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

[crypto_curious]

dont buy this hardware over a year of empty promises futurebit as a company in new york should say it all. scam central this decive still doesnt do half of what it claimed it was going to do and this guy rolls in over a year later saying he rewrote a 5 year old softare as if java is out of data.

this is a pieced together miner mostly useless to anyone its not more efficient than miners from 2017 do not waste your money. just another crypto company taking advantage of regular people. let us see what happens next.

people paid a premium for a mediocre turn key solution and got a dev kit that doesnt relaly do anything you cant do on your own with a t9+ ($100 with power supply) and an old laptop. these are the companies that are killing crypto do not support futurebit.

What a pile of BS. Show me other home miner, which is quiet, works via USB, draws 100-200W, and fits in my PC case. Futurebit miner ticks all these criteria. Miner is inside a PC, I don't hear it at all with one single fan spinning slowly, other fans in that machine are making more noise.
I can't be more happier with home-friendly Futurebit miner. You keep that Antminer T9+ for yourself, I am not interested to keep 1500 Watts, 76 dB noise jet in my living room

[nullama]

dont buy this hardware over a year of empty promises futurebit as a company in new york should say it all. scam central this decive still doesnt do half of what it claimed it was going to do and this guy rolls in over a year later saying he rewrote a 5 year old softare as if java is out of data.

this is a pieced together miner mostly useless to anyone its not more efficient than miners from 2017 do not waste your money. just another crypto company taking advantage of regular people. let us see what happens next.

people paid a premium for a mediocre turn key solution and got a dev kit that doesnt relaly do anything you cant do on your own with a t9+ ($100 with power supply) and an old laptop. these are the companies that are killing crypto do not support futurebit.

It's certainly a niche market but it's not a scam by any means.

It's a nice looking miner, perfect for home mining as you can set it up to run basically completely silent and still mine at 1 or 2TH/s.

Also it consumes a reasonable amount of energy, so your electricity bill won't be impacted too much.

Sure, an industrial miner will be more efficient, but they're not as polished looking as this one, they consume lots of more energy and they are incredibly noisy.

They are different products for different types of people.

[Polynom42]

When will direct node mining be offered? The full node package would be much more meaningful with mining the own node solo.

[unicornmangle]

They are different products for different types of people.

Well unless you read and write kernel code you have no business mining this should be told to people. Stay strong big farms!

[MrMik]

They are different products for different types of people.

Well unless you read and write kernel code you have no business mining this should be told to people. Stay strong big farms!

Why do you think that is so?

[MrMik]

I have a problem with an nvme drive that came with one of my Apollo Full package units.

I'm wondering it it is worth it trying to fix it or if I should just buy a new one, maybe larger.

The node in my first full package Apollo always worked and it had eventually downloaded the blockchain and is up to date.

The 2nd Full package Apollo never showed the 1TB nvme drive in Files and I ignored that for some months because I had more important things to do.

But now I got around to test it out and it seems there is something wrong with the 2nd nvme drive.

When I swap the good nvme drive into the other Apollo, it works and the node starts connecting and updating.

When I put the bad nvme drive into an external USB housing, it was not working properly. Could not format it, Linux disks utility reports the file system is OK but fails when trying to repair it. After a few attempts, it reported "Successful repair" or something like it and the nvme drive showed up in Files and I could read and write to it.

So then I used dd to image the good nvme drive and then restored the image to the bad nvme drive. It failed a couple of times but eventually succeeded. Now the bad nvme gets detected when it's in the USB external housing and also when I put it into an Apollo. I can read the files, it all looks the same as in the good nvme drive, but for some reason the node does not start. It does not seem to write anything at all to the bad nvme drive.
But I can create a new folder in the Bitcoin folder on the bad nvme drive, so write access seems OK.

When I put the good nvme drive into the same Apollo again, the node starts to connect immediately upon booting up.

Any idea what could be going on and how I can troubleshoot this?

I think I'll get a 2TB nvme drive and restore the image to that, then try if it works.

[nullama]

~snip~
Well unless you read and write kernel code you have no business mining this should be told to people. Stay strong big farms!

Not sure what you mean here.

The literal meaning makes no sense because of course you don't need to modify the kernel to mine with the Apollo BTC.

If you mean that it's hard to use, well, it's simply a binary that you run on the command line. It's extremely simple to use, and has documentation.

As I mentioned before, it's a niche product, for very specific people. People that want to have a home miner that looks nice, and can be setup to mine in silence with relatively decent hash rates (1-2TH/s silently).

The only drawback that I didn't know beforehand is that the code is closed sourced. I wasn't aware of this fact before I bought it. I was expecting to use cgminer with it just like you can with the stick miners. Other than that, it has performed exactly as advertised.

[PakoTor]

When will direct node mining be offered? The full node package would be much more meaningful with mining the own node solo.

I heard it's still not ready for release.
I bought the full node for solo mining but so far it's not worth the extra 300$.
My standard does as good.

[MrMik]

~snip~
Well unless you read and write kernel code you have no business mining this should be told to people. Stay strong big farms!

Not sure what you mean here.

The literal meaning makes no sense because of course you don't need to modify the kernel to mine with the Apollo BTC.

If you mean that it's hard to use, well, it's simply a binary that you run on the command line. It's extremely simple to use, and has documentation.

As I mentioned before, it's a niche product, for very specific people. People that want to have a home miner that looks nice, and can be setup to mine in silence with relatively decent hash rates (1-2TH/s silently).

The only drawback that I didn't know beforehand is that the code is closed sourced. I wasn't aware of this fact before I bought it. I was expecting to use cgminer with it just like you can with the stick miners. Other than that, it has performed exactly as advertised.

Did you try to use cgminer?
What is stopping it from working with the Apollo?

[n0nce]

They are different products for different types of people.

Well unless you read and write kernel code you have no business mining this should be told to people. Stay strong big farms!

This makes no sense. Mining solo, pooled, to your own node or not, is all possible without touching any kernel code. Also, this is literally a home mining product, why do you think anyone here is in favor of big farms?

As far as I can tell, while I do agree that it takes too long for software updates, they seem to try their best and in the interest of the customer.
If you're getting impatient, even completely replacing the operating system is not as daunting a task as you may think. My (probably outdated now) step-by-step guide is found here. Just use the latest version of everything and save the /boot/dtb/rockchip/rk3399-orangepi-4.dtb file to a USB disk before re-flashing the device, so you can put it back into the new OS (as described in the guide).

The only drawback that I didn't know beforehand is that the code is closed sourced. I wasn't aware of this fact before I bought it. I was expecting to use cgminer with it just like you can with the stick miners. Other than that, it has performed exactly as advertised.

Did you try to use cgminer?
What is stopping it from working with the Apollo?

You quoted him. The chips and protocol are closed, i.e. kano can't just add support for the Apollo. He typically works together with the creator of a device (sidehack for GekkoScience products) who provides the required hardware information (I guess mostly protocol) so that he can write the driver.

[jstefanop]

They are different products for different types of people.

Well unless you read and write kernel code you have no business mining this should be told to people. Stay strong big farms!

Ooo the big farms are finally realizing plebs mining in masses are going to be a threat to their USD profits the future 

[unicornmangle]

The Apollo's are doing wonders for my Linux skills and my knowledge about Bitcoin is improving much faster than before I started mining. I doubt I would have jumped in to mining without the Apollo offer.

If i had any merit to give i would give it to you. the tips you provide help me progress in learning. i do agree i have learned a lot with mining and embedded systems not so much with the futurebit but with some of the older miners which i purchased prior to the futurebit. im just hitting a wall trying to figure out a definitive path to what i wanna do so many options. i lack hardware knowledge at a low level so this has been super challenging for me. and all of the scam talk and other things that go on are really discouraging.

[cd1177]

Ive have 3 standards and a full node.  they have all ran fine for quite awhile.  the full node and 1 standard are first batches and i have since upgraded the ssd.  like i said they have all ran fine for months.  one of the standards stopped and won't ever start back up.  i power it down and restart and it will go through the process but eventually it will just completely stop and stay that way.  tried restarting the whole thing numerous times as a reboot usually seems to fix any issues.  but not with this one standard unit.  any ideas?  thanks

Are you connecting all the standards to the Full package Apollo via USB?

I find that the USB connection on my Full packages is very sketchy.

You could try to connect just the faulty Standard unit, or swap the order in which connect them to USB, maybe another one starts to malfunction then.

When I suspect USB issues, I disconnect the USB hub before rebooting the Full package unit, then reconnect the USB hub and standard unit after it has booted up.

Changing the USB port also helps sometimes, there seems to be no rhyme nor rhythm to it, just that once one of the USB ports is having a dummy spit, it causes weird issues until it is allowed to power up without a load on it.

worked!  thank you

[cd1177]

any updates on solo mining to our own nodes?  or any working workarounds ?  is it worth it or better to just use ckpool solo?

[heslo]

any updates on solo mining to our own nodes?  or any working workarounds ?  is it worth it or better to just use ckpool solo?

Just use ckpool, that's what I'm doing

[Twelvetwentyone]

Good afternoon! I’ve had my Apollo running for just under three days now. I’m having two issues: the first, I’m having trouble setting up port forwarding, and I’m stuck on 10/32 connections. I’ve logged into my router admin page, and I updated the port forwarding section with my units IP, and TCP + UDP, with WAN Port 8333~8333, LAN host port 8333~8333.

Any ideas how I can remedy this?

My second issue is, this morning my internet connectivity dropped out (only on the Apollo, the home internet never stopped working), and on the dashboard, I was prompted with a “Disconnected” under eth0 network (direct Ethernet connection) - this happened without any apparent reason, and I was no longer able to access the admin page from the router. I’ve since did a hard reset on the router, but that isn’t solved the issue.

My only workaround for the second issue is to connect to wifi, which I’ve been able to do, but I would really like to sort out the hard wired connection issue. My Apollo won’t show an Ethernet connection at all even though the green light turns on when I plug the cable in to the port.

I’m also seeing a red  “internal error” message when I first launch the Apollo dashboard, right at the top of the page overtop of where I see the online status and TH/S.

I’ve emailed Futurebit, but thought I’d try here too.

Thanks!

[jstefanop]

Good afternoon! I’ve had my Apollo running for just under three days now. I’m having two issues: the first, I’m having trouble setting up port forwarding, and I’m stuck on 10/32 connections. I’ve logged into my router admin page, and I updated the port forwarding section with my units IP, and TCP + UDP, with WAN Port 8333~8333, LAN host port 8333~8333.

Any ideas how I can remedy this?

My second issue is, this morning my internet connectivity dropped out (only on the Apollo, the home internet never stopped working), and on the dashboard, I was prompted with a “Disconnected” under eth0 network (direct Ethernet connection) - this happened without any apparent reason, and I was no longer able to access the admin page from the router. I’ve since did a hard reset on the router, but that isn’t solved the issue.

My only workaround for the second issue is to connect to wifi, which I’ve been able to do, but I would really like to sort out the hard wired connection issue. My Apollo won’t show an Ethernet connection at all even though the green light turns on when I plug the cable in to the port.

I’m also seeing a red  “internal error” message when I first launch the Apollo dashboard, right at the top of the page overtop of where I see the online status and TH/S.

I’ve emailed Futurebit, but thought I’d try here too.

Thanks!

Your node wont show more than 10 connections until it is fully synced, so it's not a port forward issue.

As for wifi/ethernet, this is a know bug in the underlying system, if you enable wifi then try and connect ethernet it wont work. You need to disable the wifi interface in the system menu (not the dashboard, you need to connect to the system via HDMI), then ethernet will work again.

[PakoTor]

Just use ckpool, that's what I'm doing

The point of mining solo directly on our node is it might be a little bit faster.
Any fraction of a seconds counts to get the edge.
ckpool is not the best with one block per 4 months and all the intermediate connections.
FutureBit told me solo mining was not ready for release yet.
Hopefully soon.

[heslo]

Just use ckpool, that's what I'm doing

The point of mining solo directly on our node is it might be a little bit faster.
Any fraction of a seconds counts to get the edge.
ckpool is not the best with one block per 4 months and all the intermediate connections.
FutureBit told me solo mining was not ready for release yet.
Hopefully soon.

I agree but it's the best we have right now

[crypto_curious]

Just use ckpool, that's what I'm doing

The point of mining solo directly on our node is it might be a little bit faster.
Any fraction of a seconds counts to get the edge.
ckpool is not the best with one block per 4 months and all the intermediate connections.
FutureBit told me solo mining was not ready for release yet.
Hopefully soon.

Solo mining to your own node may have the opposite effect. ckpool's VPS is in very well-connected paid datacentre, and most likely connected to maximum amount of 125 peers. ckpool can push the block to 125 connected nodes, and to the entire world, in a matter of few seconds. What is your home upload? Most likely in tens of Mbits or slower, no match for 1Gbit upload from datacentres. If your block is not propagated well, then 20ms delay you save by not connecting to ckpool means nothing if you propagate your block in 30000ms (30s) and by then someone faster pushes hit block and yours become an orphan.