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

[SpeedForceGN]

A note for anyone looking for another PPLNS pool. The apollo is a fun piece of hardware and works great, but better to verify than just blindly trust! After testing the releases of the miner binaries ( 64 bit v. 1, 32/64 bit v.2) and showing they can submit high enough difficulty shares to find a block, Kano's Pool will now allow them on the PPLNS side and not just solo.

Is it activated now on kano's pool ?

Yep, I've got my three pointed to the PPLNS side there.

What is your daily payout per machine?

[n0nce]

What is your daily payout per machine?

Kano is PPLNS. No payout until the pool finds a block. But then it'll be a much larger payout than usual.
At the moment, the last block found by https://kano.is/ is roughly half a year ago.

What payout method does the pool use?

We use PPLNS (Pay Per Last N Shares)

PPLNS means that when a block is found, the block reward is shared among the last N shares that miners sent to the pool, up to when the block was found.
The N value the pool uses is 3 days.

You can also mine Solo here if you wish, see Help->Solo for details here

How much of each block does the pool reward?

Transaction fees are included in the miner reward.
Pool fee is 0.9% of the total.

When are payments sent out?

The block 'Status' must first reach '+101 Confirms' on the Blocks page, and then is flagged as 'Matured', before the reward is distributed.
The block reward transaction is created manually some time before the block matures, and sent out automatically a minute after the block matures.

The payout may use a low fee transaction, so we will confirm it with the next block we find after the transaction is sent out
if it isn't confirmed before that by some other network block.
You may not see the transaction in your wallet before the first confirm.

What's a shift?

When your miner sends shares to the pool, the shares are not stored individually, but rather summarised into shifts.
Shifts average ~50 minutes in length.
Aproximately every 30s, the pool generates new work and sends that to all the miners.
The pool also sends new work every time a block is found on the Bitcoin network.
A shift summarises all the shares submitted to the pool for 100 work changes.
However, when we find pool blocks, the current shift ends at the work in which the block was found
and a new shift starts.
A pool restart will also end the current shift and start a new shift.
A network Difficulty change will also end the current shift and start a new shift.

[SpeedForceGN]

What is your daily payout per machine?

Kano is PPLNS. No payout until the pool finds a block. But then it'll be a much larger payout than usual.
At the moment, the last block found by https://kano.is/ is roughly half a year ago.

What payout method does the pool use?

We use PPLNS (Pay Per Last N Shares)

PPLNS means that when a block is found, the block reward is shared among the last N shares that miners sent to the pool, up to when the block was found.
The N value the pool uses is 3 days.

You can also mine Solo here if you wish, see Help->Solo for details here

How much of each block does the pool reward?

Transaction fees are included in the miner reward.
Pool fee is 0.9% of the total.

When are payments sent out?

The block 'Status' must first reach '+101 Confirms' on the Blocks page, and then is flagged as 'Matured', before the reward is distributed.
The block reward transaction is created manually some time before the block matures, and sent out automatically a minute after the block matures.

The payout may use a low fee transaction, so we will confirm it with the next block we find after the transaction is sent out
if it isn't confirmed before that by some other network block.
You may not see the transaction in your wallet before the first confirm.

What's a shift?

When your miner sends shares to the pool, the shares are not stored individually, but rather summarised into shifts.
Shifts average ~50 minutes in length.
Aproximately every 30s, the pool generates new work and sends that to all the miners.
The pool also sends new work every time a block is found on the Bitcoin network.
A shift summarises all the shares submitted to the pool for 100 work changes.
However, when we find pool blocks, the current shift ends at the work in which the block was found
and a new shift starts.
A pool restart will also end the current shift and start a new shift.
A network Difficulty change will also end the current shift and start a new shift.

Thank you

[Woe_ter]

Hello everyone! So I just bought a 850W PSU to run my full node system on Turbo. But dont find the way to connect the system and turn it on. Anyone doing this already ? Thanks

I used the Scotch (b)locks on pin 4 and pin 5(block which normally goes onto the motherboard of the PC.
[img width=100 heigth=100]https://imgur.com/7w2tdPk[/img]

[img width=100 heigth=100]https://imgur.com/HCYzd00[/img]


Hope it helps.

[Ale_theMiner]

As I am setting up my Apollo Miner I get stuck at the "Initial Set Up Wizard". I have filled in the information needed but after pressing the "save" button a red box pops up in the upper left part of the browser right behind the wizard. The red box states "Internal Error". Additionally the Wizard stays stuck with a loading circle right where the "save" button was.

[n0nce]

Hello everyone! So I just bought a 850W PSU to run my full node system on Turbo. But dont find the way to connect the system and turn it on. Anyone doing this already ? Thanks

I used the Scotch (b)locks on pin 4 and pin 5(block which normally goes onto the motherboard of the PC.



Hope it helps.

quote for images

[nullama]

I see that the source code is not available for this miner.

From the binaries published, I don't see any mac build.

Will there be a build for mac?, in particular for the Mac Mini M1.

It natively runs arm64 and with Rosetta-2 it can emulate x86_64 architecture.

I wonder if either the x86_64 or the aarch64 Linux builds can somehow be run in the mac directly.

[wavelengthsf]

What is your daily payout per machine?

I lose 75 cents a day per machine. You need to get super lucky and have cheap power, neither of which I have.

[Joelnolan]

Hi All, One of my Apollo fans makes a loud/annoying rattling noise. Any recommendations on how to fix?

Cheers!

[heslo]

Hi All, One of my Apollo fans makes a loud/annoying rattling noise. Any recommendations on how to fix?

Cheers!

Common issue; contact support and they'll help you out

[navigo429]

Question about "DISK /MEDIA/NVME USAGE". I'm getting close to the 457.45 GB limit. Are there instructions for adding more space? Thanks!

[Joelnolan]

Hi All, One of my Apollo fans makes a loud/annoying rattling noise. Any recommendations on how to fix?

Cheers!

Common issue; contact support and they'll help you out

Thanks! I did and they already got back to me. I appreciate the reply.

[heslo]

Hi All, One of my Apollo fans makes a loud/annoying rattling noise. Any recommendations on how to fix?

Cheers!

Common issue; contact support and they'll help you out

Thanks! I did and they already got back to me. I appreciate the reply.

Too easy mate

[Donaldjc]

I was attempting to rearrange power cords and the connection on one of my power supplies loosened just enough to interrupt power to  one of my Appolo BTC units.  I reseated the plug in the power supply and restarted both of my units using the dashboard.  At present only the standard unit is mining (has a slow flashing light) and the other unit has a solid red light and is listed as inactive on the dashboard.  I'm not sure if I need to do anything or just wait.  Help!  Any advice?

[okwasmo]

I'm mining fine, but after the node got to about 80% complete, I seem to have lost power to the nvme.
I pulled it and put it in another computer to make sure it wasn't fried, and all was good, could even see data.
Definitely NOT being detected in Linux, as I connected with Putty and checked.
But still, after putting it back in the miner, no go.
Any ideas?

Thanks,

Dave

[OsoOkun]

Hello All

I just go my first Apollo BTC standard I don't think had I really read the description I don't think would have gotten it however, I was able to get it up and operating in a few hours using the scripts found at
https://github.com/jstefanop/Apollo-Miner-Binaries/releases/

I tried to download the SD Image but the link is not working. So can someone point me in the right direction? I'm new to mining but it also seems to be a waste to have all this power and only have one miner, it errors and disconnects if I try to add a second pool.  Is it even possible?  I can't seem to find any software that is less than 5yrs old, I'm using Ubuntu 20.04 nothing seems to work.

So Any help would be appreciated



 

[nullama]

Hello All

I just go my first Apollo BTC standard I don't think had I really read the description I don't think would have gotten it however, I was able to get it up and operating in a few hours using the scripts found at
https://github.com/jstefanop/Apollo-Miner-Binaries/releases/

I tried to download the SD Image but the link is not working. So can someone point me in the right direction? I'm new to mining but it also seems to be a waste to have all this power and only have one miner, it errors and disconnects if I try to add a second pool.  Is it even possible?  I can't seem to find any software that is less than 5yrs old, I'm using Ubuntu 20.04 nothing seems to work.

So Any help would be appreciated

If you've got the Apollo BTC Standard (instead of the full), then the only thing you need is the binary for Linux (Apollo-Miner_linux-x86_64). You can run that from your Ubuntu 20.04 machine, and it will mine with your USB connected Apollo miner.

Based on the help output from the binary, it looks like it only supports mining from one pool:

pool:
  -host <hostname>          Set pool hostname (default: [stratum.slushpool.com])
  -port <port>              Set pool port     (default: [3333])
  -user <username>          Set pool username (default: [jstefanop.apollodefault])
  -pswd <password>          Set pool password (default: [1])

This is the only binary that can be used with this miner. It's not open sourced, so AFAIK no other miner software can be used with the Apollo BTC.

[OsoOkun]

Thanks, I was hoping that wasn't the answer.  I just got my first pay  .79 mining BCH yay!!

[apurgert]

With so many of us now using an Apollo for mining BTC and the fact that the box has its own node, has anyone taken the time to do a write up for us "slower" old guys that might want to take full advantage of the functions of the box as in use the node and the box together to solo mine?

Is it even possible to set up the Apollo BTC and Node to mine into itself in solo mode?

I'm mining to CKPool but wondering if I have the ability to use the Apollo to mine in my old world and not have to go to a pool.

A write-up or cheat sheet would be really welcome!

ml

I know this post is a couple months old, but in case the OP is still needing this (or others who might be looking to do the same), I was able to get my full-node unit mining my own node.  I didn't do a 'write-up' of this, and it does require some basic / intermediate Linux knowledge, but in a nutshell:

I installed ckpool - source package found here (they don't supply pre-built binaries): (https://bitbucket.org/ckolivas/ckpool/get/b8f668524835.zip) and set up a simple pool in standalone mode (without ckdb support), with my local full node (127.0.0.1:8332) as the btcd, and 127.0.0.1:3333 as the address for miners to connect.  Once I got bitcoin.conf (from the node) and ckpool.conf (from ckpool) set up so that everything was working as expected, I modified the script that starts up the node, to also start up the ckpool process.

Someone else may know a solution to this problem, but I had to replace the bitcoind binary with an earlier version 0.19.1 - this is because version 0.20.0 and later which removed the coinbaseaux flag from the GBT response, and ckpool doesn't play nice without it there (even though it isn't a required flag ...).

Then in the ApolloUI, I set up my pool as:  stratum+tcp://127.0.0.1:3333 - User and pass: <same as rpcuser and rpcpassword from bitcoin.conf>.

Everything comes up on its own when I (re)start the device -- and if you don't change the RPC username / pass from the defaults, it also remains fully integrated with the UI, though obviously you don't see anything about ckpool (since the node_start script modification I made launches ckpool in a screen session (screen -dmS ckpool), like the node and miner services do, I can pull up the running ckpool output via (as root): screen -x ckpool).  If you do change the rpcuser and rpcpassword from default, it breaks the UI - but at some point I'll probably take the time to figure out how to change the values the UI uses to connect so that I can change the RPC credentials.

Screenshots of results:

https://www.filehosting.org/file/details/976274/miner.jpg

https://www.filehosting.org/file/details/976275/node.jpg

@jstefanop : this unit has always had ~40% hardware errors since I first started it up 12/27, regardless which mining pool I used (tried ckpool, nicehash, slush, etc).  The hashrate is as advertised, so I haven't been too worried about it - but is this a cause for concern?

To fix the UI, the password needs to be updated in /opt/apolloapi/src/store/api/node/nodeStats.js as well

[SpeedForceGN]

Anyone know or have an update for software update and or lightning network addon?