Official FutureBit Apollo LTC Image and Support thread

[whiteogre]

Assuming jstefanop et. al. get it running on the Orange Pi Zero, the biggest limitation is the storage space; my node is currently using 24G to store the blockchain, so you'll need a sizable SD card.

It could be more practical to store the blockchain on some USB flash stick since there's an USB port available anyway. That way the SD card size wouldn't matter that much and updating the firmware by fully erasing the card content wouldn't reset the blockchain back to zero (or to some other older snapshot the firmware possibly provides).

[jstefanop]

Assuming jstefanop et. al. get it running on the Orange Pi Zero, the biggest limitation is the storage space; my node is currently using 24G to store the blockchain, so you'll need a sizable SD card.

It could be more practical to store the blockchain on some USB flash stick since there's an USB port available anyway. That way the SD card size wouldn't matter that much and updating the firmware by fully erasing the card content wouldn't reset the blockchain back to zero (or to some other older snapshot the firmware possibly provides).

Yea this is the main issue we are still trying to figure out with the full node (other than the memory limitations we are still working through). We still want to make it that the whole node runs on the current hardware with nothing extra, but based on how bad the node wears down SD cards we might need to provide an external USB drive solution for better reliability.

Almost done with getting Batch 2 out the door, and my full attention will turn to this...

[dwood443]

Yea this is the main issue we are still trying to figure out with the full node (other than the memory limitations we are still working through). We still want to make it that the whole node runs on the current hardware with nothing extra, but based on how bad the node wears down SD cards we might need to provide an external USB drive solution for better reliability.

Almost done with getting Batch 2 out the door, and my full attention will turn to this...

you've mentioned how reformatting/re-imaging the SD card fixes problems but I don't know if its the SD cards I bought (amazon) but I've never had an issue where I thought I needed to re-image the card. Do you think its something worth doing every once in a while as preventative? Is there any value to it, efficiency, etc...?

[Morphicshift]

Hi I have purchased one of these and I want to run it off my solar...I have a PCie splitter and I am intending on turning the other end into one + and one - to the 12v outlet from the battery bank. My question is... the actual unloadded voltage from the battery bank is 14v not exactly 12... if I hook this up anyway, will I blow the unit?

[jstnryan]

Do you think its something worth doing every once in a while as preventative?

SD cards have a finite lifespan. The more you write to them, the shorter that lifespan becomes.

[dwood443]

Hi I have purchased one of these and I want to run it off my solar...I have a PCie splitter and I am intending on turning the other end into one + and one - to the 12v outlet from the battery bank. My question is... the actual unloadded voltage from the battery bank is 14v not exactly 12... if I hook this up anyway, will I blow the unit?

Disclaimer - I'm not a electrician or elec engineer. I'm looking into running one of these off a solar controller as well. The specs for my APW3++ show the output for the PCIE connector is DC Voltage 12.15 V.

I was going to measure voltage and current at one of the PCIE connectors when running but have not found time to do that yet.

[estacionsj]

Definitely not...the donation pool only mines on litecoinpool.org. If your solo mining you would get 100% of the solo block, nor would I ever take a solo block from someone even if the donation share fell on it. Sounds like an issue with zerg pool, but seems like he deleted the posted so I'm guessing it was resolved by them.

Congrats on the solo block either way

I deleted the post when I realized just because I have my settings to mc=LTC,m=solo, it does not really mean I am just solo mining. The pool seems to be a bit buggy as I still do some shared mining. Just lucky enough to be mining only LTC and enjoyed a 15% piece of a shared block. So I immediately ordered another Apollo

so how long of a time frame were u mining to get 15% of the block, and were u just using one apollo.
im a newb , have a apollo batch 2 on pre-order

[estacionsj]

Hi I have purchased one of these and I want to run it off my solar...I have a PCie splitter and I am intending on turning the other end into one + and one - to the 12v outlet from the battery bank. My question is... the actual unloadded voltage from the battery bank is 14v not exactly 12... if I hook this up anyway, will I blow the unit?

Disclaimer - I'm not a electrician or elec engineer. I'm looking into running one of these off a solar controller as well. The specs for my APW3++ show the output for the PCIE connector is DC Voltage 12.15 V.

I was going to measure voltage and current at one of the PCIE connectors when running but have not found time to do that yet.

Let us know if u get i running, i would like to go solar myself.Im in san francisco and i pay .22 a kilowat. A solar alternative for me would be great.

[dwood443]

so how long of a time frame were u mining to get 15% of the block, and were u just using one apollo.
im a newb , have a apollo batch 2 on pre-order

I've been running three Apollos since batch one, few months I guess. Just got lucky and found a shared block. With three miners running med speed my time to find block is 4 years average.

[jstefanop]

Hi I have purchased one of these and I want to run it off my solar...I have a PCie splitter and I am intending on turning the other end into one + and one - to the 12v outlet from the battery bank. My question is... the actual unloadded voltage from the battery bank is 14v not exactly 12... if I hook this up anyway, will I blow the unit?

Disclaimer - I'm not a electrician or elec engineer. I'm looking into running one of these off a solar controller as well. The specs for my APW3++ show the output for the PCIE connector is DC Voltage 12.15 V.

I was going to measure voltage and current at one of the PCIE connectors when running but have not found time to do that yet.

The regulators and caps are rated for up to 16v input. Everything is tuned for 12v obviously, but you wont "fry" the board if you run it at 14v...I just wouldn't go any higher since once you approach the limits of the caps things will start getting unstable.

[littleless]

Hi, I run one of solar. My charge controller gives up to 14.4v when bulk charging and when works on batteries I set up to run it all the way to 10.8v(~50% of the batteries). Miner runs perfect in this condition and consumes about 9-10Amps @ 10.8v(eco mode). The only thing I added 15Amp circuit breaker just to be on safe side. P.S. I'm not electrician, this is just my experiment.

[dwood443]

Hi, I run one of solar. My charge controller gives up to 14.4v when bulk charging and when works on batteries I set up to run it all the way to 10.8v(~50% of the batteries). Miner runs perfect in this condition and consumes about 9-10Amps @ 10.8v(eco mode). The only thing I added 15Amp circuit breaker just to be on safe side. P.S. I'm not electrician, this is just my experiment.

Could you give me more info on your solar setup? Panel and controller size. Did you connect the Apollo directly to the controller with maybe a fuse in between? What kind of battery do you use
Right now I only have a couple 100 watt solar panels and a small 30 amp controller but I'm really interested in doing this too.
Sorry for all the questions and appreciate any help you can offer.

[littleless]

My solar setup: 2x300w solar panels, eSmart 3series 60A MPPT charge controller, 12V 200Ah AGM battery. Miner connected to controllers load terminal through 15Amps dc trip-switch(works as a fuse) and controller set up to shut load when battery voltage drops to 10.8v. The miner consumption @this setup never exceeded 10A (miner setup eco mode)   Due to location of solar panels miner works only 15-17Hrs when sunny day. Need to put panels on the roof, now it is on the ground and I miss ~50-70w in production and ~1.5hrs of sun in evening. When will fix all that, should be enough to run it 24h when sunny

[jstefanop]

My solar setup: 2x300w solar panels, eSmart 3series 60A MPPT charge controller, 12V 200Ah AGM battery. Miner connected to controllers load terminal through 15Amps dc trip-switch(works as a fuse) and controller set up to shut load when battery voltage drops to 10.8v. The miner consumption @this setup never exceeded 10A (miner setup eco mode)   Due to location of solar panels miner works only 15-17Hrs when sunny day. Need to put panels on the roof, now it is on the ground and I miss ~50-70w in production and ~1.5hrs of sun in evening. When will fix all that, should be enough to run it 24h when sunny

Thats awesome...you guys should definitely blog/tweet/post about this stuff. This is the kind of things I envision people doing with a sub 200 watt home miner yet very few people still know about it.

Free power, eco friendly, decentralized mining! Cool stuff!

[estacionsj]

My solar setup: 2x300w solar panels, eSmart 3series 60A MPPT charge controller, 12V 200Ah AGM battery. Miner connected to controllers load terminal through 15Amps dc trip-switch(works as a fuse) and controller set up to shut load when battery voltage drops to 10.8v. The miner consumption @this setup never exceeded 10A (miner setup eco mode)   Due to location of solar panels miner works only 15-17Hrs when sunny day. Need to put panels on the roof, now it is on the ground and I miss ~50-70w in production and ~1.5hrs of sun in evening. When will fix all that, should be enough to run it 24h when sunny

Maybe what dwood443 is also asking is did u connect it to the controller direct to the Apollo with or without a power supply ..

[dwood443]

My solar setup: 2x300w solar panels, eSmart 3series 60A MPPT charge controller, 12V 200Ah AGM battery. Miner connected to controllers load terminal through 15Amps dc trip-switch(works as a fuse) and controller set up to shut load when battery voltage drops to 10.8v. The miner consumption @this setup never exceeded 10A (miner setup eco mode)   Due to location of solar panels miner works only 15-17Hrs when sunny day. Need to put panels on the roof, now it is on the ground and I miss ~50-70w in production and ~1.5hrs of sun in evening. When will fix all that, should be enough to run it 24h when sunny

Maybe what dwood443 is also asking is did u connect it to the controller direct to the Apollo with or without a power supply ..

I got my answer. a solar controller has 3 connections, solar panel, battery and output to miner. I was just wondering if a ac inverter was used but I'm just going to hook miner directly to miner DC connection. Can't wait to try this.

[littleless]

I got my answer. a solar controller has 3 connections, solar panel, battery and output to miner. I was just wondering if a ac inverter was used but I'm just going to hook miner directly to miner DC connection. Can't wait to try this.

My miner connected directly to charge controller through 15A kill-switch(as a fuse) and works absolutely fine without any other voltage conversion.  But when connect miner to charge controller's "load" output, make sure it can handle (should be written in manual), my miner in eco mode consumes up to 10A @ 10.8V.

Thats awesome...you guys should definitely blog/tweet/post about this stuff. This is the kind of things I envision people doing with a sub 200 watt home miner yet very few people still know about it.

Free power, eco friendly, decentralized mining! Cool stuff!

It's true amazing stuff, but still slightly expensive... all set up cost me ~ £600 + miner cost(another ~£360). In today's reality it makes me ~£0.2 daily. Most bloggers say: ...it's easier to buy crypto and HODL... So as a hobby it is a very great thing, but no more...

[qwamme]

Hello, I ordered Batch2 back in may and in the anouncement it was called to be delivered end of june. Until today I did not recieved the miner and even no shipping informations.

Can anybody give me a update how long it will take to get the miner delivered?

[rayday11]

Wrong thread. But here's your answer


quote from jstefanop


Here is the update email for anyone that ordered and didn't see it (which was about 25% of you, and instead of calling me pathetic a 5 second inbox search you would have found it). Im also pretty active on twitter and on here with updates if you miss the email.

https://mailchi.mp/f44e011db3c1/introducing-the-futurebit-apollo-383755


Also I understand the frustration when you order something that is not cheap and dont get it on the expected timeframe, but two weeks late in the pre-order world is pretty outstanding. I do my best to estimate when my supply chain will have everything ready, but the Apollo has dozens of different parts from diffrent vendors and its impossible to sync all of them perfectly, especially since we took the time to redesign the case and many other parts of the overall customer experience (not to mention n completely new power supply design which I spent more time than I care to admit on).

Obviously I need to work on this and want to get to the point where Im shipping early, but its a far cry from the 90% of project on here that dont ship anything or months late (I think those are more a fair designation for pathetic). And to be clear, I operate FutureBit as essentially a non-profit to get as much hardware out to as many people as possible...this means I dont have a budget for marketing, sales, customer support, and time to write up updates every day...wish I did but then I would be charging 600 bucks for the same product (or selling my soul to greedy investors).


BTW All PCBs are done at our factory, and now its just a matter of getting in all our cases and assembling/testing and shipping them out. First units are going out in the coming days, and PSU is due in at the end of next week which is when the full package orders will start going out

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4974036.460

[r00tdude]

Assuming jstefanop et. al. get it running on the Orange Pi Zero, the biggest limitation is the storage space; my node is currently using 24G to store the blockchain, so you'll need a sizable SD card.

It could be more practical to store the blockchain on some USB flash stick since there's an USB port available anyway. That way the SD card size wouldn't matter that much and updating the firmware by fully erasing the card content wouldn't reset the blockchain back to zero (or to some other older snapshot the firmware possibly provides).

Yea this is the main issue we are still trying to figure out with the full node (other than the memory limitations we are still working through). We still want to make it that the whole node runs on the current hardware with nothing extra, but based on how bad the node wears down SD cards we might need to provide an external USB drive solution for better reliability.

Almost done with getting Batch 2 out the door, and my full attention will turn to this...

So pleased to hear that the full node is in the works following the Batch 2 being on their way. Been waiting what seems like ages for this - I want to solo mine my Apollos from now on and mining against a node on the rig is the best scenario (I had considered a VM on my NAS, but I like the thought of this better).

FWIW and for those interested, I was one of the guys running L3's until last week, and with the price action on LTC, I decided to shut down 75% of my capacity and run only my Apollos from here on out. It hurt, but LTC is losing ground immensely and without privacy solution ready for mainnet, I don't think LTC is going to gain ground on BTC.

With the halving and price slumping, I foresee an immediate 25% reduction in hashrate, and 50% over the next six months, unless Charlie Lee pulls mimblewimble out of his hat.