Free Processing Nodes Volunteer Network

[pierotofy]

At some point it could be beneficial to create a basic infrastructure for allowing people to donate server resources to process maps.

It could be as simple as having volunteers install the processing software, having a sign-up form, a web page with the list of volunteers, and some code to check which nodes are online.

[Bavar2142]

Righto. Ill have a look at boinc to see how theyve organised it and get back to you.

[Bavar2142]

Boinc itself is under the ​Lesser General Public License (LGPL), version 3 or there abouts and i've managed to find links to their git repository and source code.

https://boinc.berkeley.edu/trac/wiki/SourceCodeGit

[pierotofy]

This idea would require:

• Central endpoint to maintain a list of active nodes
• Modification to node-OpenDroneMap to add an advertise or broadcast or public flag that automatically notifies the central list
• Addition of a sponsor name, other metadata to node-OpenDroneMap
• Code that fetches the list of public nodes in WebODM
• A simple install process for new nodes

[skypuppy]

Not sure if BOINC can do this automagically, but it would be ideal if we could distribute the work load over a number of systems. Yeah, I know, distributed processing is a whole 'nother can of worms.

[smathermather]

We’re working on solving some of the distributed problems anyway, it’d just be a different network to distribute on, so distribution isn’t too much of an issue, or won’t be once we’re done with it :D

[pierotofy]

I'm going to take this off the TODO list. There's too many unresolved difficulties:

• Unsustainable economic costs of running and managing such network
• Data privacy and security concerns
• Impossibility(?) of guaranteeing QOS

I'd welcome proposals and coding efforts from the community to solve this.