Official FutureBit Apollo LTC Image and Support thread

[honglu69]

Awesome product.  Thumbs up to Engineers and staffs of this company.

Ordered one USB stick myself weeks ago.  The product was shipped from NYC to New England area in a couple of days and I am mining  NewEnglandcoin(NENG) using this ASIC USB. It works very well.

[1713580376]

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[1713580376]

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[wttbs]

hmmm...   having some troubles with my 2 miners.

Miner (1) is online now for 1 day and performance dropped to like 90MHs and 12% HW errors



I mine at multipool.us


I will reboot and switch to LTCpool for now, to test if problem is with pool.


Miner (2) stops mining after 5 to 10 minutes and then you can't access dashboard anymore. Restarting miner doesn't help, reboot doesn't help. Other PSU , same problem. Then I did a new flash of the SD, miners works again... for 10 minutes then same problem. Used the SD from the working Miner (1) , same problem so it's not the software.



reboot miner, then this message


I restart miner then I see this (as it should be)


then after like 1 to 2 minutes either this message again

or the ECONNREFUSED message, does not disappear, not even after like 5 minutes wait

For both miners I use a wired connection and that seems to be OK, I can access them thru webinterface and SSH...

[UPDATE]

Miner (1) swithed pools. rebooted miner, then something wierd, it is mining at the failover pool, guess bfgminer isn't picking up the swith of the pool.. it is mining at multipool now



Miner (2) after another 4 reboots, it is mining now for 5 minutes at litecoinpool ..

[UPDATE]

Miner (1) removed multipool pool, restarted miner and it is mining now at litecoinpool

[Underwaterbasketcoin]

I've been unable to get the apollo to boot. I ran a checksum on the image I downloaded and it doesn't match. I've re-downloaded twice and neither matches. Anyone have advice? I'm using a windows 10 pc and downloaded using both chrome and edge.

If it’s flashing yellow it’s working fine. What are you using to run the checksum?

Yellow flashing means it’s booting and not getting a network connection. You have it plugged in via Ethernet and ran an ip finder on your network?

Thanks for the response.

I ran the checksum with command prompt, yes it's plugged in via Ethernet but it's not being assigned an IP by my network. Anything else I plug into the ethernet is immediately assigned an IP.

Did you hash check the IMG or the ZIP of the IMG?

I figured out what I was doing wrong with checksum, I was using MD5 instead of SHA256. The checksum on the IMG matches. I've tried to create an ISO on the micro SD using Etcher but it doesn't seem to be working. I've tried on a sandisk 8gb and a Kingston 16gb with no luck. There doesn't seem to be any settings in Etcher to change. I read that I have to make sure the image is on the whole disk not sure how to do that.

[r00tdude]

Got another one -

I use AwesomeMiner to monitor my rigs - how about making a slider in the UI that will enable API access?

Thanks!

r00t: I use awesome miner too. Let me know if you find a workaround in the meantime.

Will do. Opening the API access is usually issued with the mining command as part of the command. I need to investigate how jstef set this up and maybe can find a way to do it. Gimme a day or so.

OK got it figured out...

The bfgminer instance lives in /opt/ and there's a bfgminer.conf file in there that can be edited with

Code:

sudo nano bfgminer.conf

and edit the line

Code:

"api-allow": "W:127.0.0.1, W:192.168.0.0/24", 

adding in your local subnet then reboot the rig. All good!

[jstefanop]

hmmm...   having some troubles with my 2 miners.

These are pool connection issues. Interface currently does not have a nice way to display connection errors since the interface requires bfgminer to at least connect to one pool before it starts sending data to the dashboard.

Thats why your seeing the miner offline screens.

High hardware errors is a byproduct of a pool going offline then coming back online (next image release will handle this better and shutdown the miner properly and wait for a connection), since it just spits back thousands of shares to the pool on reconnect and they all get rejected.

Ill start checking mutipool with my devices and see if I can replicate....if you see the same issue, ssh into the device and do "sudo screen -dr miner" to bring up bdgminer and take a screenshot of it.

[jstefanop]

I've been unable to get the apollo to boot. I ran a checksum on the image I downloaded and it doesn't match. I've re-downloaded twice and neither matches. Anyone have advice? I'm using a windows 10 pc and downloaded using both chrome and edge.

If it’s flashing yellow it’s working fine. What are you using to run the checksum?

Yellow flashing means it’s booting and not getting a network connection. You have it plugged in via Ethernet and ran an ip finder on your network?

Thanks for the response.

I ran the checksum with command prompt, yes it's plugged in via Ethernet but it's not being assigned an IP by my network. Anything else I plug into the ethernet is immediately assigned an IP.

Did you hash check the IMG or the ZIP of the IMG?

I figured out what I was doing wrong with checksum, I was using MD5 instead of SHA256. The checksum on the IMG matches. I've tried to create an ISO on the micro SD using Etcher but it doesn't seem to be working. I've tried on a sandisk 8gb and a Kingston 16gb with no luck. There doesn't seem to be any settings in Etcher to change. I read that I have to make sure the image is on the whole disk not sure how to do that.

Did you figure this out yet? Its definitely something with your network...double check your router/firewall settings. You don't need to change anything on etcher other than select your SD card and the .img file.

If the flashing yellow LED is coming up then the device and SD card is working right, its just not getting an internet connection from your router.

[redzep]

hi

i had same issue as wttbs miner went off line, the reboot option i dont think works, does not reboot device, had to do power cycle
was working ok for two day's and seems ok now to litecoinpool

[wttbs]

I've been unable to get the apollo to boot. I ran a checksum on the image I downloaded and it doesn't match. I've re-downloaded twice and neither matches. Anyone have advice? I'm using a windows 10 pc and downloaded using both chrome and edge.

If it’s flashing yellow it’s working fine. What are you using to run the checksum?

Yellow flashing means it’s booting and not getting a network connection. You have it plugged in via Ethernet and ran an ip finder on your network?

Thanks for the response.

I ran the checksum with command prompt, yes it's plugged in via Ethernet but it's not being assigned an IP by my network. Anything else I plug into the ethernet is immediately assigned an IP.

Did you hash check the IMG or the ZIP of the IMG?

I figured out what I was doing wrong with checksum, I was using MD5 instead of SHA256. The checksum on the IMG matches. I've tried to create an ISO on the micro SD using Etcher but it doesn't seem to be working. I've tried on a sandisk 8gb and a Kingston 16gb with no luck. There doesn't seem to be any settings in Etcher to change. I read that I have to make sure the image is on the whole disk not sure how to do that.

Did you figure this out yet? Its definitely something with your network...double check your router/firewall settings. You don't need to change anything on etcher other than select your SD card and the .img file.

If the flashing yellow LED is coming up then the device and SD card is working right, its just not getting an internet connection from your router.

thanks for the explenation, all clear what is happening.

it is probably the miningpool. Both miners are mining without problems now for 12 hours at litecoinpool

[in2tactics]

...

I figured out what I was doing wrong with checksum, I was using MD5 instead of SHA256. The checksum on the IMG matches. I've tried to create an ISO on the micro SD using Etcher but it doesn't seem to be working. I've tried on a sandisk 8gb and a Kingston 16gb with no luck. There doesn't seem to be any settings in Etcher to change. I read that I have to make sure the image is on the whole disk not sure how to do that.

Etcher does not require any setting changes.

hi

i had same issue as wttbs miner went off line, the reboot option i dont think works, does not reboot device, had to do power cycle
was working ok for two day's and seems ok now to litecoinpool

I have not experienced any issues with using the reboot command. It appears to function correctly as intended. What were you trying to fix by rebooting?

[crypto_curious]

Bug report:

https://imgur.com/a/6szEf9o

Arrows up and down don't work (tested on Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome). I can't change priorities in pool order.

Also, it's not possible to EDIT entries. These fields here are just greyed out display fields, not text entry fields.

If I want to edit the main pool, for example, I need to delete all of them and enter them all again in the correct order.

[psycodad]

Bug report:

https://imgur.com/a/6szEf9o

Arrows up and down don't work (tested on Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome). I can't change priorities in pool order.

Also, it's not possible to EDIT entries. These fields here are just greyed out display fields, not text entry fields.

If I want to edit the main pool, for example, I need to delete all of them and enter them all again in the correct order.

I believe something is messed up between UI and backend, because if you delete one pool, the backend often deletes another pool (not the one you clicked to delete). Might be that sometimes there are entries in the database with the same number in the 'index' field.

I also dislike that you can't edit them (nor can't copy-paste the entries), not even directly in the apollo itself - the only way I found is mounting the apollo disk via sshfs and running sqliteman against the db in /opt/apolloapi/. This was for me necessary since at some point after some trying to shuffle, re-add, delete from the UI I suddenly got litecoinpool and a multipool running in parallel which made the apollo freak-out pretty much.

On the positive side I finally managed to run them stable against a multipool, since 24hrs stable at 100MHs with ~1.6-1.9% errors. If you want to mine on profit switching pools / multipools, make sure you do not have a backup pool configured (unlike cgminer, bfgminer seemingly requires primary and failover pool to run on the same coin/network). For mine I also set the fans to 45% resulting in 56-58°C.

Worth mentioning is also the fact that these are the first miners in my hands that are IPv6 capable, according to bfgminer release notes this should allow the apollo to connect to pools via IPv6 and for later releases to allow full nodes to run dual-stack which gives much more connections to the coind.

However the Wifi doesn't work for me (tested just for fun, don't need it), I have 2 wireless networks (WPA2-PSK only) that the apollos should see but only saw them once upon "scan" and that was after the first boot of the image, since then I don't see them anymore on both apollos (and not even the dozen or so neighbouring WiFis that my notebook sees from the same location).

[r00tdude]

However the Wifi doesn't work for me (tested just for fun, don't need it), I have 2 wireless networks (WPA2-PSK only) that the apollos should see but only saw them once upon "scan" and that was after the first boot of the image, since then I don't see them anymore on both apollos (and not even the dozen or so neighbouring WiFis that my notebook sees from the same location).

Do you know if you are running your APs in mixed mode? If you switch to mixed mode, you'll likely be able to see and connect to them. Make sure once you associate, reboot them and remove the ethernet cable. I was able to get all of my Apollos to successfully connect and run reliably on my WiFi. Let me know if you need more troubleshooting help.

Peace,
r00t

[psycodad]

However the Wifi doesn't work for me (tested just for fun, don't need it), I have 2 wireless networks (WPA2-PSK only) that the apollos should see but only saw them once upon "scan" and that was after the first boot of the image, since then I don't see them anymore on both apollos (and not even the dozen or so neighbouring WiFis that my notebook sees from the same location).

Do you know if you are running your APs in mixed mode? If you switch to mixed mode, you'll likely be able to see and connect to them. Make sure once you associate, reboot them and remove the ethernet cable. I was able to get all of my Apollos to successfully connect and run reliably on my WiFi. Let me know if you need more troubleshooting help.

Peace,
r00t

If you mean by mixed mode 802.11b/g/n, yes that's the case on all AFAICS. Though no need to worry, I won't use WiFi, that just adds unnecessary delay und unreliability when ethernet is available just 1m from the miners.
In the meantime I tried "iwlist wlan0 scanning" in the shell and after an "ifconfig wlan0 down; sleep 3; ifconfig wlan0 up" I saw my networks. It might be that they are just shielded wifi-wise pretty good when standing on a metal surface as in my case with the antenna on the bottom. When I saw my networks on first boot they were in a different place on a wooden surface.

[monkeyrocker]

Tried a be quiet! Pure Power 11 CM 600W PSU but so far no luck getting the Apollo going.
Connected pins so it can start and PSU fan starts spinning. LAN-port leds turn on (orange, green) and the Apollo fan starts with a few spins but stops immediately, no front led light.
It will do this every time when PSU turns on so seems like some kind of protection from the PSU that shut its off. Maybe somebody has a better idea or experience?
With the Apollo attached and pins connected should normally be enough?
If nothing works I might just get one of the PSUs that seemed to work for others.

[jstefanop]

Tried a be quiet! Pure Power 11 CM 600W PSU but so far no luck getting the Apollo going.
Connected pins so it can start and PSU fan starts spinning. LAN-port leds turn on (orange, green) and the Apollo fan starts with a few spins but stops immediately, no front led light.
It will do this every time when PSU turns on so seems like some kind of protection from the PSU that shut its off. Maybe somebody has a better idea or experience?
With the Apollo attached and pins connected should normally be enough?
If nothing works I might just get one of the PSUs that seemed to work for others.

Do the LAN port LEDs flash a few times? If they come on and stay on that means its not booting from SD card (when it boots properly the LAN LEDs will flash a few times).

If they don't flash that means either your using an incompatible SD card, or something went wrong with your SD card image download/flash.

[jstefanop]

Bug report:

https://imgur.com/a/6szEf9o

Arrows up and down don't work (tested on Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome). I can't change priorities in pool order.

Also, it's not possible to EDIT entries. These fields here are just greyed out display fields, not text entry fields.

If I want to edit the main pool, for example, I need to delete all of them and enter them all again in the correct order.

I believe something is messed up between UI and backend, because if you delete one pool, the backend often deletes another pool (not the one you clicked to delete). Might be that sometimes there are entries in the database with the same number in the 'index' field.

I also dislike that you can't edit them (nor can't copy-paste the entries), not even directly in the apollo itself - the only way I found is mounting the apollo disk via sshfs and running sqliteman against the db in /opt/apolloapi/. This was for me necessary since at some point after some trying to shuffle, re-add, delete from the UI I suddenly got litecoinpool and a multipool running in parallel which made the apollo freak-out pretty much.

On the positive side I finally managed to run them stable against a multipool, since 24hrs stable at 100MHs with ~1.6-1.9% errors. If you want to mine on profit switching pools / multipools, make sure you do not have a backup pool configured (unlike cgminer, bfgminer seemingly requires primary and failover pool to run on the same coin/network). For mine I also set the fans to 45% resulting in 56-58°C.

Worth mentioning is also the fact that these are the first miners in my hands that are IPv6 capable, according to bfgminer release notes this should allow the apollo to connect to pools via IPv6 and for later releases to allow full nodes to run dual-stack which gives much more connections to the coind.

However the Wifi doesn't work for me (tested just for fun, don't need it), I have 2 wireless networks (WPA2-PSK only) that the apollos should see but only saw them once upon "scan" and that was after the first boot of the image, since then I don't see them anymore on both apollos (and not even the dozen or so neighbouring WiFis that my notebook sees from the same location).

Yea most of this stuff is on my bug list / to-do.

Wifi is very hit or miss with the current driver for the wifi chip...were trying to get a stable driver going from the vendor.

My test units work fine in a simple b/g network at home...but in my office with dozens of networks/mixed mode stations etc the wifi driver chokes and crashes all the time.

[crypto_curious]

Yea most of this stuff is on my bug list / to-do.

Wifi is very hit or miss with the current driver for the wifi chip...were trying to get a stable driver going from the vendor.

My test units work fine in a simple b/g network at home...but in my office with dozens of networks/mixed mode stations etc the wifi driver chokes and crashes all the time.

I've managed to have Apollo on WiFi on mixed 2.4/5 GHz (g+n / ac) network, same SSID for both of frequencies. I am not sure which frequency was Apollo using at that time, but it was stable. Now I switched to ethernet though.
It's a matter of polishing driver I am sure this hardware could work for months without any interruption on any WiFi providing signal is strong enough, fingers crossed for its development

[philipma1957]

Okay

 Yeah cut and paste does not work a real P.I.T.A.




I did a youtube video shows 1 L3+ and 1 Apollo running nice and quiet hooked up to a high end cosair

loading really slow sorry for delay.
 

at: https://youtu.be/x6EjibK9Ot8

[crypto_curious]

Okay

 Yeah cut and paste does not work a real P.I.T.A.




I did a youtube video shows 1 L3+ and 1 Apollo running nice and quiet hooked up to a high end cosair

loading really slow sorry for delay.
 

at: https://youtu.be/x6EjibK9Ot8

You have 10% HW errors there?   (I did not watch whole video, but seen it throughout the clip)

[monkeyrocker]

Tried a be quiet! Pure Power 11 CM 600W PSU but so far no luck getting the Apollo going.
Connected pins so it can start and PSU fan starts spinning. LAN-port leds turn on (orange, green) and the Apollo fan starts with a few spins but stops immediately, no front led light.
It will do this every time when PSU turns on so seems like some kind of protection from the PSU that shut its off. Maybe somebody has a better idea or experience?
With the Apollo attached and pins connected should normally be enough?
If nothing works I might just get one of the PSUs that seemed to work for others.

Do the LAN port LEDs flash a few times? If they come on and stay on that means its not booting from SD card (when it boots properly the LAN LEDs will flash a few times).

If they don't flash that means either your using an incompatible SD card, or something went wrong with your SD card image download/flash.

Ok, leds do stay on but don't blink. I'll try writing sd cards again without using dd. Tried both a 32 Gb and 64 Gb sandisk extreme plus, but both created in the same way with dd so makes sense to try different way or even using cheaper different card. Thanks, I'll report back.