200 Folding@Home WUs!

I just finished my 200th work unit for Folding@Home!  For those of you who don't know, Folding@Home is a distributed computing project on protein folding, dedicated to helping scientists understand diseases such as Alzheimer's and cancer.  And today, my trusty computer, "FrankenBox I", just finished its 200th work unit, with a score of 621295 and a rank of 46952 out of 1708587 users!  That comes out to a percentage of 2.74%.  I am in the top 2.75% of all Folding@Home users!  In short, I am very happy and am already (when am I not?) scheming for ways to get more computers and do more folding!

RPi Battery Pack at Last!

Well, it's been a while since I have posted, because... actually, I don't know.  But, while traversing the Great Information Superhighway, I stumbled upon this amazing article on powering a Raspberry Pi off 8 AA batteries and a 12V car-to-USB adapter.  Since I had the materials and have wanted to get a battery pack set up for various projects, I tried the idea.  My Raspberry Pi was not functional, however, as it had somehow self-destructed its memory card again and had weird errors that I couldn't make heads or tails of.  After playing around with the car charger, I discovered that the polarity of the leads connecting to the tabs of the charger does matter.  I tried testing for voltage on the USB end of the charger, and something started smoking and smelling bad.  Then, I noticed that my clip lead had come undone, because it had melted!  After reversing polarity, I got the whole thing working!

I was able to power a USB keyboard light using my hack.  As you can see in the image, I have a four-pack of AAs, a two-pack, and another two-pack, all in series.  The clip leads connect to the tabs of the 12V car-to-USB charger, and then the USB light is plugged into that.  Next, I need to figure out my misbehaving Raspberry Pi and try this battery pack!