Beacon@Home is a volunteer computing project for citizen science that needs almost none of your CPU. Our applications sit quietly in the background and keep watch — the way a lighthouse does.

Radiation Monitor builds a continuously updated map of background radiation from GQ GMC Geiger counters connected to volunteers' computers, continuing the work of the retired Radioactive@Home project. Every reading is statistically verified before it earns credit, and your exact location is never stored or shown — only a coarse ~17 km map cell.

The Monkeys — Scribe, Scholar, Bard and Poet — test the infinite monkey theorem, one random keystroke per second: real English words and fragments of Shakespeare, found by pure chance and verified on our servers. A tribute to the Monkeys of GoofyxGrid@Home. Unlike the Radiation Monitor, the Monkeys need no dedicated hardware — any ordinary x86 or ARM computer (Windows, Linux, or Raspberry Pi) can run them, and new accounts start with the Monkeys selected.

Joining is open to everyone: account creation asks for an invite code, which is simply lighthouse — it exists only to keep spam bots out, not people.

Own a GQ GMC detector? Enable the Radiation Monitor under your project preferences after joining, and set your detector's map location from your account page. On Linux, give the BOINC client access to the serial port first: sudo usermod -aG dialout boinc, then restart the BOINC client.

Already joined? Log in.

Beacon@Home is live
Beacon@Home is a non-CPU-intensive BOINC project. The apps here use next to no CPU or GPU time, so you can attach it alongside whatever compute projects you already run without it fighting them for resources.

We’re launching with five apps.

Radiation Monitor

If you own a GQ GMC Geiger counter, this app reads it and reports background radiation levels to the project. Radioactive@Home is gone and a lot of working detectors have been sitting idle since. This gives them a place to send data again.

Tested and supported today: the GQ GMC-300 series. Plug the detector into the host over USB, attach the project, and the app handles the rest. Data is sent in trickles while the task runs, so a task showing little or no progress is normal.

I only own 300 series units, so the app was built around that model and nothing else is supported yet. If you have a different GQ model, or a detector from another manufacturer, I’m willing to add support for it, but I’ll need your help testing since I can’t do it without the hardware. Post in the forum or discord and we’ll work through it.

Your location on the public map comes from the postal code you enter, converted to a coarse 17km grid cell. The map never shows your coordinates. I have not tested countries other than the USA on the map. Let me know if your postal code errors or doesn’t resolve.

US volunteers who want a detector can get the GMC-300S here: https://www.amazon.com/GQ-GMC-300S-Radiation-Detector-Dosimeter/dp/B0B541D433

If you know of a retailer that sells it cheaper, or one that ships to your country, post it in the forums for everyone else.

Infinite Monkey Theorem (four apps)

These continue the Monkeys apps from GoofyxGrid@Home NCI, written by Krzysztof Faryna (goofyx). His original source is at https://github.com/goofyx/boinc_ggNCI. His code was a good bit outdated, so I made changes to get it running here.

Monkey Scribe: types a random 6 - 13 letter word every second, drawing letters completely at random; a hit is any real English word.
Monkey Scholar: the same word game, but this monkey types with English letter frequencies, so hits come more often and longer words are possible.
Monkey Bard: types one random letter per second against the works of Shakespeare; a hit is a streak of 4 or more consecutive letters matching the text.
Monkey Poet: the Shakespeare streak game with frequency-weighted typing. The educated monkey of the pair.

Thanks for crunching.

Skillz
27 Oct 2026, 18:30:58 UTC · Discuss

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