Is it possible to generate Boid power using a Raspberry Pi?

Recently I've discovered the Boid project and have been really fascinated with its integration of cryptocurrency with contributions to the BOINC project.

Since I have a few Raspberry Pis sitting at home and I know it's possible to install and run BOINC client on Raspbian I thought I'd try to install the boidcmd client on them and generate some Boid power. Maybe it would add up to an insignificant amount, but getting it to work seemed like a fun project. I found no mention of using the rpi with Boid, so that was also a motivator for me.

Unfortunately, since at the moment Boid users can only contribute to the World Community Grid, which does not support the Pi's architecture for any of its tasks, it's not possible to generate Boid power using a Raspberry Pi.

However, I'll post this write-up because in the future - according to their Telegram posts - the Boid devs plan on expanding to different BOINC projects which may support the ARM architecture. There's also a chance that the WCG team compiles some tasks to compatible with the Pi. Users have requested it in the forums but since the project is closed source we depend on their willingness to do it.

Finally there's the possibility of using Gridcoin with your Raspberry Pi, which I've stumbled upon while researching for this article and intend to try afterwards. This falls outside of the topic for this, so I might be back with another one if I'm successful.

With that out of the way, let's go to the instructions. The process is actually very straightforward:

Installing Node.js on a Raspberry PI

First find out which version of ARM you're running:

$ uname -m

Now go to the Node.js website and download the latest stable ARM binaries for your rpi architecture, in my case it was ARMv7:

$ wget https://nodejs.org/dist/v10.16.3/node-v10.16.3-linux-armv7l.tar.xz

Then extract the contents of the file:

$ tar xf node-v10.16.3-linux-armv7l.tar.xz 

And copy the files to install them on your system:

$ sudo cp -R * /usr/local/

After that you should have both node and npm commands at your disposal.

Next we'll install boinc-client and boidcmd as per the official instructions:

$ sudo apt install boinc-client -y
$ sudo npm install -g boidcmd

Now do the normal setup of your account, again follow the instructions from the official README:

$ boidcmd setup
... follow instructions

At this point the tasks should start running and you could use the resume and suspend commands to control the boinc-client. Unfortunately as I've said before, nothing happened. A peek inside the boinc-client logs showed me the reason:

 This project doesn't support computers of type arm-unknown-linux-gnueabihf

So this is the end, for now...

BONUS TIP:

To get the boidcmd setCPU command working without needing sudo:

sudo chown pi:pi /var/lib/boinc-client/global_prefs_override.xml

Conclusion

That's it, I hope you've found this article helpful and we can get our Raspberry Pis crunching and generating Boid sooner rather than later! Thanks for reading and if you want to try Boid, here's my invite link: https://app.boid.com/u/Matehackers