Official FutureBit Apollo LTC Image and Support thread

[whiteogre]

I've noticed that the fan speed keeps revving up and down a little,
though I have set it at manual speed 15 %.

I have the same 15% manual setting enabled. The unstable rpm was confirmed to be a feature, not a bug:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5081750.msg48986544#msg48986544

[Underwaterbasketcoin]

Fan control still needs work.
Got the alert from litecoinpool that the apollo had dropped off this morning. I could not get the the web front end, so I ignored it figuring on a crash.
The L3+ that is on the same power supply never dropped so I knew the power and internet were good.

Got in to work and fan was not spinning AND unit was about 1 billion degrees (give or take a bit) was actually hot enough to darken the thermal ink label on the controller.
https://i.imgur.com/8EMSuNlm.jpg

Once it cooled down it seems to have come back no problem.
I now have the fan set to 25% instead of auto.

In the next revision can you have the fan fail to max speed in case of any issues?

-Dave

What mode were you running in? Eco, Balanced or Turbo?

[DaveF]

Fan control still needs work.
Got the alert from litecoinpool that the apollo had dropped off this morning. I could not get the the web front end, so I ignored it figuring on a crash.
The L3+ that is on the same power supply never dropped so I knew the power and internet were good.

Got in to work and fan was not spinning AND unit was about 1 billion degrees (give or take a bit) was actually hot enough to darken the thermal ink label on the controller.


Once it cooled down it seems to have come back no problem.
I now have the fan set to 25% instead of auto.

In the next revision can you have the fan fail to max speed in case of any issues?

-Dave

What mode were you running in? Eco, Balanced or Turbo?

Eco

-Dave

[whiteogre]

Fan control still needs work.
Got the alert from litecoinpool that the apollo had dropped off this morning. I could not get the the web front end, so I ignored it figuring on a crash.
The L3+ that is on the same power supply never dropped so I knew the power and internet were good.

Got in to work and fan was not spinning AND unit was about 1 billion degrees (give or take a bit) was actually hot enough to darken the thermal ink label on the controller.


Once it cooled down it seems to have come back no problem.
I now have the fan set to 25% instead of auto.

In the next revision can you have the fan fail to max speed in case of any issues?

What mode were you running in? Eco, Balanced or Turbo?

Eco

Looking at the content of the current sdcard image and the implementation of the fan control, there does appear to be a failure scenario that could explain what you saw happen.

The startup process of the Apollo first starts the network, followed by apollo.service and bfgminer.service. apollo.service is the UI itself and it has been configured to restart on failure. bfgminer.service on the other hand contains the hardware monitoring and fan control process (apollo_hwmon) and, after a 20 second delay, bfgminer itself is started. The problem here is that the bfgminer.service contains several processes and the init system hasn't been configured to monitor any of these for doing a restart on failure. For some reason, possibly for implementation simplicity, the fan control is that separate process instead of being part of the bfgminer driver.

I suspect that setup results in a situation that if the apollo_hwmon process dies for some reason then nothing is there to notice and restart it. Since the process is handling the pwm signal generation for the fan, this results in the fan either shutting down or getting stuck at 100% depending on what the current setting was when the process dies. With a 25% manual setting, I'd guess there's a 25% chance on getting stuck at 100% rpm and 75% for a fan shutdown (0% rpm).

The easiest fix would be to move that apollo_hwmon process to a separate systemd service that would be configured to have the same restart on failure monitoring as the UI itself has. Having the separate service would also allow to chain the bfgminer process/service as a dependency on fans having started instead of blindly assuming that after 20 seconds everything should be ok. Longer term, the better approach would most likely be having the fan control in the bfgminer process (provided by the Apollo driver) as the unit isn't producing much heat if the bfgminer process itself isn't running.

Disclaimer: this is what I can see based on what's visible in the image itself. Some of it could be wrong as for example the source code of the apollo_hwmon binary isn't available.

[Filax]

I received my apollo Easy setup and configuration! But i have a question :

What are the "Discarded" datas? It is normal that they are more numerous than "Accepted" ?:

29091
Accepted

49670
Discarded

Regards

[huntingthesnark]

Apollo miner won't power on for me.

I've tried two different power supplies: 1) Corsair 450W and a 2) Powerspec 420W

Any suggestions?

I know this sounds stupid, but did you short the enable pin if you are using an ATX PSU without a PC attached to it?

I’ve already had a few emails like this because of that issue

Need to build a stand alone PSU for this ASAP!

Newbie/hobbiest here - can you please list/link the 3 best standalone PSUs for the Apollo and their best attributes?
I really just want to get the best PSU I can so I can get my Apollo running.
Thx.

One apollo correct?

Corsair sf450 and a psu switch

Search

Asicminer 24-pin atx/eps

On amazon should cost 2.99

The psu costs 83 is it the best ah maybe maybe not but it is small.

Amazon has the Evga 750p2 platinum psu on sale 99 bucks with a psu switch to plug in.

99 is cheap for that model.  It can run two maybe three of these on middle speed.

Just wanted to share I took the PSU tip of the Dell D2 from back along in this thread.

200w brick, runs eco fine, very pleased.

£10 from Ebay. I followed this guide https://egpu.io/forums/psu-cables/us3-dell-da-2-pcie-splitter/, and used this pcie splitter off Amazon: https://amzn.to/2Rxq48x

[HagssFIN]

I received my apollo Easy setup and configuration! But i have a question :

What are the "Discarded" datas? It is normal that they are more numerous than "Accepted" ?:

29091
Accepted

49670
Discarded

Regards

You don't have to worry about the discarded number,
it doesnt matter

[Filax]

I received my apollo Easy setup and configuration! But i have a question :

What are the "Discarded" datas? It is normal that they are more numerous than "Accepted" ?:

29091
Accepted

49670
Discarded

Regards

You don't have to worry about the discarded number,
it doesnt matter

Ok thanks !

[johnstewart]

Hello Everyone,

So today one of my two apollos was down on litecoinpool.org but still "online" ( Green on the workers username ) but no hashing.

I just get home the miner seemed to still hashing ( green and red light like always ) doesn't seem to don't have any problems...

So i opened the dashboard and it says miner offline... **

I don't really know what happened today ....

[jstefanop]

Fan control still needs work.
Got the alert from litecoinpool that the apollo had dropped off this morning. I could not get the the web front end, so I ignored it figuring on a crash.
The L3+ that is on the same power supply never dropped so I knew the power and internet were good.

Got in to work and fan was not spinning AND unit was about 1 billion degrees (give or take a bit) was actually hot enough to darken the thermal ink label on the controller.


Once it cooled down it seems to have come back no problem.
I now have the fan set to 25% instead of auto.

In the next revision can you have the fan fail to max speed in case of any issues?

-Dave

I have seen this happen on a rare occasion and trying to investigate the root cause, but its has to do with the controller randomly locking up. Unfortunately has nothing to do with our code. We have a board level failsafe that will shut down the regulator before any damage happens, but since the fan is controlled by the MCU there is nothing we can do on the fan side, and things will get hot until the emergency shutdown triggers (which it might not in eco mode since board might not get hot enough).

[jstefanop]

Hello Everyone,

So today one of my two apollos was down on litecoinpool.org but still "online" ( Green on the workers username ) but no hashing.

I just get home the miner seemed to still hashing ( green and red light like always ) doesn't seem to don't have any problems...

So i opened the dashboard and it says miner offline... **

I don't really know what happened today ....

Sounds like an internet disconnect knocked the pool offline and it did not auto-reconnect. Simple restart will fix this.

[vsc-miner]

I got my FutureBit Apollo miner today, easy install/setup and now it is happily mining.

I connected to it by opening http://futurebit.local on my browser. If I add a second or third Apollo box in the same network what is the expected DNS name to us? perhaps someone who has multiple miners running already know.

Thanks !!

[AltScope]

repeat of issue with adding / changing order of pools today
on miner restart both pools were somehow set as main and active, units giving lots of hardware errors
decided to reboot but neither of my units will shutdown or reboot from the menu, you get the shutdown image but nothing happens it just keeps hashing so I had to do a hard power off/on.



might try a clean install in case anythings gone weird on the os, concerned that both units were acting the same.
I'm using MiningDutch as my failover so I'm not sure if just there's an issue with that pool and these units or the software. I do see a few complaints about it on my MLD's issuing work for old blocks, not matching coinbase etc. I've added #skipcbcheck to the url which removes the coinbase error on the MLD's and repeated this on the apollo's as well as setting the difficulty via the password field.

I got my FutureBit Apollo miner today, easy install/setup and now it is happily mining.

I connected to it by opening http://futurebit.local on my browser. If I add a second or third Apollo box in the same network what is the expected DNS name to us? perhaps someone who has multiple miners running already know.

Thanks !!

if you have more than one you can connect via its local ip address  

[philipma1957]

I hit a block last night  ! Doge not LTC  10000 Doge

http://ltc.tbdice.org/ablocks.htm


"18077   2548414   2019-01-07 16:00:42   LM...N.118   confirmed   1.573M   3.088M   196.36%   0.86%"

[mrwendal]

Just to add to the miner going offline reports: My Apollo went offline after what may have been exactly 6 days of hashing.  I had connected it to wifi about 2 or 3 days ago and removed the ethernet cable.  The wireless interface appears  to have lost its IP address, and reconnected the ethernet cable did not lead to a DHCP lease.  Power cycling the Apollo brought everything back online.  How would I go about connecting to the shell to get a log file?  I am using the pre-loaded 4gb card at the moment.

Is it possible in the current software version to run a full node with an SD card of sufficient capacity?

[HereToday]

Latest reports and observations after a couple weeks of tinkering:

Got the wifi working, but I couldn't get a hashrate above 65 Mh/S no matter what mode I tried.

Might be something on the provider end, wifi generally sucks in our house anyway...

Also had the dashboard freeze up with the wifi running and couldn't adjust controls which got a little terrifying.

Plugged the cable back in and mined litecoinpool for 6 days with no issues in eco mode and fan at 15%

Currently mining litecoinpool in balanced mode for the last day with no issues. Avg 120 Mh/S

Fan set at 30%, miner temp 68.15, mcu temp 55.05, have the unit sitting on a $5 laptop fan plugged into the USB port

Tried some other coins and pools, but keep returning to litecoinpool 'cos I like their dashboard layout

Verdict: having a blast with my new cool toy! Thanks!

[jstefanop]

Just to add to the miner going offline reports: My Apollo went offline after what may have been exactly 6 days of hashing.  I had connected it to wifi about 2 or 3 days ago and removed the ethernet cable.  The wireless interface appears  to have lost its IP address, and reconnected the ethernet cable did not lead to a DHCP lease.  Power cycling the Apollo brought everything back online.  How would I go about connecting to the shell to get a log file?  I am using the pre-loaded 4gb card at the moment.

Is it possible in the current software version to run a full node with an SD card of sufficient capacity?

Yea this is a known issue, most likely the wifi driver crashed and when that happens only a reboot recovers it. Next version will most likely have some sort of reboot script to check for basic internet outages and stuff like this will happen auto.

[jstefanop]

Latest reports and observations after a couple weeks of tinkering:

Got the wifi working, but I couldn't get a hashrate above 65 Mh/S no matter what mode I tried.

Might be something on the provider end, wifi generally sucks in our house anyway...

Also had the dashboard freeze up with the wifi running and couldn't adjust controls which got a little terrifying.

Plugged the cable back in and mined litecoinpool for 6 days with no issues in eco mode and fan at 15%

Currently mining litecoinpool in balanced mode for the last day with no issues. Avg 120 Mh/S

Fan set at 30%, miner temp 68.15, mcu temp 55.05, have the unit sitting on a $5 laptop fan plugged into the USB port

Tried some other coins and pools, but keep returning to litecoinpool 'cos I like their dashboard layout

Verdict: having a blast with my new cool toy! Thanks!

Yea, if your wifi is bad it was most likely dropping packets so shares were not reaching the pool, hence the lower hash rate.

Thanks for the rest of the feedback! What do you mean by the laptop fan plugged into the USB port?

[whiteogre]

Just to add to the miner going offline reports: My Apollo went offline after what may have been exactly 6 days of hashing.  I had connected it to wifi about 2 or 3 days ago and removed the ethernet cable.  The wireless interface appears  to have lost its IP address, and reconnected the ethernet cable did not lead to a DHCP lease.  Power cycling the Apollo brought everything back online.  How would I go about connecting to the shell to get a log file?  I am using the pre-loaded 4gb card at the moment.

You can open a ssh connection to get a shell using "futurebit" as both username and password. The only logfile that may provide some answers is /var/log/syslog as the bfgminer process has no file based logging. However, depending on how that syslog file is being rotated, it may no longer contain any relevant information.

Is it possible in the current software version to run a full node with an SD card of sufficient capacity?

The binary needed for a full node isn't provided by default. With the right tools, it's still possible to compile it yourself and get it running but I haven't checked how much memory would also be required if every setting is minimized. The default settings appear to have caches of 450 MB + 300 MB. The MCU has only 256 MB ram and about half of that is already being used. As for storing the blockchain, most likely using a separate USB stick would be the better approach as that way any updates of the SD card image wouldn't require fetching the blockchain again.

[jstefanop]

Is it possible in the current software version to run a full node with an SD card of sufficient capacity?

The binary needed for a full node isn't provided by default. With the right tools, it's still possible to compile it yourself and get it running but I haven't checked how much memory would also be required if every setting is minimized. The default settings appear to have caches of 450 MB + 300 MB. The MCU has only 256 MB ram and about half of that is already being used. As for storing the blockchain, most likely using a separate USB stick would be the better approach as that way any updates of the SD card image wouldn't require fetching the blockchain again.

Yes we have internal builds with full node running, but we still have a lot of work to do before its stable. There are a lot of system level changes that need to be done to keep the full node + webui + miner backend stable, plus tweaks on the node itself to run on this hardware efficiently.

Plan is still on to have full node + LN + wallet functionality done before Q1 this year.

FYI also hope to have an update to the image complete by end of next week with lots of bug fixes/improvements. Just got back from holiday break and some serious downtime I needed so getting back into he swing of things.