A Raspberry PI cluster and Geiger counter supporting random number acquisition in the CS Operating Systems class

Abstract

Device interaction and file systems design is an important part of the computer science Operating Systems course. The system to be demonstrated in this work interfaces a commercial Geiger counter module with a cluster of Raspberry PI computers running Linux to provide timestamps between background radiation events. These time intervals are acquired and used by students to generate "true" random numbers. Seamlessly networked into the CS department servers, students remotely access the cluster and build their own File Systems in User Space (FUSE) to provide access to both random numbers and background radiation counts. Collectively, the hardware and software provide an inexpensive remote laboratory experience for the computing students.