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Message 1933204 - Posted: 2 May 2018, 13:08:57 UTC

Hello everyone,

Mike here, member since 1999. I participated a lot for years but then left the project for some years. But now I'm back with an updated PC in my ham shack here with a Ryzen 7 1700. It's going through WUs in about 2 hrs on it's individual processors. The CPU I had for my main PC - an AMD Phenom II w/six proc. is now running Linux and is devoted to Seti@Home exclusively (it's getting warm in this room).

Next, I have a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ being delivered this week, which I will test for this project. I did do research on the rate of completion for this project WUs (~ 20 - 30 hrs?) and I think it's worth it. If it appears to accomplish in a reasonable amount of time, I'll buy 3 more and stack them.

Now I need to see where my room fan is - summertime is coming LOL.

Mike
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Message 1933208 - Posted: 2 May 2018, 13:34:52 UTC

Welcome back to the world of Seti crunching!
Meow!
"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

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Message 1933477 - Posted: 4 May 2018, 1:35:50 UTC

Well ... my 1st Pi is being delayed. Seems Amazon lost it and had to start all over from the git-go on the order. But they did issue me a $15 online gift card I can use to buy another one! Might still get one by the weekend to play with.
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Message 1933495 - Posted: 4 May 2018, 4:13:56 UTC - in response to Message 1933204.  

My Pi 3B does the seti WU's in 10-16 hours or so.

At least the ones that I can see right now have been in that time frame.

Not a speed demon, but its a cheap low power device.

I only run 3 WU's a time to keep temperatures down, it does get pretty hot.

Make sure you've got sufficient cooling.
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Message 1933570 - Posted: 4 May 2018, 14:19:37 UTC - in response to Message 1933495.  

I only run 3 WU's a time to keep temperatures down, it does get pretty hot.

Make sure you've got sufficient cooling.


Are you running them with fans? I might get one Pi today and will evaluate the cooling issue. I know I don't want to mount in a tight enclosure, but need to see if open-air is good enough. I like the DIN rail mounting system because they aren't sitting one on top of the other but rather side by side.
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Message 1933651 - Posted: 4 May 2018, 18:17:45 UTC - in response to Message 1933570.  
Last modified: 4 May 2018, 18:18:49 UTC

I used to run it passively cooled with a heatsink on the CPU.

Today I have a 120mm fan at low rpm pushing air across the heatsink.

One of my Pi's (3B+) is in a closed case used as a media player for my TV. That one is passively cooled with a heatsink, and only runs two Wu's at one time.
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Message 1933891 - Posted: 6 May 2018, 0:20:57 UTC

Got one Pi yesterday. Nice little board. I put on the two heat sinks that came with it. I attached a thermocouple to the cpu heatsink and ran a web browser with a You Tube movie running and various other tasks. I managed to get the temp on the heatsink up to 55 C (131 F). Using a little linux app called htop it showed one cpu near max and the other 3 at somewhat low levels.

I haven't installed this project yet but will tomorrow. Then I want to take some data with only the project running and whatever the base OS needs to run. I'll do 1, 2, 3, and 4 cores at 100% and see what the temps do. According to what I've read the max temp is 85 C ...
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Message 1934062 - Posted: 6 May 2018, 23:00:52 UTC - in response to Message 1933891.  
Last modified: 6 May 2018, 23:05:19 UTC

Here's the temperature data for the Raspberry Pi 3 B+ running the Seti@Home application using an aluminum finned heatsink on the processor. I used a small 12V 50 mm fan but I only ran it at 1/2 the voltage (6V) because I wanted to see how well it cooled without making a lot of noise. I logged into the project and got some tasks, and set the # of processors in increments from 1 to 4 and let it run for at least 30 minutes at each setting. The utilization for each CPU was set to 100%, and was verified true by a separate CPU monitoring utility. I used an external thermocouple attached to the heat sink to measure the temperature with a DMM.

I am pleased with the results, as it cooled the chip very well at half speed. If you want to run the fan at full voltage it will work even better.

No Fan Data

State--------Temp Deg C(F)
OS only ----- 46(114)
1 CPU ----- 58(136)
2 CPU ----- 64(147)
3 CPU ----- 69(155)
4 CPU ----- 72(161)

With Fan Data

State--------Temp Deg C(F)
1 CPU ----- 35(95)
2 CPU ----- 38(101)
3 CPU ----- 41(107)
4 CPU ----- 45(113)

As of this evening, the first Seti WU the Pi got this morning is going to finish soon, it's at 94.6% and been running for 8 hours. So all in all I think this project is worth the trouble and I'll add Pi #2 tomorrow and get more crunching going. I also need to decide on the mounting system because right now I have pi all over my desk LOL.
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Message 1934176 - Posted: 7 May 2018, 13:01:11 UTC
Last modified: 7 May 2018, 13:03:07 UTC

You can get the temp from the Pi via vcgencmd:
vcgencmd measure_temp

The Pi3's need active cooling as they get quite hot under load. I have a few running Einstein work. I designed a 3D printed case with room for 4 of them side by side and fans on top. Pictures here
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Message 1934297 - Posted: 7 May 2018, 23:22:46 UTC - in response to Message 1934176.  

You can get the temp from the Pi via vcgencmd:
vcgencmd measure_temp


Thanks for the command I didn't know about that one.


The Pi3's need active cooling as they get quite hot under load. I have a few running Einstein work. I designed a 3D printed case with room for 4 of them side by side and fans on top.


Yea that's a decent cooling rack. I am looking on Ebay for a stack solution w/fans but haven't decided on which one yet. In the pic you see my first pi running this project plus a second one waiting for a power supply. In the end I'm going to make my own USB power wiring to the power supply you see in the pic. The fan is doing it's job now but I'd be ashamed to leave the project in that condition :-)

I'll keep updating the project in this thread.


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Message 1934401 - Posted: 8 May 2018, 13:44:57 UTC
Last modified: 8 May 2018, 13:45:27 UTC

Powering the Pis
I use a number of 5 port USB chargers to run them and a couple of official power adapters as well. The USB chargers are technically rated at 3 x 2A plus 2 x 1A output but I have successfully run 4 Pi3's off a single one plus the fans on the top of the case using the 5th port. They're Astrotek AT-UPS-008 or 008B.

Cooling them
One solution that our team founder over at Einstein uses is to stack them and have a couple of 80mm fans on one side of the stack. He has made a few videos about his Bramble as they're called. You can see the video here
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Message 1934687 - Posted: 9 May 2018, 18:53:46 UTC

Today I added another Raspberry Pi. The host name is Pi-2 (the first one I have is Pi-1). When I added Pi-2 through the BOINC manager, I looked at my computer list, and the Seti website showed all my computers, except it no longer showed Pi-1 - just the new Pi-2 and my normal computers. I do not know why it no longer showed Pi-1, because it was still working on tasks. All I did was to add a new computer. I went to the Projects tab in BOINC for both computers and made each one "Update" the project. Then the Seti website showed both Pi-1 and Pi-2

Now Pi-1 - shows all it's tasks, both completed and in-progress, but Pi-2 shows no tasks at all, but it is currently happily working on 3 tasks. Also, Pi-1 shows 3 abandoned tasks in it's listing for May 9 (today). I never abandoned any tasks today for any computer.

Does this make any sense to anyone? I wonder if the Seti software that adds computers has a weird bug?
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Message 1934819 - Posted: 10 May 2018, 14:19:58 UTC - in response to Message 1934687.  

Now Pi-1 - shows all it's tasks, both completed and in-progress, but Pi-2 shows no tasks at all, but it is currently happily working on 3 tasks. Also, Pi-1 shows 3 abandoned tasks in it's listing for May 9 (today). I never abandoned any tasks today for any computer.

Does this make any sense to anyone? I wonder if the Seti software that adds computers has a weird bug?

That sounds like its got the same host id as the other one. Did you copy the SD card from one to make the other? You need to have each one start off with a clean BOINC data directory if possible. When the tasks finish exit boinc-client and nuke the client_state.xml and client_state_prev.xml files then start it up again. It will recreate them and should assign a new host id.

I have seen problems with Seti giving me new hostid's when it should retain the old one (the opposite of what you have). Its supposed to use the mac address to assign a hostid. I have heard of it happening when people use the internet sharing feature in windows.
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Message 1934824 - Posted: 10 May 2018, 14:58:59 UTC - in response to Message 1934819.  

Thanks for responding to this curious event.


That sounds like its got the same host id as the other one. Did you copy the SD card from one to make the other?


Yes I did, but it had BOINC installed but just in the installed state that had not/never connected to the project yet. I assigned a new host ID (i.e. Pi-2) before connecting to the project for work on Pi-2

You need to have each one start off with a clean BOINC data directory if possible. When the tasks finish exit boinc-client and nuke the client_state.xml and client_state_prev.xml files then start it up again. It will recreate them and should assign a new host id.


I was kinda thinking of that yesterday, wondering if just installing BOINC stored some computer info that Seti is using to identify the computer even if it had never connected. I thought it was purely the host name. That is why I thought that changing the host name before connecting for the first time was enough. Now, in the SD card image I have, which will initialize the next two Pis I get, I'll go ahead and nuke BOINC totally and after it's up an running on the next Pi, I'll set teh host name (Pi-3 or Pi-4) and install BOINC from scratch. Is that what you recommend?

In any case it appears that the "abandoned" tasks on Pi-1 were running on Pi-2 and I got credit for them, so things get straight eventually I suppose.

Thanks,

Mike
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Message 1935566 - Posted: 13 May 2018, 22:18:05 UTC - in response to Message 1934824.  

Got some parts coming. I received the micro USB connectors so I can make my own power wiring. I'm going to power all of the Pis off of a nice little power supply that shows the current being drawn (same one as shown in the previous post). Also, I am receiving four of the mounts shown below. They are not designed to mount one on top of the other (I asked the vendor) but I am going to modify the system so they can be with extra brass standoffs. More on this later.

I helped my neighbor yesterday re-wire some of his 4 ft. fluorescent lights in the kitchen to accept single-ended LED replacement lights. To thank me he offered to buy me the other two Pis because he knew about this project, so that takes care of all the Pis i need for the project! :-)




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Message 1935816 - Posted: 15 May 2018, 23:19:40 UTC - in response to Message 1935566.  

More parts arrived - Mounting plates, two more Pis, brass standoffs.

I tried the little 5V fan on a power supply because I was worried it might be too loud - but thankfully it's very quiet.


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Message 1936089 - Posted: 17 May 2018, 22:08:13 UTC - in response to Message 1935816.  

So far this is what I've got. These are the bottom two Pis. All I did was to add small M3 standoffs between the top of one kit and the bottom of the next one. I also did away with the metal fan shroud as it's not needed in this type of application, although I might use on on the final top piece. I just need to keep going and add the two Pis I already have running for the Seti@Home project, and then get the bottom two going as well.

I also soldered a two-pin header to each Pi board, which is not populated from the factory, which allows a reset when temporarily shorted, so you can restart the Pi if shutdown without removing and re-inserting the power. I have some switches coming for those. Well yea the power wiring needs to be completed too ...


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