[ANN] FutureBit Project Apollo: Bringing ASIC Mining Back to the Home Miner!

[jstefanop]

Hello,

    Power to the independent miners.

    Ideally, the centralized mining cartel which is comprised of for-profit miners dumping into the markets can be overthrown.

    The price point on these scrypt ASICs is just fine for any newcomer.

    Can you tell us more about the platform's capabilities?
    You mentioned a quad-core A7 ARM based controller.

    What I would like to do is assemble a small swarm of them which report to a local P2Pool and coin daemon.

    What's in the image for the controller currently?
    Where are the sources for any modified miner which is required by them?

    If some high quality work is contributed to help improve the platform software to give new buyers an easy way to join a P2Pool with their Apollo miners, would it be accepted upstream and be included in future images?

    I'm looking for a way to do two things well.

    1.) provide the common man an easy to use accessible miner which doesn't sound like a jet engine
    2.) customize the control interface with retail branding and support options

    Would love to hear your thoughts about the expectations new mom and pop miners may have with regards to support.

Best Regards,
-Chicago

Yes this is exactly what I intended to do with this platform. Probably wont make it into the initial image release, but eventual I want to give people the ability to run full nodes and connect to a p2pool for a true decentralized mining ecosystem.

Definitely send me a PM if this is something your interested in, I'm looking for more software devs for the UI side of things.

i was wondering about the same thing.  i am hoping in your web interface we need the full address of the wallet or pool.
ie
http://192.165.0.2:3389
stratum+tcp://bills.pool.com:3389
that would be super if its done that way. thanks

most of the other manufactors get hung up on making you only put a strattum address nothing else.

Miner still needs stratum responses though, as long as the pool/website is configured for the protocol should not matter what what the URL formatting is.

[1714511673]

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[Chicago]

i was wondering about the same thing.  i am hoping in your web interface we need the full address of the wallet or pool.
ie
http://192.165.0.2:3389
stratum+tcp://bills.pool.com:3389
that would be super if its done that way. thanks

most of the other manufactors get hung up on making you only put a strattum address nothing else.

Hi shotgun1969,

    You see it that way because otherwise you could only solo mine with one miner.
    The reason the stratum protocol is there is so that a pool may divide the work among miners who solve shares.

     -- and since the vision is a decentralized pool of miners, there has to be a protocol to enable the miners to get work.

Best Regards,
-Chicago

[shotgun1969]

Hello,

    Power to the independent miners.

    Ideally, the centralized mining cartel which is comprised of for-profit miners dumping into the markets can be overthrown.

    The price point on these scrypt ASICs is just fine for any newcomer.

    Can you tell us more about the platform's capabilities?
    You mentioned a quad-core A7 ARM based controller.

    What I would like to do is assemble a small swarm of them which report to a local P2Pool and coin daemon.

    What's in the image for the controller currently?
    Where are the sources for any modified miner which is required by them?

    If some high quality work is contributed to help improve the platform software to give new buyers an easy way to join a P2Pool with their Apollo miners, would it be accepted upstream and be included in future images?

    I'm looking for a way to do two things well.

    1.) provide the common man an easy to use accessible miner which doesn't sound like a jet engine
    2.) customize the control interface with retail branding and support options

    Would love to hear your thoughts about the expectations new mom and pop miners may have with regards to support.

Best Regards,
-Chicago

Yes this is exactly what I intended to do with this platform. Probably wont make it into the initial image release, but eventual I want to give people the ability to run full nodes and connect to a p2pool for a true decentralized mining ecosystem.

Definitely send me a PM if this is something your interested in, I'm looking for more software devs for the UI side of things.

i was wondering about the same thing.  i am hoping in your web interface we need the full address of the wallet or pool.
ie
http://192.165.0.2:3389
stratum+tcp://bills.pool.com:3389
that would be super if its done that way. thanks

most of the other manufactors get hung up on making you only put a strattum address nothing else.

Miner still needs stratum responses though, as long as the pool/website is configured for the protocol should not matter what what the URL formatting is.

 i normale dont mine pools and i usually just solo the wallets.  i have 35+ moonlanders doing just that. i am not sure what you mean by the  miner needs
stratum responses. bfgminer uses getwork via http addressing. so the only thing i am asking is if you leave out the address all together i should be able
to solo wallets via http or pools via stratum.  thanks for your response.   

[shotgun1969]

i was wondering about the same thing.  i am hoping in your web interface we need the full address of the wallet or pool.
ie
http://192.165.0.2:3389
stratum+tcp://bills.pool.com:3389
that would be super if its done that way. thanks

most of the other manufactors get hung up on making you only put a strattum address nothing else.

Hi shotgun1969,

    You see it that way because otherwise you could only solo mine with one miner.
    The reason the stratum protocol is there is so that a pool may divide the work among miners who solve shares.

     -- and since the vision is a decentralized pool of miners, there has to be a protocol to enable the miners to get work.

Best Regards,
-Chicago

  when you solo the wallet there is no shares there is only blocks hit. i can aim multiple asics at one wallet via http and the wallet
will hand out the same work to each miner.  the shares thing is the only way to figure out how to cut the block up via stratum
pool and make it fair.
  90-95% of all the scrypt wallets dont need a stratum pool to mine them locally.

[Chicago]

  when you solo the wallet there is no shares there is only blocks hit. i can aim multiple asics at one wallet via http and the wallet
will hand out the same work to each miner.  the shares thing is the only way to figure out how to cut the block up via stratum
pool and make it fair.
  90-95% of all the scrypt wallets dont need a stratum pool to mine them locally.

    To each their own I guess.

    I would rather have an idle coin daemon with fewer RPC calls to it so that when a block is found it can get broadcast to the network immediately.
    It sounds to me like way to much overhead to use getwork in 2018 w/ 25 different USB miners.

    Some of those old scrypt coins don't even have an rpcthreads argument to help improve the situation.

Best Regards,
-Chicago

[shotgun1969]

 when you solo the wallet there is no shares there is only blocks hit. i can aim multiple asics at one wallet via http and the wallet
will hand out the same work to each miner.  the shares thing is the only way to figure out how to cut the block up via stratum
pool and make it fair.
  90-95% of all the scrypt wallets dont need a stratum pool to mine them locally.

    To each their own I guess.

    I would rather have an idle coin daemon with fewer RPC calls to it so that when a block is found it can get broadcast to the network immediately.
    It sounds to me like way to much overhead to use getwork in 2018 w/ 25 different USB miners.

    Some of those old scrypt coins don't even have an rpcthreads argument to help improve the situation.

Best Regards,
-Chicago

 all of them have a rpcthreads call and it is much faster cause you dont have a middle man to fumble the block and it
is much easier to set up than a stratum pool and coin daemon. you only need to set up the conf file in the coin daemon
to get it to put out getwork.
 i believe those wallets that need a pool only to mine are centerlized wallets in you have  to have a pool to mine them.
decenteralized wallets are wallets anyone can http in a miner and solo the wallet.

[Chicago]

all of them have a rpcthreads call and it is much faster cause you dont have a middle man to fumble the block and it
is much easier to set up than a stratum pool and coin daemon. you only need to set up the conf file in the coin daemon
to get it to put out getwork.
 i believe those wallets that need a pool only to mine are centerlized wallets in you have  to have a pool to mine them.
decenteralized wallets are wallets anyone can http in a miner and solo the wallet.

    Luckycoin is one example which does not have an rpcthreads call.

    Yes, you're absolutely right it is much easier to use getwork with http than it is to support stratum mining.

    Nonetheless, the reason getblocktemplate supercedes getwork is because with getwork the miner is kept in the dark as to what is actually in the block and has no influence over it.

    According to the Bitcoin Wiki, "getwork protocol only provides a single block header, which is sufficient for a total of about 4 GH of mining" and I know that is in terms of double sha256 and I'm not certain what it would be sufficient for with regards to Scrypt.

Best Regards,
-Chicago

[FFI2013]

Well this sucks the pre-order is sold out do you have a estimate for next batch I can't believe I missed this somehow

[philipma1957]

Time line on first shipment?

[jstefanop]

Time line on first shipment?

First units wont start shipping out until end of October, and since these are getting manufactures in the states were running into issues with the new import taxes and trying to figure out how to minimize them. Some of our overseas components timeline could be impacted by it, but Ill have a better idea when units will start shipping by next week.

[gvb]

these are getting manufactures in the states

Which means you're in europe?

Are there no companies in europe that can build the PCBs when they have the parts?

[HagssFIN]

these are getting manufactures in the states

Which means you're in europe?

Are there no companies in europe that can build the PCBs when they have the parts?

No.

'In the states' means in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 

[jarvisparvis]

Obviously some components will have to be from China like asics they seem at the cutting edge with cheap manufacturing would make sense to keep the cost down.  But if your gonna suffer from the raise in tariffs on stuff from China might be better possibly cheaper to have the shipped to Europe and forwarded to USA may be an indirect way but may be cheaper than the tariffs.

[gvb]

that was my point actually.

if you can do it in europe you don't have the double costs of shipping to the US and back and additional import taxes that might come with it.

[jstefanop]

Obviously some components will have to be from China like asics they seem at the cutting edge with cheap manufacturing would make sense to keep the cost down.  But if your gonna suffer from the raise in tariffs on stuff from China might be better possibly cheaper to have the shipped to Europe and forwarded to USA may be an indirect way but may be cheaper than the tariffs.

Yea we got the ASICs in so were set to at least start production on the PCB. Only bottleneck right now coming from china is the MCU and Fan. Even if we sent the shipments to Europe, they are still subject to a 17% import fee there regardless....trade sucks right now :/

Either way this at most adds 1-2 weeks delay, so worst case well start shipping beginning of november.

[drakedave]

Hi guys,

Too bad the preorder is finished, if ever somebody changed its mind and don't want his miner anymore just PM, I'm really interested.
If not I'll wait for the next batch  

By the way, I've 2 moonlanders 2 and ordered 3 more and I'm so thrilled to be able to mine at home with such great little machines  , thank you so much !!

[jarvisparvis]

Obviously some components will have to be from China like asics they seem at the cutting edge with cheap manufacturing would make sense to keep the cost down.  But if your gonna suffer from the raise in tariffs on stuff from China might be better possibly cheaper to have the shipped to Europe and forwarded to USA may be an indirect way but may be cheaper than the tariffs.

Yea we got the ASICs in so were set to at least start production on the PCB. Only bottleneck right now coming from china is the MCU and Fan. Even if we sent the shipments to Europe, they are still subject to a 17% import fee there regardless....trade sucks right now :/

Either way this at most adds 1-2 weeks delay, so worst case well start shipping beginning of november.

I can live with that. Obviously eager to get hold of mine but rather wait and get a quality product like the moonlander2s are

[crypto_curious]

Obviously some components will have to be from China like asics they seem at the cutting edge with cheap manufacturing would make sense to keep the cost down.  But if your gonna suffer from the raise in tariffs on stuff from China might be better possibly cheaper to have the shipped to Europe and forwarded to USA may be an indirect way but may be cheaper than the tariffs.

Yea we got the ASICs in so were set to at least start production on the PCB. Only bottleneck right now coming from china is the MCU and Fan. Even if we sent the shipments to Europe, they are still subject to a 17% import fee there regardless....trade sucks right now :/

Either way this at most adds 1-2 weeks delay, so worst case well start shipping beginning of november.

I can live with that. Obviously eager to get hold of mine but rather wait and get a quality product like the moonlander2s are

Same here.

I just started home mining with few Moonlanders, I've ordered another small USB hub, so I will have moonlanders mining nicely at home. When Apollo is ready and absolutely stable and polished, I will welcome it to my family I placed order for two Apollos in this batch. I will wait patiently

[WaterTower]

What do you guys think of this PSU for the miner?

https://www.amazon.com/Replacement-ATX-1953D-ATX-1956D-ATX-1956-B1-ATX-1956F/dp/B0107CIJP8?pd_rd_wg=o923z&pd_rd_r=248d0b3c-92ed-48ea-9d2d-37dd0f12bc64&pd_rd_w=cvCM7&ref_=pd_gw_simh&pf_rd_r=YCZQG8EYE7V5JH4GNH4N&pf_rd_p=b841581f-e864-5164-afa6-4c18a8348879

[jarvisparvis]

To be honest i wouldnt...

my reasons to run one apollo would be inefficient as youd only need 250 watts max
                          run two apollos in eco mode maybe... but i still wouldnt these arent the most stable types of psu's

at this stage this is obviously speculative and until ive use an apollo for a while couldnt really be 100% sure.


Id err on the side of caution look at hp or dell server psus and a breakout board (basically and adapter for 6 pin pcie leads) some refurbed bargains around and theyre very efficient, stable and built to be longterm work horses.