Boinc for Raspberry Pi

Do you think using a Raspberry Pi to mine bitcoins or litecoins is an useless and egoistic waste of energy. You can change for an useless but generous waste of energy by installing Boinc.

Boinc is an ditributed computing platform used by some scientific projects, were you share your CPU time to contribute to the projects of your choice.

The difficulty with a Raspberry Pi is to find ARM processor compatible projects. I choice the Seti@home project, but I also tested the Milkyway@home projects.

Join an project
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/ for Seti@home. Remember your ID and password, which are necessaries for the configuration.

Install Boinc on Raspberry Pi
"
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install boinc
"

Download the Seti@home client
"
cd /var/lib/boinc-client
sudo wget https://github.com/dcarrion87/boinc-rpi/raw/master/bin/setiathome-armv6l.tar.gz
sudo tar xfz setiathome-armv6l.tar.gz
chown -R boinc:boinc projects/
"

Connect theBoinc to the project
"
boinccmd --lookup_account http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/ yourAccount yourPassword
"
The command returns your "account key" wich is 32 hexadécal caracters long.

You have to use it in the following command
"
boinccmd --project_attach http://setiathome.berkeley.edu yourAccountKey
"

To get my first task I used this command
"
boinccmd --project http://setiathome.berkeley.edu update
"

And to check activity I use:
"
boinccmd --get_simple_gui_info
"

Here you are, your Raspberry Pi is now crushing numbers to detect intelligent life outside Earth.

Thank to this blogger who gives the more valuable informations about this topic:
http://burdeview.blogspot.fr/p/raspberry-pi-boinc-project-ive-created.html

Changing of power adapter

After weeks of use, i feel that my "Apple" power adapter is too warm. So I decided to chage it for the Bluestork one. This one has 2 usb ports and illuminates a blue light when plugged.

After a few day of use, I feel it less hot. 

Currently, my only measuring tool is my hand. But to do thing more seriously, I decided to buy an cheap InfraRed Thermometer on dealextreme. I should receive it soon. 

Mining Bitcoins with a Raspberry Pi

Last weeks, cryptocurrencies were under media attention because of the recent Bitcoin price volatility. It gives me an idea: to test on my spare Raspberry Pi how it can be used to mine BitCoin.

Because of Bitcoin generation difficulty,  I decided to have a look on an alternative cryptocurrency called Litecoins. To be sure to obtain results, I also decided to join a mining pool, with the "cpuminer" software wich can mine Bitcoins and Litecoins.

Downloading dependencies

"
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install make automake build-essential git
sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev
"

Downloading and compiling cpuminer:
"
git clone git://github.com/pooler/cpuminer.git
cd cpuminer/
 ./autogen.sh
./configure CFLAGS="-O3"
make
 "

Using cpuminer with a pool :
"./minerd --url adressedupool.org:portdupool --userpass user:motdepasse"

Exemple
"./minerd --url pool.org:8337 --userpass error418.pi:toto"

I also made some Litecoin mining test with the Raspberry Pi at each overclocking choice of Raspbian, with the actual mining difficulty (wich can change):

Overclocking	Speed	Temperature
None	0,32 khash/s	43,3°C / 109.94°F
Modest	0,37 khash/s	45,5°C / 113.9°F
Medium	0,41 khash/s	46,5°C / 115.7 °F
High	0,42 khash/s	47,1°C / 116.78°F (crash after one day)
Turbo	0,46 khash/s	51,9°C / 125.42°F (quick crash)

Raspberry Pi power consumption - Fourth month

May 1, this is the 4th report about my Raspberry Pi.

The total consumption is 7,1 kWh. The average consumption is definitively of 1.8 kWh per month.

Uptime of the Teapot is 99,43%.

1384 unique visitors were on the teapot in April. 

crédit photo: By Axel Rouvin, via Wikimedia Commons