Official FutureBit Apollo II/BTC Software/Image and Support thread

[philipma1957]

Well it worked for about 15 minutes, got a pool started and soon the red light went solid and I could no longer access the device, the IP address no longer shows up.
Found the IP address after rebooting and now refuses to connect
- after hooking up a monitor and keyboard, nothing to see here, but the miner suddenly starts mining again and I can access it again. Its still in eco mode, Node syncing is about half way finished now, Did something overheat or is the dynamic IP address a problem?

Locked up again after maybe one hour, cannot access with a monitor or through the IP address, no mining is happening on the website and the the blinking redlight and heat from the unit means its doing something, (using electricity).

They system might lock up  a few times while its syncing, it should resolve by itself. Node uses up 100% of system resources, mining has priority though and should not stop. If you want to avoid these issues I would recommend you stop mining for ~24 hours while the node completes most of the syncing.

If your in a hot environment it could be that the CPU is overheating and shutting down. While we did extensive tests during syncing and running in ECO mode, it would overheat in certain situations while in Balanced/Turbo.

My node is synched.
I am running eco
my hash board temp is 54c
but my cpu temp is always over 70c
mostly closer to 75c

so on the cpu temp is long term 75c okay what to watch for on cpu temps.
80c?
85c?

If I recall ARM cpu can run hot 🥵 safely.

oh room temp is 75-80f

[peetee]

I fired up my Apollo-BTC the other day and noticed that it's sending out a DNS query every five seconds for raw.githubusercontent.com.

Any insight into what it's after up there?

[cryptofreshman]

Full Node finally finished the blockchain sync. Any guess as to when we will need to upgrade the 500gb to something bigger?

[philipma1957]

Full Node finally finished the blockchain sync. Any guess as to when we will need to upgrade the 500gb to something bigger?

2 years

[heslo]

Received my unit today and all set up now, very easy to do. Didn't connect any monitor, just used the web interface and went flawlessly. Syncing blockchain now, just on 50% done so that's sweet. Only issue is that I'm mining but no stats are showing up on the dashboard. My pool recognises that I'm mining but nothing on the miner GUI front end. I've left it for about 20 minutes so far and still nothing. Any ideas?

EDIT: It's now been hours and still mining isn't registering on the GUI

[kano]

Full Node finally finished the blockchain sync. Any guess as to when we will need to upgrade the 500gb to something bigger?

2 years

Full Node disk space additions without address index and also ignoring blocks/index:

Dec 6.1G
Jan 6.4G
Feb 5.8G
Mar 6.4G
Apr 5.8G
May 6.4G

So going on 6.1G a month and a 512GiB drive holds 460GB in disk space (and ignoring anything else there)
and current is 383G, the answer would appear to be 12.6 months - if you let it fill up and didn't care about it failing due to that.

Just hope there's way less transactions due to a lower BTC price, and I guess then it may make it to 2 years?

[crypto_curious]

How to connect 2 Apollo to one computer (hashboard mode only, no controller)? Using -comport /dev/ttyACM0 and -comport /dev/ttyACM1 in one apollo-miner command line doesn't work, also running 2x apollo-miner instances with two separate ACM defined doesn't seem to work, both miner pick up orders from one apollo-miner instance.

[crypto_curious]

Excellent, thanks! Downloading and running binary was very easy on normal Linux system.

That being said however, I have quite good Raspberry Pi 2, quad core ARM, which is still running strong, and that's where I want to run Apollo. I don't have Raspberry Pi 4. I could not find source code for your apollo-miner binary. Will there be code released for apollo-miner binary, so I can compile it myself and run on Raspberry Pi 2?
Hardware says:

Code:

OS: Raspbian GNU/Linux 10 (buster) armv7l
Host: Raspberry Pi 2 Model B Rev 1.1

But I also have plenty of Pi zeros, would love to run miner on that too.

Yea thats on the list, should have binaries for 32bit arm next week.

Any updates on this? Would like to run on Raspberry Pi 2 and Raspberry Zero W, any updates would be much appreciated.

Will try and get this compiled by end of the week, trying to push out the critical bug updates for the main unit first.

Thanks. Will be waiting patiently for updates for this. 

[jbrow8]

Well it worked for about 15 minutes, got a pool started and soon the red light went solid and I could no longer access the device, the IP address no longer shows up.
Found the IP address after rebooting and now refuses to connect
- after hooking up a monitor and keyboard, nothing to see here, but the miner suddenly starts mining again and I can access it again. Its still in eco mode, Node syncing is about half way finished now, Did something overheat or is the dynamic IP address a problem?

Locked up again after maybe one hour, cannot access with a monitor or through the IP address, no mining is happening on the website and the the blinking redlight and heat from the unit means its doing something, (using electricity).

They system might lock up  a few times while its syncing, it should resolve by itself. Node uses up 100% of system resources, mining has priority though and should not stop. If you want to avoid these issues I would recommend you stop mining for ~24 hours while the node completes most of the syncing.

If your in a hot environment it could be that the CPU is overheating and shutting down. While we did extensive tests during syncing and running in ECO mode, it would overheat in certain situations while in Balanced/Turbo.

After turning the unit on, the solid red light stays on, its not in a hot environment. I cannot access with a monitor or through an IP address any longer either. I thought about maybe flashing the sd card. no software to do that though

[philipma1957]

Full Node finally finished the blockchain sync. Any guess as to when we will need to upgrade the 500gb to something bigger?

2 years

Full Node disk space additions without address index and also ignoring blocks/index:

Dec 6.1G
Jan 6.4G
Feb 5.8G
Mar 6.4G
Apr 5.8G
May 6.4G

So going on 6.1G a month and a 512GiB drive holds 460GB in disk space (and ignoring anything else there)
and current is 383G, the answer would appear to be 12.6 months - if you let it fill up and didn't care about it failing due to that.

Just hope there's way less transactions due to a lower BTC price, and I guess then it may make it to 2 years?

wrong ratios

395 against 500

you have 105 left over

so 105/6.4 = 16.4 months or 1 year and 4 months.

or 105/5.8= 18.1 months of 1 year and 6 months

Either way too short and my guess of 2 year is also too short in the sense that nodes support network and need to run for decades not months.

Frankly I complained about this to the builder in a post here or on the other thread.



I would say the 500gb choice was wrong and I did say it.

In fact I will be this  cloning the crucial 500gb to a crucial 1tb this week.

I will be making a YouTube video and linking the effort of cloning the drive in my review thread.

Sometimes things are done stupid cheap ('Pennywise pound foolish')

I have found that the drive is too small and that the feet are too short.
My YouTube video shows the larger feet I added.

[jbrow8]

Well it worked for about 15 minutes, got a pool started and soon the red light went solid and I could no longer access the device, the IP address no longer shows up.
Found the IP address after rebooting and now refuses to connect
- after hooking up a monitor and keyboard, nothing to see here, but the miner suddenly starts mining again and I can access it again. Its still in eco mode, Node syncing is about half way finished now, Did something overheat or is the dynamic IP address a problem?

Locked up again after maybe one hour, cannot access with a monitor or through the IP address, no mining is happening on the website and the the blinking redlight and heat from the unit means its doing something, (using electricity).

They system might lock up  a few times while its syncing, it should resolve by itself. Node uses up 100% of system resources, mining has priority though and should not stop. If you want to avoid these issues I would recommend you stop mining for ~24 hours while the node completes most of the syncing.

If your in a hot environment it could be that the CPU is overheating and shutting down. While we did extensive tests during syncing and running in ECO mode, it would overheat in certain situations while in Balanced/Turbo.

My node is synched.
I am running eco
my hash board temp is 54c
but my cpu temp is always over 70c
mostly closer to 75c

so on the cpu temp is long term 75c okay what to watch for on cpu temps.
80c?
85c?

If I recall ARM cpu can run hot 🥵 safely.

oh room temp is 75-80f

Finally managed to get back into system, the node did not sync after another 30 minutes. I did manage to get the mining running again at 2 Th/s, its been running about 15 minutes now. The sync message just states waiting it may take 15 minutes, when before the sync menu was there and the graphics show 10/31 and actively syncing.

[kano]

Full Node finally finished the blockchain sync. Any guess as to when we will need to upgrade the 500gb to something bigger?

2 years

Full Node disk space additions without address index and also ignoring blocks/index:

Dec 6.1G
Jan 6.4G
Feb 5.8G
Mar 6.4G
Apr 5.8G
May 6.4G

So going on 6.1G a month and a 512GiB drive holds 460GB in disk space (and ignoring anything else there)
and current is 383G, the answer would appear to be 12.6 months - if you let it fill up and didn't care about it failing due to that.

Just hope there's way less transactions due to a lower BTC price, and I guess then it may make it to 2 years?

wrong ratios

395 against 500

you have 105 left over

...

Firstly, yep I wrote 512 when I should have written 500
You posted this device: https://www.crucial.com/ssd/p2/CT500P2SSD8
Which is 500GB, but that's 500*1000*1000*1000 but all OSes will read this as 465G = 465*1024*1024*1024 or less.

But unless that 465G of storage has nothing else on it but the .bitcoin directory, it will lose a few G so probably 460G in OS terms.
My months stats I stated above are the same OS G

Login to your linux box on it and type:

Code:

df -h

and you'll see how big it is and how much is used.

I wonder what that 395 number you say is? Disk G as any computer will say? (1024*1024*1024)

If it is disk G, then you lose another 1.5 months off my number.
So down to 11 months

Edit: and yes in my post I wrote GB and GiB back to front in the 'So going...' line

[Philipma1957cellphone]

Full Node finally finished the blockchain sync. Any guess as to when we will need to upgrade the 500gb to something bigger?

2 years

Full Node disk space additions without address index and also ignoring blocks/index:

Dec 6.1G
Jan 6.4G
Feb 5.8G
Mar 6.4G
Apr 5.8G
May 6.4G

So going on 6.1G a month and a 512GiB drive holds 460GB in disk space (and ignoring anything else there)
and current is 383G, the answer would appear to be 12.6 months - if you let it fill up and didn't care about it failing due to that.

Just hope there's way less transactions due to a lower BTC price, and I guess then it may make it to 2 years?

wrong ratios

395 against 500

you have 105 left over

...

Firstly, yep I wrote 512 when I should have written 500
You posted this device: https://www.crucial.com/ssd/p2/CT500P2SSD8
Which is 500GB, but that's 500*1000*1000*1000 but all OSes will read this as 465G = 465*1024*1024*1024 or less.

But unless that 465G of storage has nothing else on it but the .bitcoin directory, it will lose a few G so probably 460G in OS terms.
My months stats I stated above are the same OS G

Login to your linux box on it and type:

Code:

df -h

and you'll see how big it is and how much is used.

I wonder what that 395 number you say is? Disk G as any computer will say? (1024*1024*1024)

If it is disk G, then you lose another 1.5 months off my number.
So down to 11 months

Edit: and yes in my post I wrote GB and GiB back to front in the 'So going...' line

It reads in the node guidelines that it has used 395 of 500

In a storage report it reads say 345 of 457

Not at the site so no access to exact numbers

But 395 of 500 or 345 of 457 are close.

These get us in the 14 to 18 month zone using your 5.8 to 6.4 numbers

Whether it is 11 or 12 or 14 or 18 months even two years it is too fast.

I Consider the 500gb option okay if you may not want to run the node.

But I want to run the node so I am going to clone the 500 to a 1tb and not worry.

Parts are on the way.

[kano]

Then, someone needs to login to their device that is fully synced and type

Code:

df -h

which on linux gives the correct numbers.

Then divide the left over by 6.1 to get the correct number of months.

The point of these devices is to run a full node, so people should know how long to expect it will last.

[jstefanop]

I fired up my Apollo-BTC the other day and noticed that it's sending out a DNS query every five seconds for raw.githubusercontent.com.

Any insight into what it's after up there?

This is our rushed update mechanism for initial release. Well update this to something else down the line (hopefully git won't ban us in the meantime 

[jstefanop]

How to connect 2 Apollo to one computer (hashboard mode only, no controller)? Using -comport /dev/ttyACM0 and -comport /dev/ttyACM1 in one apollo-miner command line doesn't work, also running 2x apollo-miner instances with two separate ACM defined doesn't seem to work, both miner pick up orders from one apollo-miner instance.

You need to run a separate instance for each. Just edit the comport to the correct one of each board, you should only have one -comport in your line otherwise it will just pick up the first.

[cryptofreshman]

Full Node finally finished the blockchain sync. Any guess as to when we will need to upgrade the 500gb to something bigger?

2 years

Full Node disk space additions without address index and also ignoring blocks/index:

Dec 6.1G
Jan 6.4G
Feb 5.8G
Mar 6.4G
Apr 5.8G
May 6.4G

So going on 6.1G a month and a 512GiB drive holds 460GB in disk space (and ignoring anything else there)
and current is 383G, the answer would appear to be 12.6 months - if you let it fill up and didn't care about it failing due to that.

Just hope there's way less transactions due to a lower BTC price, and I guess then it may make it to 2 years?

wrong ratios

395 against 500

you have 105 left over

so 105/6.4 = 16.4 months or 1 year and 4 months.

or 105/5.8= 18.1 months of 1 year and 6 months

Either way too short and my guess of 2 year is also too short in the sense that nodes support network and need to run for decades not months.

Frankly I complained about this to the builder in a post here or on the other thread.



I would say the 500gb choice was wrong and I did say it.

In fact I will be this  cloning the crucial 500gb to a crucial 1tb this week.

I will be making a YouTube video and linking the effort of cloning the drive in my review thread.

Sometimes things are done stupid cheap ('Pennywise pound foolish')

I have found that the drive is too small and that the feet are too short.
My YouTube video shows the larger feet I added.

As soon as you publish this video please let me know so I can purchase a bigger drive and do the same I’d rather just get it out of the way as soon as possible.

[Philipma1957cellphone]

Full Node finally finished the blockchain sync. Any guess as to when we will need to upgrade the 500gb to something bigger?

2 years

Full Node disk space additions without address index and also ignoring blocks/index:

Dec 6.1G
Jan 6.4G
Feb 5.8G
Mar 6.4G
Apr 5.8G
May 6.4G

So going on 6.1G a month and a 512GiB drive holds 460GB in disk space (and ignoring anything else there)
and current is 383G, the answer would appear to be 12.6 months - if you let it fill up and didn't care about it failing due to that.

Just hope there's way less transactions due to a lower BTC price, and I guess then it may make it to 2 years?

wrong ratios

395 against 500

you have 105 left over

so 105/6.4 = 16.4 months or 1 year and 4 months.

or 105/5.8= 18.1 months of 1 year and 6 months

Either way too short and my guess of 2 year is also too short in the sense that nodes support network and need to run for decades not months.

Frankly I complained about this to the builder in a post here or on the other thread.



I would say the 500gb choice was wrong and I did say it.

In fact I will be this  cloning the crucial 500gb to a crucial 1tb this week.

I will be making a YouTube video and linking the effort of cloning the drive in my review thread.

Sometimes things are done stupid cheap ('Pennywise pound foolish')

I have found that the drive is too small and that the feet are too short.
My YouTube video shows the larger feet I added.

As soon as you publish this video please let me know so I can purchase a bigger drive and do the same I’d rather just get it out of the way as soon as possible.

parts are due on friday

Should be done by Monday at worst

[philipma1957]

the reading for storage is

374:filled
457:total

gives 83 : left

so 81/5.8 = 14.3 months..  edit math typo. 83/5.8 = 14.3 months
and 81/6.4= 12.9 months  edit math typo. 83/6.4 = 12.9 months 
which is too short.



The ltc/doge model  done by same builder was long lasting I had one for more than 3 years and sold it. It still works

this should be a 3-5 year life model with out insane speed modes. maybe 6-7 years

and will need a new ssd in 12.9-14.3 months.

waiting on parts to clone the drive.

they are due on Thursday

this ssd
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B089DNM8LR/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?

this cloner
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08LPDTZGQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?


I will give away 2 cloned  1tb ssd's assuming  I can clone easy peasy















please ignore for now
rules
First you enter the give away

and show proof of purchase if and only if you win.

1 to the euro shipper
1 to the usa shipper

[crypto_curious]

How to connect 2 Apollo to one computer (hashboard mode only, no controller)? Using -comport /dev/ttyACM0 and -comport /dev/ttyACM1 in one apollo-miner command line doesn't work, also running 2x apollo-miner instances with two separate ACM defined doesn't seem to work, both miner pick up orders from one apollo-miner instance.

You need to run a separate instance for each. Just edit the comport to the correct one of each board, you should only have one -comport in your line otherwise it will just pick up the first.

Thanks, I've tried that but one instance with one comport declaration was making both miners blink red LED in sync. And they were not mining. Anyway, I will try this again next week once I am back where they are located. Also will wait for new version of the software for Raspberry Pi 2 and Zero to try it there.