Official FutureBit Apollo LTC Image and Support thread

[A_Renaissance_Man]

Noob question (first attempt at mining):

Hi everybody -

I purchased a FutureBit Apollo and Corsair RM1000x power supply. What cable do I use to connect the two:

Is the PCIe 8 pin (6+2) cable the right one? What do I do with the two times two surplus connecting pins?

Thanks for helping.

[1714956745]

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[1714956745]

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[1714956745]

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[1714956745]

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[philipma1957]

Noob question (first attempt at mining):

Hi everybody -

I purchased a FutureBit Apollo and Corsair RM1000x power supply. What cable do I use to connect the two:

Is the PCIe 8 pin (6+2) cable the right one? What do I do with the two times two surplus connecting pins?

Thanks for helping.

Fold them back and Tie them off. With a zip tie or Velcro wrap.

[A_Renaissance_Man]

Thanks. The powersupply does not start. I read somewhere that I have to jump some pins of an adapter. Any ideas?

[jstefanop]

Thanks. The powersupply does not start. I read somewhere that I have to jump some pins of an adapter. Any ideas?

Yes just search online for ATX PSU Pin jumper. Easiest way is to just paper clip the green wire to any black wire  (if its color coded, if not use the pinout pics that are online),

[A_Renaissance_Man]

Can something bad happen if I connect the wrong pins with the paper clip?

[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!

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?

Bought this cheap 'laptop cooling fan' off ebay. Link below. 5 volts powered by a USB plug. Doesn't push much air but every little bit helps.
Miner temp is currently 66.44 and the mcu is 51.84 in a heated den so that fan's doing something!
2 days in balanced mode, Apollo fan at 30% still hashing 120 Mh/S

https://www.ebay.com/itm/14-1-15-4-Laptop-Notebook-USB-LED-Light-Air-Cooling-Big-Fan-Cooler-Pad/332938425099?_trkparms=aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20160908105057%26meid%3D7c10238888274c6f986469674c60d4bb%26pid%3D100675%26rk%3D5%26rkt%3D15%26sd%3D351932237156%26itm%3D332938425099&_trksid=p2481888.c100675.m4236&_trkparms=pageci%3A3bf85246-154f-11e9-ab94-74dbd180054b%7Cparentrq%3A3ae8de601680aadb34652179fff7968e%7Ciid%3A1

[crypto_curious]

Can something bad happen if I connect the wrong pins with the paper clip?

Why would you do that? Just watch closely pinout of your PSU and connect two wires. You can't be wrong about it. Just pay attention and you will be fine.

[AltScope]

Can something bad happen if I connect the wrong pins with the paper clip?

Why would you do that? Just watch closely pinout of your PSU and connect two wires. You can't be wrong about it. Just pay attention and you will be fine.

make sure you've got the connector oriented the same way as the diagram your looking at, that's about the only way I can imagine cocking it up.

[jstefanop]

Can something bad happen if I connect the wrong pins with the paper clip?

If your worried about it just buy one of these:

https://www.amazon.com/CRJ-24-Pin-Supply-Jumper-Bridge/dp/B01N8Q0TOE/

[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?

Bought this cheap 'laptop cooling fan' off ebay. Link below. 5 volts powered by a USB plug. Doesn't push much air but every little bit helps.
Miner temp is currently 66.44 and the mcu is 51.84 in a heated den so that fan's doing something!
2 days in balanced mode, Apollo fan at 30% still hashing 120 Mh/S

https://www.ebay.com/itm/14-1-15-4-Laptop-Notebook-USB-LED-Light-Air-Cooling-Big-Fan-Cooler-Pad/332938425099?_trkparms=aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20160908105057%26meid%3D7c10238888274c6f986469674c60d4bb%26pid%3D100675%26rk%3D5%26rkt%3D15%26sd%3D351932237156%26itm%3D332938425099&_trksid=p2481888.c100675.m4236&_trkparms=pageci%3A3bf85246-154f-11e9-ab94-74dbd180054b%7Cparentrq%3A3ae8de601680aadb34652179fff7968e%7Ciid%3A1

Got ya...yea thats obviously keeping the MCU nice and cool.

[dwood443]

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.

Forgive my naivete but would running a full node make it possible to solo mine? I've been mining on TBDice but lack of responses from the pool owner and many complaining about lost blocks I'd rather work on my own if I could.

[A_Renaissance_Man]

Another noob question: I managed to set the jumper and started the Futurebit yesterday. It is flashing red/green quite frantically.

Should this turn to green only or this correct? I am asking becuase I can't log in with http://futurebit.local.

[stef942]

it's correct
log with ip

[philipma1957]

Can something bad happen if I connect the wrong pins with the paper clip?

If your worried about it just buy one of these:

https://www.amazon.com/CRJ-24-Pin-Supply-Jumper-Bridge/dp/B01N8Q0TOE/

or buy this one

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DXN85LW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01__o00_s00?

[crypto_curious]

Hello all,

My apollo is not showing dashboard any more and it's not mining.
Ethernet port have both LEDs on.
When turned on from cold, Apollo is flashing orange for 10 seconds or so, and then flashing green and stays like that. No IP via DHCP registered, Apollo is not on the network.

Any advice? My guess it's the SD card?

[AltScope]

Hello all,

My apollo is not showing dashboard any more and it's not mining.
Ethernet port have both LEDs on.
When turned on from cold, Apollo is flashing orange for 10 seconds or so, and then flashing green and stays like that. No IP via DHCP registered, Apollo is not on the network.

Any advice? My guess it's the SD card?

that's what I'd try first mate re-flash the image to the current sd card or a new one

I've had issues on my pi's where an unclean shutdown just knackers the image

[whiteogre]

I think I've solved the reason why the fan rpm doesn't sound stable even when the fan is manually set to some specific speed and have a solution to fix it.

The fan is being controlled with software generated pwm as there doesn't appear to be any hw pwm capable pins unused on the board. The software solution needs to keep a stable timing with the pwm in order for the fan to keep the same rpm. At the same time, the MCU can have a frequency of several values between 240 MHz and 1.20 GHz. By default, this works so that if there's zero load then the frequency will eventually drop to 240 MHz and when there's any load spike then the frequency jumps directly to 1.20 GHz no matter how small the actual cpu demand was. I used the following command to monitor the frequency and it's clear that it's constantly jumping between minimum and maximum even when nobody is using the dashboard:

Code:

while true ; do echo "$(date) - $(sudo cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy0/cpuinfo_cur_freq)" ; sleep 1 ; done

The constant cpu frequency variation makes it difficult for the software pwm to maintain exact rpm. It's close but still the variation is audible. Looking at the frequency usage stats with the "cpufreq-info" command, we can also see that the cpu is spending much time at maximum frequency:

Code:

240 MHz:42.72%, 480 MHz:24.41%, 648 MHz:0.00%, 816 MHz:0.00%, 912 MHz:0.00%, 960 MHz:0.00%, 1.01 GHz:0.01%, 1.10 GHz:0.01%, 1.20 GHz:32.85%  (2229569)

The solution itself is rather simple. The default behaviour is to react instantly to any processing power demand and bump the frequency to maximum. However, other behaviours are also available and switching to the one called "conservative" results in slower changes in the frequency is processing power is needed. It turns out that the demand with the current software content is so low in reality that with the "conservative" setting the frequency rarely increases resulting in the software pwm staying stable and the audible changes in the manually set fan rpm going away.

First, without saving the change, the behaviour (frequency governor) can by changed with:

Code:

sudo cpufreq-set -g conservative

If that doesn't help then the change can be reverted back with:

Code:

sudo cpufreq-set -g ondemand

Making the change permanent requires modifying /etc/default/cpufrequtils and replacing "GOVERNOR=ondemand" with "GOVERNOR=conservative". The other positive side effect is that since the higher frequencies are no longer used that often, the MCU temperature also stays a little bit lower.

With the changed governor, "cpufreq-info" now shows (after a stats reset):

Code:

cpufreq stats: 240 MHz:99.21%, 480 MHz:0.30%, 648 MHz:0.07%, 816 MHz:0.08%, 912 MHz:0.05%, 960 MHz:0.05%, 1.01 GHz:0.03%, 1.10 GHz:0.03%, 1.20 GHz:0.17%  (18182)

[jstefanop]

I think I've solved the reason why the fan rpm doesn't sound stable even when the fan is manually set to some specific speed and have a solution to fix it.

The fan is being controlled with software generated pwm as there doesn't appear to be any hw pwm capable pins unused on the board. The software solution needs to keep a stable timing with the pwm in order for the fan to keep the same rpm. At the same time, the MCU can have a frequency of several values between 240 MHz and 1.20 GHz. By default, this works so that if there's zero load then the frequency will eventually drop to 240 MHz and when there's any load spike then the frequency jumps directly to 1.20 GHz no matter how small the actual cpu demand was. I used the following command to monitor the frequency and it's clear that it's constantly jumping between minimum and maximum even when nobody is using the dashboard:

Code:

while true ; do echo "$(date) - $(sudo cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy0/cpuinfo_cur_freq)" ; sleep 1 ; done

The constant cpu frequency variation makes it difficult for the software pwm to maintain exact rpm. It's close but still the variation is audible. Looking at the frequency usage stats with the "cpufreq-info" command, we can also see that the cpu is spending much time at maximum frequency:

Code:

240 MHz:42.72%, 480 MHz:24.41%, 648 MHz:0.00%, 816 MHz:0.00%, 912 MHz:0.00%, 960 MHz:0.00%, 1.01 GHz:0.01%, 1.10 GHz:0.01%, 1.20 GHz:32.85%  (2229569)

The solution itself is rather simple. The default behaviour is to react instantly to any processing power demand and bump the frequency to maximum. However, other behaviours are also available and switching to the one called "conservative" results in slower changes in the frequency is processing power is needed. It turns out that the demand with the current software content is so low in reality that with the "conservative" setting the frequency rarely increases resulting in the software pwm staying stable and the audible changes in the manually set fan rpm going away.

First, without saving the change, the behaviour (frequency governor) can by changed with:

Code:

sudo cpufreq-set -g conservative

If that doesn't help then the change can be reverted back with:

Code:

sudo cpufreq-set -g ondemand

Making the change permanent requires modifying /etc/default/cpufrequtils and replacing "GOVERNOR=ondemand" with "GOVERNOR=conservative". The other positive side effect is that since the higher frequencies are no longer used that often, the MCU temperature also stays a little bit lower.

With the changed governor, "cpufreq-info" now shows (after a stats reset):

Code:

cpufreq stats: 240 MHz:99.21%, 480 MHz:0.30%, 648 MHz:0.07%, 816 MHz:0.08%, 912 MHz:0.05%, 960 MHz:0.05%, 1.01 GHz:0.03%, 1.10 GHz:0.03%, 1.20 GHz:0.17%  (18182)

Thanks for this! This was known and our internal build has the frequency set to a fixed 800mhz permanently (since thats all the MCU needs right now), and also sets the voltage state to the lower value, but I like your solution even better if it keeps CPU frequency at 240 for a large percentage of time.

[Harbingold]

I have a new Apollo. It works great for a few days then one of two things happen.
1. The fan stops completely and start smelling. I have to unplug and plug back in. Glad I?m around when that has happened because I fear it was heating up.
2. Fan speed jumps to full speed. Can?t log in to reboot. Have to unplug etc.
These happen regularly.
Glad I?ve been around in each case. Thoughts?

[jstefanop]

I have a new Apollo. It works great for a few days then one of two things happen.
1. The fan stops completely and start smelling. I have to unplug and plug back in. Glad I?m around when that has happened because I fear it was heating up.
2. Fan speed jumps to full speed. Can?t log in to reboot. Have to unplug etc.
These happen regularly.
Glad I?ve been around in each case. Thoughts?

What mode are you running the miner in?

This is probably related to the MCU lockup issue we know about that can happen in a rare occasion. It should be fixed in the next update we are releasing soon.