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

[crypto_curious]

Maybe wait till it stops synching and see if it starts mining, CPU might be overloaded

Thanks! I'll also inspect the wiring harness for any wires that may have disconnected or snapped during shipment--another user suggested that.

Weeeeeell...same issue. I stopped the node (thus removing the load on CPU) and restarted the miner(s). No change--solid red light on FULL but STANDARD hashes away in Eco fine.

Will wait for blockchain to fully sync (90% currently) and retry all the rebooting steps.

I can't see any loose wires or anything, so if there's no progress after full sync, I guess it'll have to be returned and swapped out for a new FULL?

You did not follow my advice.
I suggested leaving the full unit alone, do not connect anything to it.
Just put full unit on the table, freshly flashed SD card, connect power and Internet, configure pool, wait for node to start syncing and miner to start mining. Its not mining? Its damaged and you must RMA, or investigate this unit until you find the fault. Leave standard unit out if this troubleshooting procedure, your standard USB miner is fully operational.

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[brain brain]

Maybe wait till it stops synching and see if it starts mining, CPU might be overloaded

Thanks! I'll also inspect the wiring harness for any wires that may have disconnected or snapped during shipment--another user suggested that.

Weeeeeell...same issue. I stopped the node (thus removing the load on CPU) and restarted the miner(s). No change--solid red light on FULL but STANDARD hashes away in Eco fine.

Will wait for blockchain to fully sync (90% currently) and retry all the rebooting steps.

I can't see any loose wires or anything, so if there's no progress after full sync, I guess it'll have to be returned and swapped out for a new FULL?

You did not follow my advice.
I suggested leaving the full unit alone, do not connect anything to it.
Just put full unit on the table, freshly flashed SD card, connect power and Internet, configure pool, wait for node to start syncing and miner to start mining. Its not mining? Its damaged and you must RMA, or investigate this unit until you find the fault. Leave standard unit out if this troubleshooting procedure, your standard USB miner is fully operational.

Well of course not, since I posted at "September 21, 2022, 12:52:46 PM" and replies to my post do not include yours.
I've investigated the unit. What my troubleshooting HAS shown might be helpful to others--as I stated in my post moving the SBC from one miner to the other did two things...

1) caused the miner it is installed in to also NOT mine
2) show a SIGNIFICANT hardware error rate (min 20% max 60%) of the miner that it had been installed in

So, if I were a dev or working on the HW side, I'd be VERY VERY curious why my product was disintegrating itself.
Miner 1 (original FULL) did not hash and originally held the SBC
Miner 2 (original STANDARD) did hash but now when hosting the SBC does not hash, all the while Miner 1 is now hashing but averaging a HUGE hardware error rate

This might be an example of what happens when QC is extended to your buyers and not fully done in house?

[crypto_curious]

You did not follow my advice.
I suggested leaving the full unit alone, do not connect anything to it.

Well of course not, since I posted at "September 21, 2022, 12:52:46 PM" and replies to my post do not include yours.

I replied to you in second Apollo thread Official FutureBit Apollo BTC Software/Image and Support thread, on September 21, 2022, 02:46:26 PM. Because you posted same issue in BOTH topics.

1) caused the miner it is installed in to also NOT mine
2) show a SIGNIFICANT hardware error rate (min 20% max 60%) of the miner that it had been installed in

So you fixed it and its mining now? Full unit, with nothing else connected, is back to work, and blockchain is synchronizing, yes/no? If yes, what was broken?

So, if I were a dev or working on the HW side, I'd be VERY VERY curious why my product was disintegrating itself.

Nothing is disintegrating.
As far as I know, it works like this:
Miner has 44 ASIC cores. If one of them is underperforming, for example half of hashes is incorrect, you are losing half of one core out of 44 cores, effectively 1/88th of the hashrate. And your miner will be 1.1% slower than other perfect miner. But dashboard will show scary 50% HW error rate! You don't need to worry about it as long as pool registers hashrate as expected, a couple of percent variation between units is normal.

AFAIK, 100% error rate in the dashboard means ONE CORE out of
Miner 1 (original FULL) did not hash and originally held the SBC
Miner 2 (original STANDARD) did hash but now when hosting the SBC does not hash, all the while Miner 1 is now hashing but averaging a HUGE hardware error rate

What is SBC? You swapped or modified some hardware and forgot to mention? I don't follow, stop mixing full and standard unit again, you were working on full unit issue which is now fixed, its mining and syncing blockchains, yes/no? If yes, then problem solved, move to next problem, but do not mix everything together.

This might be an example of what happens when QC is extended to your buyers and not fully done in house?

I am not a seller. To my understanding, your miner is working again, and standard unit is also working, so you have 2/2 working units. yes/no? Please explain in detail what was broken and what you fixed, because your post lack details needed before I address what you wrote.

[brain brain]

Thank you for your questions as they directed me in troubleshooting.

What is SBC? You swapped or modified some hardware and forgot to mention? I don't follow, stop mixing full and standard unit again, you were working on full unit issue which is now fixed, its mining and syncing blockchains, yes/no? If yes, then problem solved, move to next problem, but do not mix everything together.

SBC, single board computer (what makes the FULL model a FULL model). To test the miner, as suggested by others in this thread, I moved the SBC to the working STANDARD unit and now that unit does not mine also. The original one which had not been mining now does, except at a very high HW error rate.

I am not a seller. To my understanding, your miner is working again, and standard unit is also working, so you have 2/2 working units. yes/no? Please explain in detail what was broken and what you fixed, because your post lack details needed before I address what you wrote.

I understand you are not the seller. That comment was not directed at you. I am interested in hearing from someone who had a similar experience helping, or someone who knows a possible solution. The issue clearly lies within the SBC.

I have contacted FutureBit via my order email and will await their reply.

[n0nce]

The original one which had not been mining now does, except at a very high HW error rate.

I suggest in a thread with 24 pages to use the search function.
The forum's own search is not great, but https://ninjastic.space/search would have helped with this question.

~snip~

Regarding the error rate, there have been multiple reports and multiple replies in this thread. I highly recommend ninjastic search, since you can enter the topic ID and a search term. You could even filter by author and only get posts by jstefanop.
https://ninjastic.space/search?content=error&topic_id=5340015

In short, as long as your hashrate in the pool's dashboard looks fine, everything's fine. It's overreported, basically - if it says 50% error rate, it doesn't mean the whole machine only has 50% of the expected hashpower, but it's just one of the cores in one of the 44 ASIC chips that has such a high error rate, which is within spec / normal error margins.
Something like that.

does anyone know why one hashboard has a lot more errors than the rest?

This is higher than normal usually its around 23%

A few units display abnormally high error but this is mostly a display issue. If you hashrate is where it should be (which it is for your unit) you're fine.

As for the rest, you shall probably wait for a reply from Futurebit instead of disassembling both of your units right away; I'm not sure your warranty and everything will remain after such procedures.

I'd just reflash the microSD and if issues persist & there's nothing obvious / external (like badly plugged in power connectors), RMA.

[crypto_curious]

Thank you for your questions as they directed me in troubleshooting.

What is SBC? You swapped or modified some hardware and forgot to mention? I don't follow, stop mixing full and standard unit again, you were working on full unit issue which is now fixed, its mining and syncing blockchains, yes/no? If yes, then problem solved, move to next problem, but do not mix everything together.

SBC, single board computer (what makes the FULL model a FULL model). To test the miner, as suggested by others in this thread, I moved the SBC to the working STANDARD unit and now that unit does not mine also. The original one which had not been mining now does, except at a very high HW error rate.

I am not a seller. To my understanding, your miner is working again, and standard unit is also working, so you have 2/2 working units. yes/no? Please explain in detail what was broken and what you fixed, because your post lack details needed before I address what you wrote.

I understand you are not the seller. That comment was not directed at you. I am interested in hearing from someone who had a similar experience helping, or someone who knows a possible solution. The issue clearly lies within the SBC.

I have contacted FutureBit via my order email and will await their reply.

Great, all is clear now what has happened. As n0nce said, please be careful not do damage anything else so you don't lose any warranty.
So you have both standard miners mining OK via USB cable, one perfect one and one with some HW errors. But HW errors themselves are not such a worry.
But you determined your Orange Pi from Full Unit is not mining, with whatever miner board connected to its back, you tried two miners. That's not good. Board is online, bitcoind syncing, but not mining with the board connected by GPIO. Right?
I know there are two SD card images to download, for old batch boards and new ones. Which SD card image did you try? What batch is your miner, a new one?

[brain brain]

Thanks, all. Took 4x reflashes with lots of reboots between, but all mining now. I'm keeping it on ECO mode just to see how long they'll mine without any big issues. So far 18 hours without any issues.

Great, all is clear now what has happened. As n0nce said, please be careful not do damage anything else so you don't lose any warranty.
So you have both standard miners mining OK via USB cable, one perfect one and one with some HW errors. But HW errors themselves are not such a worry.
But you determined your Orange Pi from Full Unit is not mining, with whatever miner board connected to its back, you tried two miners. That's not good. Board is online, bitcoind syncing, but not mining with the board connected by GPIO. Right?
I know there are two SD card images to download, for old batch boards and new ones. Which SD card image did you try? What batch is your miner, a new one?

I used the new SD card image as mine was batch 4 (build sometime in July 2022).

[crypto_curious]

4 reflashes? You may have faulty SD card then. Inspect dmesg log for errors.
Glad it finally worked

[n0nce]

4 reflashes? You may have faulty SD card then.

Highly doubt that; they ship a brand-new industrial microSD. It's possible that @brain brain just used the wrong image in one of the 4 attempts and / or plugged the card too quickly and / or messed up the wiring when playing around with swapping hashboards and controllers, etc. etc. etc...

Hardware:

• Orange Pi 4 (Rockchip RK3399, 6 cores, 64-bit; 4GB DDR4 RAM).
• 1TB Kingston NV1 NVMe SSD.
• 16GB SanDisk Industrial microSD card.
• Hashboard with 44 ASIC chips and beefy heatsink + industrial fan.

'Industrial' is actually not just a buzzword here; it is pretty legit.

Many users are also worried about the longevity of microSD cards compared to laminated paper or metal seed backups. I agree that these are safer than an SD card as they're more resistant to water, dust, radiation, heat and cold, as well as even fire (if using metal).
Foundation does use an SD card from SanDisk's 'industrial' lineup. It seems these are much more temperature resistant than other models, so you could bury them outside and stuff like this without worries.

They can work in temperatures ranging from -40°F to 185°F for extended periods of time.

So for my metric friends, this is from -40°C to 85°C. Operating temperatures; so it can be used outside in most places of the world at most times of the year, which is great!

[crypto_curious]

4 reflashes? You may have faulty SD card then.

Highly doubt that; they ship a brand-new industrial microSD. It's possible that @brain brain just used the wrong image in one of the 4 attempts and / or plugged the card too quickly and / or messed up the wiring when playing around with swapping hashboards and controllers, etc. etc. etc...

Yes this is very likely
Or he mispasted mining URL, if I remember it correctly, URL and mining address must be pasted perfectly with http://, stratum+tcp:// or whatnot. Without this miner process is crashing and miner is just not mining.

Back to microSD/SD cards: Even cheap chinese SD cards last years and years for me, some Raspberry Pis with random ebay or whatever SD cards have been up for 5 or more years for me and not a single issue.

[KingTin]

Hi guys, thinking to grab one myself. I wonder what is the most suitable and quiet power supply for this mining unit? I remember reading a post about the power unit that comes with it may not be the best for return as well?
Not that I am looking to make big bucks with this, but I live in an apartment and a quiet miner with reasonable hash rate would be great.

[nullama]

Hi guys, thinking to grab one myself. I wonder what is the most suitable and quiet power supply for this mining unit? I remember reading a post about the power unit that comes with it may not be the best for return as well?
Not that I am looking to make big bucks with this, but I live in an apartment and a quiet miner with reasonable hash rate would be great.

If you don't care about spending a bit, grab a Corsair RMX Series (2021), RM750x. It can provide up to 750 Watt, but most importantly, it can provide up to 300W completely silent. The fan won't move at all if your keep the power below 300W, which is more than enough for the Apollo.



I would also recommend grabbing a Noctua Fan to put on top of the apollo to minimize noise even further.

[btctotoro]

Hello All,
Been running my apollo full unit for about 4 months now.  I turned it on yesterday and it is making a fairly loud humming sound now.  Definitely different than before.  It does not seem to be the fan as the sound is made even when the fan isn't running.  Anyone else run into this ?  Worried something might be wrong inside.  I booted it up and its been running for about 15 mins now.  Everything seems to work just fine when using the OS, mining, the node...just pretty annoying sound no way this can be in a room with me when sleeping.

[heslo]

Hello All,
Been running my apollo full unit for about 4 months now.  I turned it on yesterday and it is making a fairly loud humming sound now.  Definitely different than before.  It does not seem to be the fan as the sound is made even when the fan isn't running.  Anyone else run into this ?  Worried something might be wrong inside.  I booted it up and its been running for about 15 mins now.  Everything seems to work just fine when using the OS, mining, the node...just pretty annoying sound no way this can be in a room with me when sleeping.

It will be the fan on the SBC. They've been known for crapping out. Contact support and they should be able to sort you out with a replacement

[mocapapa]

I can't start a new thread so I'm replying to this one, sorry.

I received my appolo today, opened the box and entered the password "futurebit123" into the login screen, but I just can't log in. I can't see if the keyboard is capitalized or not, so I'm not sure.

Also, at first the screen didn't appear so I had to connect remotely, but now I can't access it remotely.
At first the machine was getting the ip address via dhcp, but now it doesn't get it either.
I just get the login screen.

Please help.

[mocapapa]

I can't start a new thread so I'm replying to this one, sorry.

I received my appolo today, opened the box and entered the password "futurebit123" into the login screen, but I just can't log in. I can't see if the keyboard is capitalized or not, so I'm not sure.

Also, at first the screen didn't appear so I had to connect remotely, but now I can't access it remotely.
At first the machine was getting the ip address via dhcp, but now it doesn't get it either.
I just get the login screen.

Please help.

I followed the instructions to download the xz file and attempted to write it to my micro-SD.
However, etcher gave me an error message "corrupted". What should I do?

[MrMik]

The mostly blue SBC board model on the site looks awfully lot like an Orange Pi 4. If it is, does it come with the onboard microphone still attached?

Sure looks like the microphone is on there.



With enough magnification it looks like I could de-solder it off the board, but I might be kidding myself.



Does anyone know if the Orange Pi 4 would complain in some way or other if it was freed of the microphone?

[MrMik]

Does anyone know if the Orange Pi 4 would complain in some way or other if it was freed of the microphone?

Polli has taken one for the team...

I'll let you know if I find that something is not working any longer.

[MrMik]

I can't start a new thread so I'm replying to this one, sorry.

I received my appolo today, opened the box and entered the password "futurebit123" into the login screen, but I just can't log in. I can't see if the keyboard is capitalized or not, so I'm not sure.

Also, at first the screen didn't appear so I had to connect remotely, but now I can't access it remotely.
At first the machine was getting the ip address via dhcp, but now it doesn't get it either.
I just get the login screen.

Please help.

I followed the instructions to download the xz file and attempted to write it to my micro-SD.
However, etcher gave me an error message "corrupted". What should I do?

I'm not sure if this is the best thread to ask this question.

Maybe better this one, and it might have your answer somewhere in it already.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5340015.0

[MrMik]

Does anyone know if the Orange Pi 4 would complain in some way or other if it was freed of the microphone?

Polli has taken one for the team...

I'll let you know if I find that something is not working any longer.

I'm happy to announce that Polli is happily hashing without the microphone on the Orange Pi 4 !