Fold for Covid - help in the fight against COVID-19 with Rosetta@home

With the recent COVID-19 outbreak, R@h has been used to predict the structure of proteins important to the disease as well as to produce new, stable mini-proteins to be used as potential therapeutics and diagnostics, like the one displayed above which is bound to part of the COVID-19 spike protein. Read more

This project has been built to get you up and running with as many devices as possible for the least effort. If you want to deploy and run this project manually, read on, if you want to add your devices to the global fleet, head on over to foldforcovid.io

Hardware compatibility

This app should run on 64-bit OS devices with 1 or more GB of RAM, but we've tested on the below:

• Raspberry Pi 3 (1GB RAM)
• Raspberry Pi 4 (1GB RAM)
• Raspberry Pi 4 (2GB RAM)
• Raspberry Pi 4 (4GB RAM)
• NVIDIA Jetson Nano
• Intel NUC (and other generic x86_64 devices)
• Most Intel-based laptops & desktops with a wired ethernet connection should also work OK

Getting started

This is a containerized app intended to run on balenaCloud, which allows you to deploy it to an entire fleet of devices and get as many of them folding as quickly as possible for the least effort. BalenaCloud covers 10 devices for free, but if you want to run this app on a larger fleet please get in touch.

One-click deploy to balenaCloud:

or

Setup the device(s)

• Sign up for or login to the balenaCloud dashboard
• Create a fleet, selecting the correct device type
• Add a device to the fleet, enabling you to download the OS
• Flash the downloaded OS to your SD card with balenaEtcher
• Power up the Pi and check it's online in the dashboard

Deploy this app

• Install the balena CLI tools
• Login with balena login
• Download this app and from the app directory run balena push <fleetName> where <fleetName> is the name you gave your balenaCloud fleet in the first step.
• The app will then be downloaded and started by each device in your fleet.

For further information, see the balenaCloud documentation.

Check the status

This app has a built in web interface that allows you to see statistics and more. Simply visit the local IP address of your device or enable the public URL for your device in the balenaCloud dashboard and you'll be able to access statistics from anywhere!

The web interface uses GoTTY to provide access to boinctui via a standard web browser.

Customization

By default, your device will contribute work units to the Fold for Covid team. To override this and contribue to a team of your choosing, you can set your account authentication key by using the device variable ACCOUNT_KEY, set from the balenaCloud dashboard. This will automatically update the XML configuration file with your key and ensure you're credited for completed work units.

FAQ

• You can start the cli-based UI by running boinctui within a terminal to the boinc-client container.

• If you are not receiving work units, in boinctui try pressing F9 -> rosetta -> update.

Contributing

We encourage you to submit bug reports, feature requests and PRs, compatibility updates, everything! Let's get this running on as many devices as we can.

Support

If you have issues deploying or running this project please start a thread in the balena forums and we'll be happy to help.