Announcing the FutureBit Apollo BTC - A Full Node/Mining Platform for the Home!

[Wikiz]

Mine shipped yesterday I hope to deliver by next week

[OgNasty]

Mine shipped yesterday I hope to deliver by next week

Congrats on your purchase.  Mine are still going strong and haven't had any problems.  Mining away nearly silently. 

I do wonder if I should be pushing them more, since the temps seem to be very low and the fans are rarely having to spin up to cool down the units.  I have 2 of them on a 1300 watt PSU, so it seems like there's nothing keeping me from turning them up.  I'd be curious if anyone has taken them to their limits and what the effect on their efficiency is.  I think efficiency is probably the most important thing with these but if they can keep their efficiency and go higher, might as well right?

[Wikiz]

Mine arrived yesterday

The most quiet/efficient/cheap? miner I've used so far. I've tried the 3 "default" modes and i'm pretty sure I saw more than 3.5TH on "Turbo" mode, fantastic And with a rasp pi and all the cables hidden behind it's like a tiny cube in my room.


Edit: Quick question. I'm using the 'official' 200w psu. In the sh it says to put the power value at 75 max with this psu.

How much TH would be with 100? Which psu should I use for that? (I mean I could use the corsair sf450 but im pretty sure that 450W 80+ would be overkill)

[nullama]

Mine arrived yesterday

The most quiet/efficient/cheap? miner I've used so far. I've tried the 3 "default" modes and i'm pretty sure I saw more than 3.5TH on "Turbo" mode, fantastic And with a rasp pi and all the cables hidden behind it's like a tiny cube in my room.


Edit: Quick question. I'm using the 'official' 200w psu. In the sh it says to put the power value at 75 max with this psu.

How much TH would be with 100? Which psu should I use for that? (I mean I could use the corsair sf450 but im pretty sure that 450W 80+ would be overkill)

It will vary from device to device a bit but I'm getting 1.3TH/s with 30% of the power (even lower than ECO).

If you use a PSU with a higher rating it will run its fan slower so you will get it even quieter than the official PSU, which now generates most of the noise in my setup. I'm waiting for a new, more quiet PSU to replace it to get an almost completely silent mining setup. This device is awesome for home mining.

[Wikiz]

Mine arrived yesterday

The most quiet/efficient/cheap? miner I've used so far. I've tried the 3 "default" modes and i'm pretty sure I saw more than 3.5TH on "Turbo" mode, fantastic And with a rasp pi and all the cables hidden behind it's like a tiny cube in my room.


Edit: Quick question. I'm using the 'official' 200w psu. In the sh it says to put the power value at 75 max with this psu.

How much TH would be with 100? Which psu should I use for that? (I mean I could use the corsair sf450 but im pretty sure that 450W 80+ would be overkill)

It will vary from device to device a bit but I'm getting 1.3TH/s with 30% of the power (even lower than ECO).

If you use a PSU with a higher rating it will run its fan slower so you will get it even quieter than the official PSU, which now generates most of the noise in my setup. I'm waiting for a new, more quiet PSU to replace it to get an almost completely silent mining setup. This device is awesome for home mining.

Thats awesome dude, about replacing the official psu, any 80+ 400-700w would be more than enough yup, but how will u tunning the parameters? The % power (up to 100%) and the second one?

[LeftLane10Under]

Mine arrived yesterday

The most quiet/efficient/cheap? miner I've used so far. I've tried the 3 "default" modes and i'm pretty sure I saw more than 3.5TH on "Turbo" mode, fantastic And with a rasp pi and all the cables hidden behind it's like a tiny cube in my room.


Edit: Quick question. I'm using the 'official' 200w psu. In the sh it says to put the power value at 75 max with this psu.

How much TH would be with 100? Which psu should I use for that? (I mean I could use the corsair sf450 but im pretty sure that 450W 80+ would be overkill)

FYI the stock psu is more than adequate to properly run in turbo mode. I asked earlier in this thread if you want the answer from the source.

The only real reason I see to use a higher output PSU is to go beyond the turbo mode to maximize hash rate. I ran 4 units like this for about a day or two and while the units did perform flawlessly at their peak performance, the small room I had them in got ridiculously hot and obviously the fans were much louder. The amount of heat they generated made me very uncomfortable and you void your warranty doing this.

[nullama]

~snip~
Thats awesome dude, about replacing the official psu, any 80+ 400-700w would be more than enough yup, but how will u tunning the parameters? The % power (up to 100%) and the second one?

I ended up getting a 750W PSU which doesn't even run a fan until 300W, so my PSU is now completely silent. Game changer for silent mining with this device.

To tune the parameters first decide what you're after, for example the noise level of the fans you want to tolerate, or a specific hash rate you want to achieve. I've managed to get up to about 4TH/s for a few minutes but the noise of the fan and the heat produced was absurd. Personally I think this device is perfect for efficient silent mining at home instead of trying to get a massive hash rate with loud noise and heat.

The fans will stabilize at their running speed in a few seconds, or couple of minutes of running. The hash rate will oscillate a bit more, so you might want to wait a bit longer to see the actual hash rate. Running it overnight should give you a nice stable hashrate reading.

Here are the relevant options and their ranges:

#      board power - this controls power/voltage for the board in %. It ranges from 30-95. See presets and tuning guide below
#      board frequency - this controls the hashboard's frequency. It ranges from 30-60

I would start first with the board power(brd_ocp) and set it to a level with acceptable fan noise. Once that's done, note the current hashrate. Then experiment with different board frequencies(osc) and see how it performs.

As a reference, here are the values of the presets:

# Preset Values:
#       ECO:               -brd_ocp 48  -osc 30
#       BALANCED:   -brd_ocp 60  -osc 40
#       TURBO:          -brd_ocp 75  -osc 50

For an absolutely silent mining operation (fan running at 1k RPM or so, basically inaudible compared to the quiet 2k RPM or so of ECO) set brd_ocp and osc to 30. You'll get about 1.3TH/s with no noise. If you want to go higher and keep the noise down, you can add more external fans running at very low RPMs. I'm in the process of designing this solution.

Here's the "official" tuning guide from the Apollo binaries documentation(start_apollo.sh file):

# Tuning Guide:
#
#       The above three modes should be more than enough for most use cases, and it is not recommended to edit these unless you are an expert user and know what you are doing.
#      It is normal for your hashboard to have  up to 5% error rate, this is usually due to one bad chip producing lots of errors and won't affect your overall hashrate.
#       The easiest way to tune your board is to simply increase or decrease the power %. If you see over 5% errors, simply start incrementing the -brd_ocp parameter 1-2 units at a time
#      If you are seeing very low error rate (under 1%), you can start decreasing the power parameter to increase efficiency
#       The software already has per-chip auto-tuning built in, so you should not need to touch the -osc frequency parameter, but you can play with this as well to determine the sweet spot for your board
#       As mentioned above, the max power for standard unit with the included PSU is 75% (200 watts), do not go past this unless you have

[n0nce]

For an absolutely silent mining operation (fan running at 1k RPM or so, basically inaudible compared to the quiet 2k RPM or so of ECO) set brd_ocp and osc to 30. You'll get about 1.3TH/s with no noise. If you want to go higher and keep the noise down, you can add more external fans running at very low RPMs. I'm in the process of designing this solution.

I agree with external fans. My Apollo sits on 4 feet that I cut from some rubber and one fan has been slid underneath and one laid on top. I hardwired both these DC fans to a USB cable that is plugged in into one of the Full Package's USB ports, so they run at roughly half speed (5V of their 12V max rating) and it hashes 3TH/s pretty silently at 200W. It is not inaudible, but it was a very easy quick setup with no software modifications. It's all stock on 'Balanced' mode and the fan adapts itself downwards after adding quiet external fans.

[jedilostone]

Hello

Just received my unit with USB hashboard that requires to be plugged into PC

Is there a way to upgrade hardware for use with Ethernet?

I see the open port on bottom where i believe that board gets plugged in

I'm ok with having it connected to another device but would like to plan in future to have it on its own

Thank you!

[nullama]

Hello

Just received my unit with USB hashboard that requires to be plugged into PC

Is there a way to upgrade hardware for use with Ethernet?

I see the open port on bottom where i believe that board gets plugged in

I'm ok with having it connected to another device but would like to plan in future to have it on its own

Thank you!

There's no plug-n-play upgrade to get a working Ethernet miner, but you can easily DIY one.

You can setup a small device like a Raspberry Pi which has Ethernet to control the miner via a USB cable. You need to get the binary file from here: https://github.com/jstefanop/Apollo-Miner-Binaries/releases

Depending if your Raspberry Pi is running 32 or 64 bits you need to download Apollo-Miner_linux-aarch32.tar.xz or Apollo-Miner_linux-aarch64.tar.xz. That will contain the executable that allows you to control the miner from the Raspberry Pi.

From then on you're able to customize the Raspberry Pi as much as you want. You only need to execute the binary with certain parameters to control the miner. The miner then writes a json file with the current status that you could use to display some information. The official web dashboard, which uses that json file to display a nice interface, is open source and available here: https://github.com/jstefanop/apolloapi

It's basically 2 projects, a data server and a web server. It's made for the official Apollo node hardware so you will have to tinker a bit with it to work with your own device though.

[jedilostone]

Hello

Just received my unit with USB hashboard that requires to be plugged into PC

Is there a way to upgrade hardware for use with Ethernet?

I see the open port on bottom where i believe that board gets plugged in

I'm ok with having it connected to another device but would like to plan in future to have it on its own

Thank you!

There's no plug-n-play upgrade to get a working Ethernet miner, but you can easily DIY one.

You can setup a small device like a Raspberry Pi which has Ethernet to control the miner via a USB cable. You need to get the binary file from here: https://github.com/jstefanop/Apollo-Miner-Binaries/releases

Depending if your Raspberry Pi is running 32 or 64 bits you need to download Apollo-Miner_linux-aarch32.tar.xz or Apollo-Miner_linux-aarch64.tar.xz. That will contain the executable that allows you to control the miner from the Raspberry Pi.

From then on you're able to customize the Raspberry Pi as much as you want. You only need to execute the binary with certain parameters to control the miner. The miner then writes a json file with the current status that you could use to display some information. The official web dashboard, which uses that json file to display a nice interface, is open source and available here: https://github.com/jstefanop/apolloapi

It's basically 2 projects, a data server and a web server. It's made for the official Apollo node hardware so you will have to tinker a bit with it to work with your own device though.

Hi i currently have it connected to a linux machine, where is that json file created? I have it running at moment

Getting that display information would be great

[nullama]

Hi i currently have it connected to a linux machine, where is that json file created? I have it running at moment

Getting that display information would be great

When you run ./apollo-miner it starts sending information to the console, and every few seconds/minutes it will write that information into a json file, which is located in the same directory. The name of this file is apollo-miner.SOME_CHARACTERS_HERE

That file is a json file with all the miner information. You can just parse it yourself and display it however you want. You can also edit the open source web UI to use it with your own hardware, but it's not trivial. You're probably better off just reading the json file.

[jedilostone]

Hi i currently have it connected to a linux machine, where is that json file created? I have it running at moment

Getting that display information would be great

When you run ./apollo-miner it starts sending information to the console, and every few seconds/minutes it will write that information into a json file, which is located in the same directory. The name of this file is apollo-miner.SOME_CHARACTERS_HERE

That file is a json file with all the miner information. You can just parse it yourself and display it however you want. You can also edit the open source web UI to use it with your own hardware, but it's not trivial. You're probably better off just reading the json file.

I have chosen to run under windows for now, thank you for your help with this


Is there any way to properly monitor temps through windows? I'm guessing this information is stored within the json file as well?

[nullama]

I have chosen to run under windows for now, thank you for your help with this


Is there any way to properly monitor temps through windows? I'm guessing this information is stored within the json file as well?

Yeah, you can look up the temperature values from the json file.

Once you locate the json file you'll find the temperature values, like this for example:

   "temperature": {
      "count": 2,
      "min": 0,
      "avr": 25,
      "max": 51
   },

And also per hashboard:

   "slots": {
      "0": {
                        ...
         "temperature": 51,
                        ...
      }
   }

There's a lot of information in the file, including fan speed, like this for example:

   
"fans": {
      "0": {
         "rpm": [
            1316
         ]
      }
   },

And so on. Pretty much anything you would like to know about the miner is there.

You would just need to read the values, and store or display them however you want in Windows. There are countless of options for this.

[Wikiz]

~snip~
Thats awesome dude, about replacing the official psu, any 80+ 400-700w would be more than enough yup, but how will u tunning the parameters? The % power (up to 100%) and the second one?

I ended up getting a 750W PSU which doesn't even run a fan until 300W, so my PSU is now completely silent. Game changer for silent mining with this device.

To tune the parameters first decide what you're after, for example the noise level of the fans you want to tolerate, or a specific hash rate you want to achieve. I've managed to get up to about 4TH/s for a few minutes but the noise of the fan and the heat produced was absurd. Personally I think this device is perfect for efficient silent mining at home instead of trying to get a massive hash rate with loud noise and heat.

The fans will stabilize at their running speed in a few seconds, or couple of minutes of running. The hash rate will oscillate a bit more, so you might want to wait a bit longer to see the actual hash rate. Running it overnight should give you a nice stable hashrate reading.

Here are the relevant options and their ranges:

#      board power - this controls power/voltage for the board in %. It ranges from 30-95. See presets and tuning guide below
#      board frequency - this controls the hashboard's frequency. It ranges from 30-60

I would start first with the board power(brd_ocp) and set it to a level with acceptable fan noise. Once that's done, note the current hashrate. Then experiment with different board frequencies(osc) and see how it performs.

As a reference, here are the values of the presets:

# Preset Values:
#       ECO:               -brd_ocp 48  -osc 30
#       BALANCED:   -brd_ocp 60  -osc 40
#       TURBO:          -brd_ocp 75  -osc 50

For an absolutely silent mining operation (fan running at 1k RPM or so, basically inaudible compared to the quiet 2k RPM or so of ECO) set brd_ocp and osc to 30. You'll get about 1.3TH/s with no noise. If you want to go higher and keep the noise down, you can add more external fans running at very low RPMs. I'm in the process of designing this solution.

Here's the "official" tuning guide from the Apollo binaries documentation(start_apollo.sh file):

# Tuning Guide:
#
#       The above three modes should be more than enough for most use cases, and it is not recommended to edit these unless you are an expert user and know what you are doing.
#      It is normal for your hashboard to have  up to 5% error rate, this is usually due to one bad chip producing lots of errors and won't affect your overall hashrate.
#       The easiest way to tune your board is to simply increase or decrease the power %. If you see over 5% errors, simply start incrementing the -brd_ocp parameter 1-2 units at a time
#      If you are seeing very low error rate (under 1%), you can start decreasing the power parameter to increase efficiency
#       The software already has per-chip auto-tuning built in, so you should not need to touch the -osc frequency parameter, but you can play with this as well to determine the sweet spot for your board
#       As mentioned above, the max power for standard unit with the included PSU is 75% (200 watts), do not go past this unless you have

Thank you Im currently running it 'turbo' mode and power off by night, but now if I manage to run it at 1.3 with no noise, man thats awesome, thanks

[Wikiz]

Just checked my ckpool profile, and at preset turbo mode it judt hit 4.09TH What an amazing machine

[jstefanop]

Hello

Just received my unit with USB hashboard that requires to be plugged into PC

Is there a way to upgrade hardware for use with Ethernet?

I see the open port on bottom where i believe that board gets plugged in

I'm ok with having it connected to another device but would like to plan in future to have it on its own

Thank you!

There's no plug-n-play upgrade to get a working Ethernet miner, but you can easily DIY one.

You can setup a small device like a Raspberry Pi which has Ethernet to control the miner via a USB cable. You need to get the binary file from here: https://github.com/jstefanop/Apollo-Miner-Binaries/releases

Depending if your Raspberry Pi is running 32 or 64 bits you need to download Apollo-Miner_linux-aarch32.tar.xz or Apollo-Miner_linux-aarch64.tar.xz. That will contain the executable that allows you to control the miner from the Raspberry Pi.

From then on you're able to customize the Raspberry Pi as much as you want. You only need to execute the binary with certain parameters to control the miner. The miner then writes a json file with the current status that you could use to display some information. The official web dashboard, which uses that json file to display a nice interface, is open source and available here: https://github.com/jstefanop/apolloapi

It's basically 2 projects, a data server and a web server. It's made for the official Apollo node hardware so you will have to tinker a bit with it to work with your own device though.

Yea you could technically run the whole UI off a rasberry pi (or any ARM SBC with a UART port for that matter), or simply run it off the USB port if you dont want to deal with setting up the internal UART. I should probably post the board connector pinout for anyone that wants to do this. Will probably release a pi image at some point as well (or at least update the installer so its a one step RPI installation).

[n0nce]

Yea you could technically run the whole UI off a rasberry pi (or any ARM SBC with a UART port for that matter), or simply run it off the USB port if you dont want to deal with setting up the internal UART. I should probably post the board connector pinout for anyone that wants to do this. Will probably release a pi image at some point as well (or at least update the installer so its a one step RPI installation).

Board connector pinout would be great! Since I'd like to install my own Linux on the 'full package' but still get that nice web UI.

[jedilostone]

Hello

Just received my unit with USB hashboard that requires to be plugged into PC

Is there a way to upgrade hardware for use with Ethernet?

I see the open port on bottom where i believe that board gets plugged in

I'm ok with having it connected to another device but would like to plan in future to have it on its own

Thank you!

There's no plug-n-play upgrade to get a working Ethernet miner, but you can easily DIY one.

You can setup a small device like a Raspberry Pi which has Ethernet to control the miner via a USB cable. You need to get the binary file from here: https://github.com/jstefanop/Apollo-Miner-Binaries/releases

Depending if your Raspberry Pi is running 32 or 64 bits you need to download Apollo-Miner_linux-aarch32.tar.xz or Apollo-Miner_linux-aarch64.tar.xz. That will contain the executable that allows you to control the miner from the Raspberry Pi.

From then on you're able to customize the Raspberry Pi as much as you want. You only need to execute the binary with certain parameters to control the miner. The miner then writes a json file with the current status that you could use to display some information. The official web dashboard, which uses that json file to display a nice interface, is open source and available here: https://github.com/jstefanop/apolloapi

It's basically 2 projects, a data server and a web server. It's made for the official Apollo node hardware so you will have to tinker a bit with it to work with your own device though.

Yea you could technically run the whole UI off a rasberry pi (or any ARM SBC with a UART port for that matter), or simply run it off the USB port if you dont want to deal with setting up the internal UART. I should probably post the board connector pinout for anyone that wants to do this. Will probably release a pi image at some point as well (or at least update the installer so its a one step RPI installation).

A UI that supports devices connected via USB would be greatly helpful


Also, how many Apollo BTC with usb connectors can you have connected to one PC/Linux host machine? I have one running now and wanted to test with second one upon arrival but unfortunately the usb port on the Apollo device is damaged and looks like i need to send back in for repair  

[jedilostone]

Hello

Does anyone know the proper command for attaching 2 USB board Apollo BTC devices to an Ubuntu linux machine?

Would it look something like this with both "/dev/ttyACM0 /dev/ttyACM1" being the devices connected to PC?


apollo-miner -host "*.pool.org" -port 3333 -user "wallet_address".Apollo -pswd x -comport /dev/ttyACM0 /dev/ttyACM1 -brd_ocp 75  -osc 50 -ao_mode 1