Hi all,
As you are aware, Rosetta@Home requires a ARM 64 bit image which basically limits involvement to Raspberry 4s (and a few work units for Raspberry 3s). Given this limitations, have you considered adding support for World Community Grid’s OpenPandemics (on BOINC)? It has ARM (32 bit) support and has much lower RAM requirements. This would allow many more Pi devices to lend their support
It would be fun to support multiple research programs, since they all are on the BOINC platform!
That’s interesting. My 4 x RPi3 are busy chewing numbers with tasks in the queue but I might have a look at this when one of them becomes free.
@vinntec I’d love to know if you could give this a try…I don’t have a spare device at the moment to test on.
Theoretically, the way it would work is this:
On one of your nodes, at the GUI, press F9 to bring down the menu. Right Arrow to Projects, then select Add Project, and press Enter. Scroll down in the list to World Community Grid, and press Enter.
Assuming you don’t already have an account, arrow down to Create User, and provide your information.
The device will likely take a few moments to pull down project metadata, get registered, and check in for work units.
Hopefully, crunch data!
Let me know if this makes sense, and/or you are successful!
p.s. - There are lots of BOINC projects, but we chose to focus our efforts on Rosetta@Home and streamline the effort, so that users could simply download an SD Card image, flash it, and power on, with zero intervention and begin folding.
@Troggdor Thanks for calling this project out as an option. We’re currently thinking about ways to expose even more projects (this one included), so I definitely appreciate the note demonstrating your interest!
And, great username, btw. 
One of my RPi3 has another 90 mins to run with nothing in the queue so may have it free tomorrow (it is after midnight here). The other three still have one running and one in the queue.
No rush, thanks!
(May want to set your nearly-complete Pi to “No New Tasks” as previously)
F9 --> Projects --> Down Arrow to Rosetta@Home --> Press Enter --> Down Arrow to No New Tasks, press Enter
Later, if you choose to return this Pi to Rosetta@Home service, you’ll need to follow the same steps but choose “Resume Tasks”, otherwise it will never grab any work units.
Good thinking!
Unfortunately they seem to only support ARM 32 bits Linux at the moment. Perhaps they could be reached out to to solve this issue.
It is up and running on an RPi3 no major problems. I installed Raspbian with desktop as normal and enabled ssh. I then followed the sign-up process which took me to help files which were 10 years old, so not surprising a lot of the commands didn’t work. Hours later after I figured it out myself, the download instructions when logged on are completely different and up to date!
I might want to do that again as a new temporary user and document the steps properly. I haven’t found a way of getting my existing Boinc account to take notice of it, so this is registered on World Community Grid for the time being.
@dtischler Thanks
@vinntec I am glad you were able to get WCG up and running.
I see a few posts in the WCG forum asking for ARM 64 support, so we will see if there is any progress. It would be great if I could support Rosetta and WCG research at the same time. I ordered a RPi4 so I will have it focus on Rosetta and I will have my old RPi3 focus on WCG.
I have worked through setting up as a new user on the WCG project and an RPi3. It looks like the links to 10 year old information have been sorted out now, so the instructions make sense and you don’t have to figure very much out yourself. Attached is my write-up to help anyone else who wants to try it. I now have 2 x RPi 3 on WCG, and the 5 x RPi4 (4G) + 2 x RPi3 running Fold for Covid.Join RPI3 to The OpenPandemics - COVID-19 Project.pdf (596.6 KB)
@vinntec that is a great write-up. thank you for sharing. Alternatively, you could run Boinc from the command line using boinctui that is what I am doing.
sudo apt-get install boinc-client boinctui
