As I explained in my prior post, the Raspberry Pi is a small single board computer that runs on a special version of Debian Linux called Raspbian. It can run on a number of different operating systems, even Microsoft Windows 10. (apparently, it's a stripped down version of Windows 10 .. that doesn't have actual windows... so, what would that look like? DOS?) Let's just leave it that Raspbian is the most commonly installed OS. ("OS" being the lazy guy's way of saying"operating system".)
Oh, wait... I didn't exactly go that far .. so I embellished.
The cool thing about the Raspberry Pi is that it has a bunch of USB ports and an HDMI (modern digital television connection) so you can easily plug in a keyboard, a mouse, a USB Wi/Fi stick, memory sticks, etc. and a modern monitor or television set. Boom! It's a tiny desktop computer!
Oh, did I say that the Raspbian OS is a full "GUI"/window-like operating system. Umm, yeah, just now. .. and "GUI" is the lazy guy's way of saying "Graphic User Interface"... or simply: a user screen that can use pictures and a funky screen layout.
One last thing.... the Raspberry Pi runs on an "Arm" spu (central processing unit) ... like the processors that run an iPhone or Android phone or tablet. The "Pi 2" (what I have) is a four core cpu... that's like having four cpus running. (Most current desktops run multiple cpus.. eight cpus is common.)
What is BOINC?
Maybe it's just a little easier to go back in time and see where it started....
Back around 1999 (or probably earlier), some astrophysics at the University of California, Berkeley were playing around with computer programs that would analyse radio telescope data from outer space. The idea was that, if you found "intelligent" patterns in the data, you could deduce that some intelligent life form created it. from this, they decided that we could go on a systematic search for intelligent life in space of out part in the universe. They called this effort the SETI project. (search for extra-terrestrial intelligence). One problem: this computer analysis takes a huge about of processing power... and with college project funding, as it is... there wasn't much chance of getting the computer power that they needed. One of the scientists on the project came up with the idea that the internet contains thousands, if not millions of computers online all that time that had spare processing power that was available, and all they needed to do was to get people to "donate" some of their computer processing power. .. so they came up with the SETI@Home project. Being rather geeky, I got into the idea and participated with some other geeky friends. Participation in this early project was huge.
Other univserity scientists and professers saw the potentian and started their own projects on the same concept. Stanford University started a project called Folding@Home, where volunteers could be involved in a project that would analyse how proteins change shape. This could help in medical applications and find answers to problems in findcures for diseases.
Realizing that the potential was huge ... and that many schools might not have the funding to build their own systems and promote their projects, the guys back at Berkeley decided to take their original project the another level: so they developed "BOINC". .. or the "Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing". or simply, it's a platform for any project to get in on this new game of "distributed computing" over the internet.
Here's their website so you can dig in and look around:
BOINC Project Main Page
The "Choose Project" link on the main page lists a number of projects that are current running under the BOINC umbrella.
Being a numbers game (i.e. number of computers on the internet, most projects develop programs to run on specific computers and operating systems. Predictable, Windows and Intel or AMD based computers are number one. but also, there are many projects that support the Apple Mac computers and computers that run on Linux. The column onf the right side of the project page indicates the computer platforms that are supported. Some even support some specific graphics cards, since some of there offer some pretty amazing computer processing power.
A fairly small number of projects also are supporting the Raspberry Pi. These are indicated on the chart with the "raspberry" logo.
I have been running a number of these on my Raspberry Pi ... and got me pulled in to obtain a second Pi to join in on the fun.
If this will work right... here's my project status page for my Raspberry Pi account :-)
Yeah, so far, the SETI and SETI-Beta projects aren't doing so well. This is because the Raspberry Pi isn't set up to run "natively" and there's a bunch that you have to work on to get it to work. Another project: Milkyway@Home also shares this problem and has yet to post any good results. The whole idea of the BOINC platform is that it's supposed to be "easy" for the average person to run.
Oh. I forgot to say.... These blog posts were done from my Raspberry Pi. The prior post was done from the default web browser for Raspbian called "Web" and this post was done from a web browser called Iceweasel (which is a version of Firefox)
Are we learning? Are we "entertained"? Feel free to comment: corrections, suggesting, ask questions, offer better answers, goofy comments ... all are welcome. The ony "dumb question" is the one that was never asked.
Disclaimer: My story of the history of the SETI and BOINC projects was not meant to be the difinitive story, but rather a summary of the story for getting the basics. Back around 1980, I was managing a Radio Shack store (yeah, that was a humble start). I met a retired engineer ... let's just say that he was an actual "rocket scientist". He was using the lowly Radio Shack TRS-80 computer with a cassette tape data drive and was collecting raw radio signals from a long wire antenna. He said that it was five miles long! Then, he would run the data through a fast fourier transform algorithm. This had to take a really long time to run! He never said, but I suspect that he was looking for "little green men" in the same way that the SETI project runs.
Cheers!
// Brian
