THIS IS THE GENERAL INFO THREAD: Keep this thread on topic! All order related questions go here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4988526All support related questions and image updates/download links here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5081750__________________________________________________
Im super excited for this one, and know you guys have been waiting for something like this for a while. I have listened to all the feedback over the years, and have created something that will allow every miner/crypto enthusiast/newbie to take part in mining in a way that has never been done before.
The big thing here, and what all these years of working in this space has culminated too, is finally building a mining platform that is truly designed for the little guys from the ground up. Where anyone can run a fairly powerful ASIC miner on their desk in the simplest and easiest way possible, and with features catered for the home miner. This is the next stepping stone from my Moonlander platform, which was designed as a low cost, but not very profitable, entry point into mining. The Apollo platform will allow home miners to be competitive with large scale ASIC farm miner without the crazy power/noise suppression/ inconvenience of running these miners in your apartment/house/office.
So without further ado, I am happy to announce:
The FutureBit Apollo LTC
*the worlds most efficient scrypt miner*
*the worlds first wifi enabled miner*
*the only powerful ASIC miner that can be run on your desk without sounding like a jet engine or require 500+ watts in power*
SPECIFICATIONS: (these are prototype specs and can change in production version)
- Compact Stand-alone Pod Style Miner (4x6x4in)
- Very wide range of operation modes with preset ECO (quiet) mode and TURBO mode.
- 100-135+ MH/s of Scrypt performance per miner
- Industry leading 1W/MH in ECO mode, and 1.4W/MH for TURBO (100-200 watts)
- Powered by a fully integrated Quad-Core A7 ARM based controller
- First miner to be fully controlled over wifi, only cable needed is power! (this will be a Beta feature on launch..backup ethernet port is available as well).
- Clocks and Voltage is fully customizable by user with easy to use interface (no more pots!)
- Industry leading 97% efficiency 12v power-stage, with 27 ASIC chips powered in a 3x9 parallel/serial power arrangement
- Custom designed cold forged hexagonal pin heatsink with leading thermal performance for the quietest ASIC miner in operation!
- 2k-6k PWM High Static Pressure Dual Ball Bearing Fan with automatic thermal management with onboard temperature sensor
- Controlled via local connection on a web browser similar to antminers. You can simply set it up via smartphone browser. No crazy driver installs, hard to use miner software or scripts needed.
- Two Six Pin PCIE power connectors for wide-range of power draw (only one is needed in ECO mode)
- New future platform features including full-node/peer to peer fully decentralize mining, full stand-alone solo mining, cloud/app based controls and more in development.
As you guys know I don't announce anything unless I have fully developed/tested the product and ready for mass-production. These specs are based on a pre-prodcution version that is running right now. Im excited to beat every other scrypt ASIC manufacturer in power efficiency, and this is obviously critical for home miners with high power costs and with the current bear market. As of this writing a stock L3+ is currently not profitable on 10 cent power, while the Apollo still has a good profit margin and will only increase as crypto markets recover.
Again I want to shy away from pure specs/profit numbers, because like my Moonlander Project, the Apollo project is not designed for people that are looking for the most profitability/lowest cost/MH etc. This is designed from the ground up by a home miner, for home miners, and with a feature set not available anywhere. I want FutureBit and its community to be a serious % of the network hash power and show the large mines/pools that decentralized mining is possible. The fully integrated plateform on a powerful ARM controller also allows future awesome feature updates to further decentralize mining (and even allow mining without a pool). I hope this project is a step to get us there and like the Moonlander allow even more people to get into mining on a serious scale that was not possible on our USB Miner platform. I still believe its possible to change the course of mining, and create an upheaval where a large number of Litecoin's hash power is being run in homes instead of farms like Satoshi's original vision for decentralized POW currencies.
Production:The FutureBit Apollo will be produced in Pre-Order Batches like the Moonlander. The first batch will be a VERY limited run (under 1k units) in order to fix any production issues as we scale. Apollo is an order of magnitude more complex miner and we want to get everything right. With that being said this should be a fairly quick turnaround from Pre-Order to shipment, since our ASICs are already fabricated and ready for production. If we complete pre-order in the next week, shipments should start sometime in October. Im in the final stages of figuring out logistics and assembly.
The top image is a rendering of what the case will look like, but want to make it clear that in order to keep costs as low as possible in this market, the miner might not get shipped fully assembled or with a case. In this case it will be shipped in kit form like the original run of Moonlander 2s, and will be ready to run other than a Micro SD card that you will need to flash with our image for the controller. I will keep you guys updated during production for the final state of the project, but at the very least it will look like the miner above, plus some stand attachments if it does not ship with a case.
Pre-Order/Cost:As always I try to get these miners out to you guys with the lowest cost possible with my limited budget/production runs. Unfortunately the miner was designed with a 200 LTC price in mind so while I'm cutting a few corners where I can it will still be priced in the $200-300 range. I obviously can't beat Bitmain in cost/MH, but I'm getting close, and hope the 60% efficiency edge and home miner features still make this a good price for people that would never run an L3 or large miner in there house in the first place.
Ordering for this run will also be handled directly by me via
www.futurebit.io. Since this will be a limited run it will be easier to handle everything directly. Pre-order will be first come first serve and will have more details in the pre-order thread and pre-announce the start time so everyone has an equal chance to order one. Unfortunately I probably wont be able to serve everyone that wants to preorder one for October, but should be able to ramp up fast/open another pre-order after product starts next month. Sign up on the email list on the site if you don't follow threads on here every day.
One last note...this community has been super helpful and supportive of my lofty goals to bring mining and spread it to even more new people. The Moonlander 2 brought in many thousands of new people into mining and was an awesome success. These are grassroots community driven mining efforts. Everything is funded by you guys, I don't have any investors, nor any special interests other than spreading crypto and the technology that drives it in the way it was supposed to be spread.
A MASSIVE thanks to all Moonlander 2 buyers, as always I wouldn't be here without you guys and as a special thanks ALL Moonlander 2 buyers will receive a significant discount on the Apollo.
Stay tuned for more updates and will be posting more shots of the Apollo running below!