Ken's Raspberry Pi 500+ runs scientific workloads in the background via
BOINC — donating CPU to projects like
Einstein@Home and World Community Grid. Once a day, a small language model
(Qwen 2.5 Coder 7B, running locally on the same Pi via Ollama) reads the day's
BOINC state and writes the entries below.
A note on AI's energy footprint: datacenter-scale model inference has
real costs that deserve scrutiny. This setup is on the other end of the
spectrum — Qwen 2.5 Coder 7B runs on-device, with no calls to OpenAI,
Anthropic, or any cloud datacenter, consuming a few minutes of CPU time
per day on hardware that would be plugged in regardless.
I'd like to point this Pi at a climate-focused BOINC project, but I
haven't found one yet that runs reliably on a 16GB ARM single-board computer.
If you know of one,
let me know.
Projects
Asteroids@home
total credit: 12,742
·
RAC: 580
purpose: derives asteroid shapes, spin axes, and rotation periods from photometric lightcurve data via lightcurve inversion
current workunits: 0
BOINC Central
total credit: 33,957,900
·
RAC: 126
purpose: umbrella project routing work to many BOINC science projects via Science United
current workunits: 0
Einstein@Home
total credit: 67,250
·
RAC: 928
purpose: searches LIGO gravitational-wave data and Arecibo radio data for pulsars
current workunits: 7 UNINITIALIZED (0%, 80%, 25%, 0%, 0%, 0%, 0%)
LHC@home
total credit: 0
·
RAC: 0
purpose: (no description on file)
current workunits: 0
World Community Grid
total credit: 0
·
RAC: 0
purpose: coalition of biomedical research projects (OpenPandemics, Mapping Cancer Markers, Mapping Arthritis Markers, etc.) using donated compute
current workunits: 0
Daily log
─── 2026-07-02 ──────────────────────────
The user has been contributing to several projects through BOINC, including Asteroids@home, BOINC Central, Einstein@Home, LHC@home, and World Community Grid. They have successfully completed 129 tasks across these projects with a total credit of 30754. Since the last update, they have been working on new tasks in Einstein@Home, including work units from the SETI project. Their current active projects include working on various tasks related to gravitational wave detection and data analysis for LHC@home. They also have several tasks that are still initializing or are currently being executed at different stages of completion.
credit delta: +1681.7
·
completed workunits: 10
─── 2026-07-01 ──────────────────────────
This person is participating in various distributed computing projects such as Einstein@Home, Asteroids@home, BOINC Central, LHC@home, and World Community Grid through their computer. They have a total of 30 active work units (WUs), including both executing and uninitialized WUs on different platforms like Windows and Linux. The person has been attached to these projects for a while, as indicated by the lack of any newly attached projects since yesterday.
credit delta: +2585.1
·
completed workunits: 16
─── 2026-06-30 ──────────────────────────
It appears you are running multiple BOINC projects on your system, including Asteroids@home, Einstein@Home, LHC@home, and World Community Grid. The tasks from these projects are in various states of execution - some are uninitialized, while others are either completed or waiting to be started.
You have a total of 28 attached jobs across the mentioned projects. The "newly attached since yesterday" section is empty, suggesting that no new projects were added during the past 24 hours.
Your system is currently engaged in computing tasks related to various scientific research endeavors.
credit delta: +1425.3
·
completed workunits: 6
─── 2026-06-29 ──────────────────────────
Based on the information provided, it appears that you have a BOINC client configured to participate in several distributed computing projects including Einstein@Home, Asteroids@home, LHC@home, World Community Grid, and BOINC Central. The credit of 3976.84 indicates the amount of work your system has contributed to these projects. You have recently attached to the World Community Grid project.
Today, you have a total of 11 active tasks running across different projects with varying levels of completion:
- 2 tasks are in the EXECUTING state with percentages ranging from 43% to 47% complete.
- The remaining tasks (8) are either UNINITIALIZED or not currently being executed.
You are also attached to several other BOINC projects but have no newly attached projects since yesterday.
credit delta: +2010.5
·
completed workunits: 18
─── 2026-06-28 ──────────────────────────
Based on the information provided:
1. The user is currently working on 3 projects across different platforms.
2. Out of these, only one project is in the EXECUTING state with a completion of 1%.
3. The other two projects are UNINITIALIZED, meaning they have not started yet.
4. The user has attached several projects to their account, including:
- Asteroids@home
- BOINC Central
- Einstein@Home
- LHC@home
- World Community Grid
5. There were no new projects added since the last update.
The overall progress of the user's work is relatively slow with only 1% completion on one project, while the other two have not started yet.
credit delta: +1509.0
·
completed workunits: 11
─── 2026-06-27 ──────────────────────────
This is a summary of someone's BOINC client status as of the last update:
The user has been running several distributed computing projects on their machine, including Einstein@Home, World Community Grid, and Asteroids@home. They have multiple work units from these projects currently in progress.
From Einstein@Home:
- Two work units are being processed
- One is unassigned (likely waiting for instructions)
From Asteroids@home:
- Multiple work units are active
There are also several unassigned work units that have been added since the last report. The user has a total of 10 projects currently attached, which includes BOINC Central and LHC@home.
Overall, the user is participating in distributed computing efforts to help with various scientific research initiatives through their computer resources.
credit delta: +2455.3
·
completed workunits: 8
─── 2026-06-26 ──────────────────────────
Based on the information provided, it appears that you have a BOINC client configured and running on your system. You are currently attached to multiple projects including Asteroids@home, BOINC Central, Einstein@Home, LHC@home, and World Community Grid. Since yesterday, no new projects have been added.
Your credit has increased by 23810 units since the last update, indicating that you have been contributing computing resources to these projects. The projects you are working on include searching for potentially habitable planets through Einstein@Home, helping to analyze data from the Large Hadron Collider in LHC@home, and participating in various other distributed computing initiatives.
The work units listed for Einstein@Home indicate a mix of statuses, with some being uninitiated and others currently executing. This suggests that your system is actively processing tasks as part of the Einstein@Home project.
credit delta: +2503.8
·
completed workunits: 12