Pi Clusters on the Internet

There is a large number of projects related to creating Pi clusters on the internet. They vary in size and software installed on them. Naturally a Pi cluster is a useful training and development environment for research organizations and thus many bigger projects are located at universities as well as government labs. However, we also have many projects done by enthusiasts.

We distinguish two different efforts. First, we often find projects that target the creation of cases for such clusters and second, we find projects that develop software fort these clusters. This section will provide an overview of these activities and provide links to these activities.

Cluster Cases

Lego

When looking at the placement of the wholes on the Raspberry Pi, the width between the wholes on the small side seems to be exactly 7 Lego Technic beam wholes apart. This has the advantage that one could build a quick frame form Lego pieces such as a

• 2 * 11 ($0.22) piece [link]
• 2 * two piece * 4 * 4 ($0.192) [link]
• A number of connector pins [link] [link]

The cost is about $0.25 per piece = $2.74 per pi.

So if we are having 100 pis we end up with $274. However we also need still to get screw and Lego connectors which we at this time have not counted and included in this calculation.

Naturally Lego’s have been explored by others

• Images on google
• University of Southampton: [link] Instructions are no longer at the original link
• Lego Technic: [link], [link]
• Lego Technic [link]
• Old style Lego [link]

Other ideas using Lego’s include:

• Compact case: Single board No screws [link]
• Zero 3D print Thingverse [link]
• B+ 3D Pi case [link]

Other interesting but not cluster related links include

• Lego hat [link]
• Brick Pi [link]

Beast by resion.io

This company has provided some larger designs for Raspberry Pi clusters and tries to create a modular system to put a number of Pis on plates that than can be connected.

• Beast 3 [link]
• Beast 2 [link]
• Beast 2 Tile [link]

Clusters

Additional links which could be useful include:

• SDSC Raspberry Pi2 MPI and Tiled Wall Viz Cluster [link]
• Six Common Errors When Building a Raspberry Pi Cluster [link]
• 5 Most Popular Raspberry Pi Cluster Supercomputer Projects [link]
• 10 amazing Raspberry Pi clusters [link]
• Build an OctaPi [link]

An older document on how to create an MPI cluster is located at

• Pi 2 MPI cluster, Boise State [link]

Swarm

How to set up docker swarm is documented here

• Pi Docker Cluster [link]