Official FutureBit Apollo LTC Image and Support thread

[HagssFIN]

@Turocik
There are also server power supplies which you can use..

An example --> https://www.parallelminer.com/product/hp-750-watt-gpu-mining-power-supply-16-ports-with-10-cables/

This is a good HP power supply and only costs 35 bucks.

[1714018236]

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[1714018236]

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[Turocik]

thx, looking good

[DaveF]

So sometime overnight mine locked up. I could get to the GUI but nothing "worked"
I could SSH in but after entering the password nothing.
Did a full power cycle when I came in and I could ping it but not much more. Burned a new SD card and now it's happy again.

-Dave

[hnelson01]

Ok image is complete...I need about 5-10 testers that are at your apollos tonight and have time to do an update and let it run over night just in case I missed something. Shoot me a PM and ill send download link.

I put the new image on card last night and Apollo started up perfectly with no issues.  It has been running for approximately 14 hours with everything on default/auto mode and all seems normal.  There is a difference in the low fan speed on auto.  Previously it ran at 950 rpm at its low speed and now it runs at 1120-1170 rpm at low speed and seems to fluctuate in that range, not really settling on a constant speed.  This causes a fan noise that I would describe as "fluttering" for lack of a better term.  The fan at idle produces more noise with the increased rpm, but I need to leave it on auto due to its location so it will cool down when needed. It is borderline "quiet" enough for its current den location.  It does maintain the same temperatures as it did previously(64-66 degrees C). It is mining normally at about 101.58 Mh/s on the ViaBtc pool.  I would like to mention that the Apollo with the previous image was very stable for me also with only 3 disconnects in a month and 2 of those were pool issues. The fan/temp issues I have noted, other than perhaps the "fluctuation" at low speed, are my own due to the location needed to hard wire it to the LAN, not technical associated with the new image.

[stef942]

for me mining since 12 hours with beta 2 in eco mode fans at 15%, all working fine.
i can now edit,move,delete pools without issues   
 

[jstefanop]

Here we go guys...new image release finally out!

Link: https://s3.amazonaws.com/apolloimage/apollo_image_1-29.img.zip

Alternate (will only be up for a few days): https://we.tl/t-Z0cS3MqxZn

MD5: a81f9830453dfbd493b94dd00787bb9c
SHA256: 937ccb99b2b58c8c3ea113b5391ca7d8dba7f10aafc4261bfa707f51a6da6918

This image has LOTS of bug fixes and stability improvements. Its recommenced that EVERYONE upgrade even if your not having any issues.

Upgrade Procedure:

We have not implemented an in-OS upgrade yet to keep issues to a minimum (this will probably change in the next update), so you will be required to remove your SD card and re-image it

-If you dont want to manually setup your configuration again, go to your miner dashboard before you upgrade, go to settings, and download the backup text file that saves all your configurations.
-Shutdown your Apollo and remove its SD card
-Download the new Apollo image linked above and make sure you UNZIP it (always a good idea to check MD5 checksum in case download was corrupted...make sure checksum is run on the .img file NOT the downloaded .img.zip)
-Use Etcher to re-image your SD card with the updated image file
-Insert the imaged SD card back into your Apollo...you know have a fresh updated image which is ready to be reconfigured (if you were using wifi you need to plug into ethernet again for initial setup)
-If your using your backup configuration file, you only need to put in a dashboard password in the initial setup screen, then just go to settings and upload the configuration file with the "Restore" Button


Full ChangeLog


-system kernel updated to 4.19 for fixes and reliability
-lowered CPU aggressiveness to keep MCU cooler for better reliability
-enabled low level hardware watchdog, this fixes the very rare issue some people were reporting and any system failure or hardware monitor failure will now cause a system reboot and prevent unit from overheating
-reduced SD card writes from hardware monitor to increase SD card life
-you can now manually set fan to a minimum of 5%
-you can now edit pools directly instead of deleting and re-adding
-added settings option to enable local bfgminer API access
-stratum pool difficulty is now displayed in dashboard instead of discarded shares
-OS will now automatically expand SD card to maximum size on first boot
-Dashboard now shows bfgminer log output if there are connection issues
-Miner Yellow LED now blinks rapidly after hardware initialization is successfully complete and waiting for bfgminer startup (ie if there is an external internet connection issue, or bad pool/credentials issue miner will just keep blinking yellow rapidly)
-multiple dashboard visual fixes
-lots of hardware monitor bug fixes


The focus of this update was system stability and refinement of the miner subsystem. I think the miner is in a pretty stable state for now, and we are going to switch focus to getting you the cool feature updates next. First step is to get a full node running on this hardware, and hope to have that for you guys by next month.

[philipma1957]

I have mine running for 2-3 hours seems okay  eco mode and 25% manual fan

[wttbs]

nice update ! good thing to see that development keeps working on this awesome product.

[AltScope]

nice, flashing now 

[drakedave]

Here we go guys...new image release finally out! ...

Great thank you so much jstefanop for all the work !
Here is a feature request for next update :

For example, I'd like to have the possibility to set the miner on balanced mode from 07:00PM to 07:00 AM and on another mode for another amount of time set in hours.

What do you think ?

[roudaille]

v0.0.2 mining for 3h in Balanced mode + 10% fan (1635 RPM): 60°C/miner 33°C/MCU in a 13°C room.
No error, great work.

[roudaille]

@jstefanop, does Full Node feature will be UPnP ready? or will we have to do port forwarding?
Thanks

[crypto_curious]

Downloading from link provided, 500 KB/s... (I have 75 Mbps Fibre if you ask)
Is there chance for torrent or something? Torrent could be even hosted in Apollo itself and distributed to people. So no need for AWS.

[psycodad]

Downloading from link provided, 500 KB/s... (I have 75 Mbps Fibre if you ask)
Is there chance for torrent or something? Torrent could be even hosted in Apollo itself and distributed to people. So no need for AWS.

I could download it just right now with 25MB/s in less than a minute from home.
You must be holding it wrong  (or your providers pipe to amazon is a tad slow).

[whiteogre]

Is there chance for torrent or something? Torrent could be even hosted in Apollo itself and distributed to people. So no need for AWS.

Considering how unstable the wifi link of the Apollo can be, I really wouldn't suggest enabling such feature at least by default.

[VictorGT]

Here we go guys...new image release finally out! ...

Great thank you so much jstefanop for all the work !
Here is a feature request for next update :

For example, I'd like to have the possibility to set the miner on balanced mode from 07:00PM to 07:00 AM and on another mode for another amount of time set in hours.

What do you think ?

This would be very nice... By night (cheaper electricity) FULL MODE, by day ECO mode... Please jstefanop, think about it...

[almartins]

Here we go guys...new image release finally out! ...

Great thank you so much jstefanop for all the work !
Here is a feature request for next update :

For example, I'd like to have the possibility to set the miner on balanced mode from 07:00PM to 07:00 AM and on another mode for another amount of time set in hours.

What do you think ?

This would be very nice... By night (cheaper electricity) FULL MODE, by day ECO mode... Please jstefanop, think about it...

For me too  will be a very nice update ... please jstefanop.

[jstefanop]

Here we go guys...new image release finally out! ...

Great thank you so much jstefanop for all the work !
Here is a feature request for next update :

For example, I'd like to have the possibility to set the miner on balanced mode from 07:00PM to 07:00 AM and on another mode for another amount of time set in hours.

What do you think ?

This would be very nice... By night (cheaper electricity) FULL MODE, by day ECO mode... Please jstefanop, think about it...

For me too  will be a very nice update ... please jstefanop.

Ive added it to my list

[jstefanop]

Downloading from link provided, 500 KB/s... (I have 75 Mbps Fibre if you ask)
Is there chance for torrent or something? Torrent could be even hosted in Apollo itself and distributed to people. So no need for AWS.

Did you try the wetransfer link? Ill see if I can put it up on mega or something as well.

[whiteogre]

-Download the new Apollo image linked above and make sure you UNZIP it (always a good idea to check MD5 checksum in case download was corrupted...make sure checksum is run on the .img file NOT the downloaded .img.zip)
-Use Etcher to re-image your SD card with the updated image file

Etcher has supported already for few years extracting the image from the zip on the fly as long as the zip contains only one file, like is the case here. Therefore, there shouldn't be any real reason to unzip first. I also think you should take the checksums from the zip file itself since that's essentially the release you are distributing. At least I see it so that the checksum can be used to validate that the release is indeed what it should be and not something that has been replaced with a botnet addon. That's why the checksum should be of the distributed file instead of a file within it. Zip by itself will anyway create an internal checksum of the file and extracting it will fail if the file has been somehow corrupted during transfer. If you'd want to go the pro way then signing the release file with gpg would be the way to go. 

Few comments regarding the release itself, less than previously thanks to fixes:

• the login screen password input field still doesn't grab keyboard focus automatically on page load
• serial-getty@ttyS0.service is still active and constantly trying to start and failing to do so
• /var/log.hdd could use a cleanup before release
• documentation for front led blink signals is missing from the first post, I've seen at least slow yellow, fast yellow, slow green and irregular red