RasPi 2*	-	-
Seti@Home	110	-	RasPi 2	RasPi B+	-
theSkyNet POGS	tbd	tbd	-	-	RasPi 2**
WUProp	3.5 (Raspi B+) 7 (Raspi 2)	7 (Raspi B+) 14 (Raspi 2)	RasPi 2	RasPi B+	-
Yoyo@Home	tbd	28.86 (Raspi B+) 80 (Raspi 2)	Yes	-	-
] Legenda	tbd=To be determined *=Needs a sensor though **=Will only run using Android as OS	- = no data/not applicable	Green light= Works out-of-the-box	Orange light= Needs some fiddling	Red light= Refuses to work

It appears that most 'native' applications have a problem of sorts -or that connecting through BAM! may seem pretty smart, but you'd better do it the 'hard' way,
as Daniel Carrion explains here at Burdeview. Worked for MilkyWay and WUProp, but at first not for Seti@Home. Seti started after a second round of fiddling though.
Most of the out-of-the-box projects can be brought into action by suspending all others, FiND appears to have run out of work for the Raspberry, OProject has been retired according to BOINCStats -they retired a lot of projects recently- and POGS has trouble with downloading an *.png image.

Looking at the table above though it suddenly dawned upon me that the problems are pretty much all with projects that I normally run as GPU-only.
Now the Raspberry has a pretty potent GPU -some 24 GFLOP as compared to other SBCs that mostly have to do with around 1 or 2 GFLOP-, but nobody has yet written a GPU BOINC application for the Raspberry.
So I may just need different profiles for the Raspberry (location in the project page like 'Home' or 'Work' or 'School' instead of 'default') that allow for CPU crunching of these projects!

Soon to be updated yet again...

Another step in low-power computing: My Pi2 is now running on a Waka Waka (bright light in Swahili) Power+ solar cell bought using a coupon that was in a six-pack of 'Wieckse Witte' wheat beer,
so I got a 50% rebate.
https://nl.waka-waka.com/media/cache...50b8773c25.jpghttps://nl.waka-waka.com/media/cache...a90ca7d15c.jpghttps://nl.waka-waka.com/media/cache...89fc1c7c40.jpg

It delivers more than enough power (2200 mAh), so I'll buy a black one for the BeagleBone Black and a yellow one for the Banana Pro soon too. They've even promised more colo(u)rs...


https://nl.waka-waka.com/media/cache...24c3b30235.jpghttps://nl.waka-waka.com/media/cache...6c099505a2.jpghttps://nl.waka-waka.com/media/cache...1023f3e07a.jpghttps://nl.waka-waka.com/media/cache...ac325c501f.jpg

Nice detail: for every one that you buy another gets send to people somewhere on the globe desperately needing light and/or power.

Interesting that they are now focusing on Sustainable Energy powering the small chip-sets. Nice post Dirk, thanks for posting!

As the usability of the Raspberry Pi increased with the advent of the Pi2, I decided to let go of the Lego casings and buy something more professional: the Multi-Pi Stackable Raspberry Pi Case:

http://www.modmypi.com/image/cache/d...58-536x408.jpg

Takes less space and is stackable, as you might conclude from the name -I bought two sets. You can also lay it on a side, aiding the cooling (basically preventing a lower board from heating up the higher one).

With so many different versions of the Raspberry I'll try to offer a one-stop reference:

Feature	Model A	Model A+	Model Zero	Model B	Model B+	Model 2B	Model 3B
Size	85.60 mm × 56.5 mm 3.370 in × 2.224 in	65 mm × 56.5 mm 2.56 in × 2.22 in	65 mm × 30 mm 2.56 in × 1.18 in	85.60 mm × 56.5 mm 3.370 in × 2.224 in	85.60 mm × 56.5 mm 3.370 in × 2.224 in	85.60 mm × 56.5 mm 3.370 in × 2.224 in	85.60 mm × 56.5 mm 3.370 in × 2.224 in
SOC	Broadcom BCM2835	Broadcom BCM2835	Broadcom BCM2835	Broadcom BCM2835	Broadcom BCM2835	Broadcom BCM2836	Broadcom BCM2837
CPU	ARM1176JZF-S	ARM1176JZF-S	ARM1176JZF-S	ARM1176JZF-S	ARM1176JZF-S	ARM Cortex-A7	ARM Cortex-A53
Architecture	ARMv6	ARMv6	ARMv6	ARMv6	ARMv6	ARMv7-A	ARMv8-A
Speed	700 MHz	700 MHz	1000 MHz	700 MHz	700 MHz	900 MHz	1200 MHz
Cores	1	1	1	1	1	4	4
RAM	256 MB	256 MB	512 MB	512 MB	512 MB	1024 MB	1024 MB
RAM/Core	256 MB	256 MB	512 MB	512 MB	512 MB	256 MB	256 MB
USB 2.0	1	1	1(micro)	2	4	4	4
LAN	No	No	No	10/100	10/100	10/100	10/100
WiFi	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes
Bluetooth	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes

The lack of LAN and USB ports of some models can be overcome with this gadget: https://www.sossolutions.nl/media/ca..._5_grande.jpeg offering WiFi and two USB ports for the cost of one -you need to plug it in.

The main attraction of the latest model -the Zero- is its tiny size; you can almost fit three zeros in the place of one of the full-sized models. Price difference -locally in the Netherlands ATM- with the more elaborate Model B+ is only one euro though.

Top dog is now the Model 3 B, with its quad core 64-bit Cortex-A53 CPU, which is more capable than previous models -but also probably even more capable after updating the kernel with additional ARMHF and Integer related libraries, as was Model 2 B.
http://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/wp-...0-1024x890.jpg

I updated the table below with the new Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, a quad core ARM Cortex-A53@1200 MHz sporting 1GB RAM.

I have 12 of the C1s and 4 of the XU4s. They run Asteroids most of the time.

Attachment 352Attachment 353

Note the use of metal "sate stick" skewers to hold the devices together :)

We bought the Odroids from the Korean manufacturer Hardkernel