How about helping conduct advanced biological research over this holiday season? No, you don’t need to be a scientist to do that, the researchers over at Stanford University already have came up with software that can operate on your PLAYSTATION 3 console and perform multitude of complex operations that will help their research against diseases like Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow (BSE), Parkinson’s disease and many types of cancer-related syndromes.
You can do all that using a simple download and the energy equivalent of keeping a single light bulb. Simply maneuver your Xross Media Bar to the Network category, locate the Folding@home icon and select it. You will be taken through a short download process and after a few minutes (depending on your network connection) you should be up and running.
When you are running the software you can set some options in the Settings menu by hitting the triangle button. Make sure Screensaver is selected to conserve energy and TV life.
Exit the application and go back to the Xross Media Bar. Hit the triangle button when the Folding@home icon is selected. Choose Auto-Start from the right-hand menu and then choose idle time detection. For example, I choose 10 minutes. Now if you are not using the console for 10 straight minutes, Folding@home will run automatically so you don’t have to think about it anymore. You can even turn your TV off and you don’t have to be connected to network all the time. Folding@home will only access your network about 2-3 times a day.
To make sure Folding@home runs automatically, all you have to remember is after playing your favorite holiday game is to quit the game but leave the console powered on. Folding will not happen if you turn the console off.
There is a myriad of information available under Information option. For example, you can read about your current running project by choosing Information and then Current Project.
We’ve also recently updated to version 1.3 of the FAH client, which allows you to stream music from your PS3’s hard disk drive while running the program.
Thank you for listening, hope you can do some relaxing over this holiday season and remember to run Folding in those little bits of time in which you are not playing your favorite game on the PS3…
The music streaming is a nice feature. Thank you
Cool, I never knew you could make it so that Folding@Home automatically runs if your PS3 is idle. Merry Christmas, Noam and the rest of the PS blog.
Anytime I’m not playing something I’m folding; currently up to 125 work units completed.
I have F@H on everytime I go to school, it would be great if more people let their PS3 fold while they are out.
What would be very useful is to enable RemotePlay while F@H is going I leave my PS3 Folding every minute I am not using it so it would be nice to be able to login via RemotePlay on Thursdays while F@H is going. I know I can select and watch F@H while in RemotePlay so it would be nice if it let me login if F@H automatically started or if I started it instead of having to set RemotePlay or turn the PS3 off.
Man, a new post on Xmas Eve AND Xmas–someone is sure dedicated hehe! Happy XMAS Jeff and Crew!
And Noam–happy Xmas to you too hehe!
When is SETI@Home coming to the PS3? now that would be cool, not that searching for proteins isn’t but aliens man! the freakin aliens man!
Lets hope that the PS3 network doesn’t turn itself into SKYNET and become “self aware”
oh boy
@ odz
Lol, screw Skynet, we need to be weary of Mantel.
Or worse, the Helghast!
@9
or worse a skynet/mantel/helghast mutant creature!!!! XD
Great work. Thanks for the hard work.
Even though for some it’s such a minor thing, but each WU does help out this matter so much.
Folding@Home is leet. Thanks for the extra info. Merry Christmas everyone!
I <3 Folding@home…
Hey, when do we get the new Super Stardust with custom soundtracks?
Folding@Home is awesome.Ever since you guys included the shutdown timer and the music feature I’ve been using it ALOT more often.
@13 (ayrkain):
I was wondering about Super Stardust HD as well. :P
F@H is very cool though, everyone should do it while their system is not in use. =)
@EnforcerX (5):
quite simply do this: turn on your PS3 through Remote Play and turn on F@H, then quit Remote Play on your PSP. Your PS3 will then fold away until whenever you decide to go Remote Play at which point you’ll boot into F@H and can quit from there.
I Fold@Home all the time, now up to 412 WU.
Great piece of software, a nice companion to my PC Folding screensaver.
Could we not have the automatic music playing when we turn the software on please? Streaming music from my PC would be great – I don’t transfer anything onto my PS3 hard-drive.
Keep up the great work!
i’ve keept Folding @ Home on for ONE FULL MONTH, my PS3 made little noise.
note: not COMPLETELY F@H, but when i’m not playing it.
oh and it raises the electric bill a bit if left on for that long. not too much but noticeable.
@13, 15
Stardust has been updated with custom tracks and some other features and is already in the PS store, re-download it.
Best options have been added in the last update: Set a time before the PS3 shut down, or fold one protein and shutdown. I love this because I like to give my PS3, a small break, a few hours every day. Before, I was either playing or folding. So the PS3 was on, literally non stop. Now, during normal week days, I just tell it to fold one protein before I go to bed, and it shut itself down after, which gives it a decent break until my next playing session. On week-ends or vacation, I use the timer so it shut-down 3 hours before I wake up. I then turn it back on, play, fold, play, fold, and set the timer again, so it can fold some more, yet have a small break in the last few hours of the night. Very cool feature in my book.
Thanks
I use F@H whenever I’m not playing. i’m at 628 work units.
Jeff Rubenstein, thanks for coming up with this series. I think it will be a useful resources. Can you also review more complicated, end-to-end use cases ? There are still a few gaps in PS3’s media capability. Once you use them for real, you’ll notice these gaps. I hope Sony can plug the holes and make it easy for layman to use PS3’s media capability (and gaming of course).
Thanks odz (20) but I did just that and I’m still seeing 1.00 in the credits & no new options. :(
Good news for people who use the PS3 to play music. First the nice world view and now also music playing from folding@home.
It would be even nicer if it was possible to play from a PS3 playlist.
Furthermore it would be really nice to have smaller workloads (around one hour), that can be completed in around the time it takes to play 1-2 CDs (from the harddisk).
Keep up the good work.
remote folding on my psp rocks my socks :)
also if you have an eyetoy etc connected to the ps3 you can check up on your home by using the start chat function via remote play, it opens the cam window. nifty cool.
folding rocks!
odz said “When is SETI@Home coming to the PS3? now that would be cool, not that searching for proteins isn’t but aliens man! the freakin aliens man! ”
And the aliens will be able to cure every disease on earth anyway.
I’m shure they had Folding@home a 1000 years ago.
So we just need to find the aliens.
But how do we get them to come here when we find them? :)
@ayrkin
Dam, I’m sorry, I was going by info posted by someone else on another forum.
That info is here
http://palgn.com.au/viewtopic.php?t=23119
@Trond
Ha! maybe the aliens are already here? maybe this is their planet? and we are the excrement left over?
If I was a super smart alien I would create intelligent life, somewhat, and get it to do all the work for me, collecting resoruces etc…and then come 2012 it’s feeding time! nice and ripe humans, mmmm mmm.
On August 15, 1977, SETI recieved a signal, “WOW!”
quote
Why “Wow!”? The signal was named after the comment Ehman wrote in the computer printout margin when he discovered the signal at the Ohio State Radio Observatory, where he was donating his time working on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project. The SETI project was at the time using the radiotelescope at the observatory.
http://www.setileague.org/articles/wow.htm
@ayrkain
Dam, I’m sorry, I was going by info posted on another forum.
@Trond
Maybe they are already here? maybe they created us for a slave race and come 2012, when all of Earth’s resources have been obtained, they invade and feed on the oversized population.
Maybe the signal recieved in 1977 was a warning. Google “SETI, WOW!”
It’s a very nice feature with Folding Home on the PS3. Though for me it’s quite bad because I’m using a projector. Is it possible to shutdown the PS3 without looking at any picture? I don’t want to turn on my projector just to shutdown the PS3.
that is nice and it is cool
love the music thing i keep Folding running for like 12 hours while playing on my PC without realizing it listening to the music
@Vantskurv
If you just memorize the PS Menu, you can easily turn off your controllers and PS3 without a screen. I know that if you press the PS button, go down 3 times, and hit X will shut off the controller. Just figure it out for shutting off the PS3.
The newest updates for Folding at Home make it so much more compatible. Just want to give my thanks. I’m using it a lot more now because of the recent update.—12
i folded starting from christmas eve morning all the way until the day after xmas.. my gift to the folks at stanford
I recently installed this last version, but I’m having troubles with it.
When it’s working, and i’m listening music, if I go to the statistics (navigator), the console gets frozen.
What else?
Yeah, I’ve been folding since the application came out in March, and I now have 674 work units to my credit. F@H FTW!
Automatic Shutdown does NOT work for me. I’ve left it on all night and seen it still on in the morning. One time, I left it on and watched it until the end. The counter at the top right went down to 0 hours 0 minutes, and then it prepared another work unit and went all the way back to 11 hours and whatever minutes, so the timer was pointless!
I just wanted to let that be known, especially if it needed a bug fix or something. Thanks.
I hope that in the future, especially when Home is released, that we will be able to run folding@home in the background. So while we are playing a game, we can also be folding in the background if we choose to.
Also, I forgot to add, it would also be nice to have the ability to pause the music you are listening to in folding@home.
I’d like to see
1: PSP updates (skype mostly)
2: New PSP Hardware (Go! Cam)
3: New Games on playstation store for PC
4: CRISIS CORE FOR PSP!!!
5: Wipeout pulse demo
6: TV Tuner for psp
PS: I’m a HUGE PSP fan
Hello!
I run folding Home on my PS3 almost daily but since I entered a team the work unit number stopped increasing.
I know it’s not because they take too long and ar discarded, I watched one end just today and the work units number simply stayed the same.
I have “lost” a few units already.
I’m sorry for the units but I mostly want to know whether I’m sending the data although it’s not recorded in my account.
Anyone has any similar experience?
By the way thanks for the improvements and upsates!
Ivy
This program was another reason the PS3 appealed to me. It’s great to think that consoles can now contribute to the field of science and can longer be viewed as a “kid’s” toy.