Welcome to FAHMM - Folding@Home Mobile Monitoring

Story behind the app

is an initiative run by Stanford University managing a distributed computing setup based on computing power provided by individuals like you and me to support basic scientific research. This distributed network of computer systems use to determine the multiple ways proteins changing their shape.

The shape of a protein itself is crucial for its function. If it is folded into a good shape a protein will work "as designed"; if a protein misfolded its functionality might be limited or in a worst case dangerous for the body. This can lead to diseases like Alzheimer's, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's and many kind of cancers. Understanding a protein's transition from a good shape towards a bad shape can lead to the development of a cure or even better preventive measures. The following is a good starter for further reading.

In case you are (now) interested to support this research and join the cause you can do so by downloading the (currently actual version 7.4.4) for Windows, macOS or Linux. The software, once installed, will contact the server from F@H and ask for assignments of little work packages to be processed on your system; by either the CPU or graphic cards (GPU, depending on the model and drivers; currently only nVidia and AMD models are supported; subject of change). Once the computation of an assignment is finished the result will be send back and analysed/post-processed by the involved scientists further. For each successful returned work assignment you will receive credits as appreciation. More details/technical support you can find via the link provided above.

Assuming you are already an active donor and have one or more computer participating, this app FAHMM Mobile Monitoring might be useful for you. It basically allows you to monitor the progress and status of your folding slots while not being near your systems (e.g. in the living room, garden, shopping or at work). It also enable you to change aspected of the configuration of your folding systems or visualize proteins in 3D your computer are working on.

This app was primary written with my own needs/wishes in mind to monitor my folding systems. If you, like me, enjoy the flexibility of mobile devices like iPad, iPhone or Apple Watch, please try the app and let me know if you have any additional requirement with respect to the functionality; please use the contact at the bottom of this page.

How does it work

This mobile app require that you in addition have at least one computer with the software from F@H installed.

Install the folding client on your Windows, macOS or Linux system
Prepare remote access
Basic config.xml file for a client
Adding folding client to FAHMM on iPad or iPhone

Advanced methods to add folding clients via hyperlink
Advanced methods to add folding clients via Bonjour / mDNS

Add unlimitted folding clients

All your folding clients can be added to the application for monitoring. This provide you a quick overview on whats going on in your folding environment.

Change Client Configuration

You can change most of the configuration of your folding clients from within the app. Adding new CPU or GPU slots, changing settings like client types or slot-size for CPUs and many more. Of course starting, pausing and stopping too.

Statistics

You can review at any time the results of work unit performed on your monitored folding systems; e.g. to compare performance and share results with the community.
The capabilities are right now simple but will be enhanced in later versions.

Easy sharing

Did you always wanted to know what performance a certain graphic card would have ? A soon coming feature will get you access to (anonymous) results of fellow donors; once you shared results of yourself.

Privacy

Everyone likes its privacy. Understandable. So do we ...

Notification

If you opt-in the backend system of FAHMM will send you periodically the offical credits to your mobile devices as notification.

3D Viewer and video recorder

You might also enjoy the beauty (yes!) of proteins when folding. For this the app provide a protein viewer incl. a 3D mode in combination with red/cyan glasses. The visualised trajectories can be stored as image or recorded as video. An area of functionality where a number of enhancements are planned, too.

RSS from F@H

FAHMM provide optional access to the official RSS blog provided by Stanford. This allow you to get updates on what happen on Stanford's side without leaving the monitoring app.

Discovery

Are you also too lazy or have many clients on- and off your network; try discovery via Bonjour/mDNS

If you have multiple folding clients running you can them all include into the monitoring app. Experimental and for advanced users are there two addtional methods to add new clients (links and mDNS).

Hell, this function is cool ...

Don't trust any statistics you didn't faked yourself ...

Once we received enough feedback from fellow folder we hope to provide here more insights on performance of hardware and software configurations. But it really depends on your contribution too. We hope it will grow over time.

With the new version 3 and the included ability to receive Push Notification it is required to share with you my Privacy Policy.
This privacy policy is here to help you to understand what information get collected and how those will be used when using the mobile application FAHMM.

What information get collected

Basically the following functionalities require an exchange of limited information from your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch

Push Notification

Your (multiple) Donor ID/user name as actually used in your connected Folding@Home system(s)
A unique device identifier created by official iOS API for usage in combination with Push Notifications

User Credit Tiles

Your (multiple) Donor ID/user name as actually used in your connected Folding@Home system(s)

IMPORTANT: In all cases your individual will never be transferred to the backend server. In addition to the information provided from your device(s) the backend server will download from the public Stanford server the .

How information are used

This section outline how the information is used

Push Notification

Your donor IDs/user names in combination with the unique device identifier will be stored on a backend server responsible to deliver the notifications
Once every hour the official credits will be downloaded from a public Stanford server and processed in a database
Once the official credits are processed the database will transfer relevant data to the backend server and trigger the delivery of notification to all devices

current cumulated points
current count of work units
team affiliations

User Credit Tiles

In case the app is running on your device and you opt-in once an hour the backend server will be contacted with your actually configured user IDs
The mobile application will cache in a local file the credit infromation and ask the backend server only once an hour to send back latest version of
- current cumulated points
- current count of work units
- team affiliations

What choices do you have ?

Standard functionality on iOS-based mobile devices is that a user can at any time opt-in or opt-out to push notifications. Please change the settings in the General Settings of your device.
For the user credit tiles you can configure not to show them; in that case your donor ID will not be transferred to the backend server.

In case you allowed the FAHMM Mobile Monitoring app to receive notifications once an hours a backend system will monitor the global available user and team statistics and send you a notification in case of changes. Please check the privacy policy as this function require to send your donor ID/team affiliation and a unique device ID to be transferred to the backend system.

Its always nice to see and explore the estetics of proteins

FAHMM Protein Viewer from Christian Lohmann on Vimeo.

To make sure you always have a latest update (e.g. in case of server trouble with F@H backbone systems, it is always good to have some direct link to the official blog / RSS from F@H. The last 10 messages will be shown and you as donor can click direct on one message and will be routed to the official blog itself.

In order to enable this function please enable the switch "F@H RSS News Feed" in the general setting of the app.

In case you have a Mac OS, Windows or Linux system with mDNS/Bonjour installed you can publish the system running the Folding client. In that case the app will create the client for you (with client name and hostname). The only information still to be entered is the password for remote connection; if configured for that client.
An example from Linux to publish the client

avahi-publish -s linuxpowered _fahclient._tcp 36330 "FAHClient on %h"

Important is the right definition of the service name _fahclient._tcp and the port 36330.

F@H Mobile Monitoring

Story behind the app

How does it work

Install the folding client on your Windows, macOS or Linux system

Prepare remote access

Basic config.xml file for a client

Adding folding client to FAHMM on iPad or iPhone

Advanced methods to add folding clients via hyperlink

Advanced methods to add folding clients via Bonjour / mDNS

Features