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

[aurel57]

I never saw that e-mail.  my experience is the CPU/system temp is fine.  System temp doesn't go above 70.  Fan does increase on its own. without the miner running.  Airflow is the key to cooling and those bottom vents and spacing in original design don't give enough airflow trapping heat causing fan to run faster.   All dust falling to the tabletop get sucked into those vents.   To lay flat there needs to be at least 1" of space below apollo to allow for proper airflow volume as fan speed increases.  The top vents would have to be double the width.  Fan speed and sound is always my key indicator to how efficient a system is running.  Faster fans means higher temps needing more airflow.  In this case constricted airflow needs higher fan speeds.

When my miner is running system temp is 43C with cpu idle and miner at 68-70C.  3600RPM.  This higher fan speed seems to cool the cpu fine.  Laying the apollo flat in eco mode works fine and the fan speed is quiet enough.

RE running miner outside.  Other than ambient humidity and environment.  I think the Miner should run fine in turbo mode and keep the miners cool. Fan speed is key.  You need faster fan speeds to move the air to cool the miners.  For longevity of the miner processor i think those temps should stay below 75C.  With antminers those fans would keep the miner temp between 60 and 70C.   I ran antminers outside in the garage and they ran great with temps below 60F.  Lower fan speeds keeping system cool.  Running these fans at full speed helps move maximum airflow but does put stress on those fans causing higher risk of failure.  Running at 3600RPM/half speed and the fans can last a long time with very low risk of failure.   Always listen to the sounds your fans are making.

Case Study:  I just turned my apollo down, lay flat running in balanced mode.  Temp increase to 72-74C on the miner.  Fan increase 4000 to 4500RPM.  No change in system temp 43C. So that email suggestion is a big fail on my apollo II.  Dust is building up on top slots after 2 months of running so will need to be blown clean soon. Bottom slots on the side operation seem to be clean and cool.  Isn't the bottom where the raspberry pi CPU is located?

I agree mine acts the same way as yours. Even the case runs cooler sideways with the heatsink pointed up.

I copied the part of the email they sent out about placing it sideways ( my first thought was your post):

Running your Apollo II in Balanced or Turbo mode requires more airflow over the top slots to keep the power supply cooled with our passive airflow technology.

The Apollo II is designed to be run on a flat surface that restricts the amount of airflow that goes in through the bottom vs top this means:

1) DO NOT place your unit sideways. While this might reduce fan RPMs slightly it will cause your power supply to over heat due to not enough airflow through the top. This is also the case for shelves that have wire mesh or not a flat solid surface

[sopsy8t]

my new best share 256,887,704,896
still a long ways away I know, but glad to see higher numbers.

[MakerAZ]

my new best share 256,887,704,896
still a long ways away I know, but glad to see higher numbers.

Mine is just 13B. I still cannot understand what this Best Share number is all about?
I also have 12B accepted shares, which tells me nothing.
I am mining SOLO with Apollo II Full Node.

[bubbAJoe]

my new best share 256,887,704,896
still a long ways away I know, but glad to see higher numbers.

Mine is just 13B. I still cannot understand what this Best Share number is all about?
I also have 12B accepted shares, which tells me nothing.
I am mining SOLO with Apollo II Full Node.

BestShare=Network Difficulty=90-100T=Block

[MakerAZ]

BestShare=Network Difficulty=90-100T=Block

Thank you for your reply, but honeslty that equation is not clear to me.
Does it mean my best share number should be between 90 and 100T to have a chance to find a valid block?
And what is the maximum Best Share number that a single Apollo II Full Node Miner can achieve?

[aurel57]

BestShare=Network Difficulty=90-100T=Block

Thank you for your reply, but honeslty that equation is not clear to me.
Does it mean my best share number should be between 90 and 100T to have a chance to find a valid block?
And what is the maximum Best Share number that a single Apollo II Full Node Miner can achieve?

Basically in simple terms, think you're playing the lotto and buy one ticket. You have a chance of winning with just one ticket, but your odds are very low, and they increase if you play with more tickets. (the big mining pools and farms are playing with millions of tickets).

Now think if they pull the winning numbers first, ( the difference is instead of only 6 numbers to win, the winning correct numbers needed are thousands trillions) and we need to buy random tickets looking for the right combination of numbers before anybody else does. Your one ticket hits 1 number, not enough to win, but that is your best ticket, now you buy another, and you hit 3 numbers, this is still not enough to win, but this is your new best. Every new block @10 mins is a new lotto drawing, your old best number from another block means nothing toward the new block other than a way to show how close you had come to winning. The lower your hash rate is like only buying one ticket compared to the mega farms/pool buying millions of tickets every 10 minutes or for every new block.

The winning combination is @the new difficulty number (the winning lotto numbers). Now it's set up to average a block/winner every 10 mins, so if there is a winner faster the difficulty amount of numbers increase to make it harder to find the right numbers and if it goes longer than 10 min the difficulty amount of numbers goes down. So as mining hash rate increases, block speed will as well, and it makes the difficulty go up. If mining hash rate drops so will the difficulty to tray and bring the average block finding back to the 10 min. (This adjustment happens only so often)

[MakerAZ]

Basically in simple terms, think you're playing the lotto and buy one ticket. You have a chance of winning with just one ticket, but your odds are very low, and they increase if you play with more tickets. (the big mining pools and farms are playing with millions of tickets).

So the number of Best Shares that Apollo shows contains only the Best Shares for my latest attempt (last 10 min) or ALL historical Best Shares since I started mining?

Now think if they pull the winning numbers first, ( the difference is instead of only 6 numbers the numbers are thousands) and we need to buy random tickets looking for the right combination of numbers before anybody else does. Your one ticket hits 1 number, not enough to win, but that is your best ticket, now you buy another, and you hit 3 numbers, this is still not enough to win, but this is your new best. Every new block @10 mins is a new lotto drawing, your old best number from another block means nothing toward the new block other than a way to show how close you had come to winning. The lower your hash rate is like only buying one ticket compared to the mega farms/pool buying millions of tickets every 10 minutes or for every new block.

When Apollo shows 13B Best Shares, does it mean that I managed to pull 13B winning tickets, that I managed to FIND a Valid Block at the current network difficulty level BUT did it too late?

The winning combination is @the new difficulty number (the winning lotto numbers). Now it's set up to average a block/winner every 10 mins, so if there is a winner faster the difficulty amount of numbers increase to make it harder to find the right numbers and if it goes longer than 10 min the difficulty amount of numbers goes down.

This is clear.

[Hamster123]

Basically in simple terms, think you're playing the lotto and buy one ticket. You have a chance of winning with just one ticket, but your odds are very low, and they increase if you play with more tickets. (the big mining pools and farms are playing with millions of tickets).

So the number of Best Shares that Apollo shows contains only the Best Shares for my latest attempt (last 10 min) or ALL historical Best Shares since I started mining?

Now think if they pull the winning numbers first, ( the difference is instead of only 6 numbers the numbers are thousands) and we need to buy random tickets looking for the right combination of numbers before anybody else does. Your one ticket hits 1 number, not enough to win, but that is your best ticket, now you buy another, and you hit 3 numbers, this is still not enough to win, but this is your new best. Every new block @10 mins is a new lotto drawing, your old best number from another block means nothing toward the new block other than a way to show how close you had come to winning. The lower your hash rate is like only buying one ticket compared to the mega farms/pool buying millions of tickets every 10 minutes or for every new block.

When Apollo shows 13B Best Shares, does it mean that I managed to pull 13B winning tickets, that I managed to FIND a Valid Block at the current network difficulty level BUT did it too late?

The winning combination is @the new difficulty number (the winning lotto numbers). Now it's set up to average a block/winner every 10 mins, so if there is a winner faster the difficulty amount of numbers increase to make it harder to find the right numbers and if it goes longer than 10 min the difficulty amount of numbers goes down.

This is clear.

From Venice.ai Pro:

Here's a brief explanation of "Best Share" on the Apollo Miner solo mining dashboard:
* The "Best Share" refers to the most valuable share submitted by your miner to the network.
* It represents the highest difficulty share your miner has found and submitted.
* This value is typically measured in hash rate or difficulty units.
* A higher "Best Share" value indicates that your miner has found a share that is closer to the actual block solution, which can increase your chances of solving a block and earning rewards.
* The "Best Share" can give you an idea of your miner's performance and potential for finding a block.

The highest share shown on our solo mining dashboards represents the historical best share submitted. My units have shown a "best share" of 55,748,041,309 for quite some time (currently at 43,592,290,933 accepted shares).

Hope this helps.

[terra.tec]

Now think if they pull the winning numbers first, ( the difference is instead of only 6 numbers the numbers are thousands) and we need to buy random tickets looking for the right combination of numbers before anybody else does. Your one ticket hits 1 number, not enough to win, but that is your best ticket, now you buy another, and you hit 3 numbers, this is still not enough to win, but this is your new best. Every new block @10 mins is a new lotto drawing, your old best number from another block means nothing toward the new block other than a way to show how close you had come to winning. The lower your hash rate is like only buying one ticket compared to the mega farms/pool buying millions of tickets every 10 minutes or for every new block.

When Apollo shows 13B Best Shares, does it mean that I managed to pull 13B winning tickets, that I managed to FIND a Valid Block at the current network difficulty level BUT did it too late?

You mentioned 12B accepted shares so your Apollo managed to pull 12B loser tickets and 13B is your highest loser ticket.

In a pool this would be your proof of work and would be used to calculate the reward.
For solo mining these values are for information purposes only. Except for rejected shares, too many may indicate an error.

[aurel57]

Basically in simple terms, think you're playing the lotto and buy one ticket. You have a chance of winning with just one ticket, but your odds are very low, and they increase if you play with more tickets. (the big mining pools and farms are playing with millions of tickets).

So the number of Best Shares that Apollo shows contains only the Best Shares for my latest attempt (last 10 min) or ALL historical Best Shares since I started mining?

Now think if they pull the winning numbers first, ( the difference is instead of only 6 numbers the numbers are thousands) and we need to buy random tickets looking for the right combination of numbers before anybody else does. Your one ticket hits 1 number, not enough to win, but that is your best ticket, now you buy another, and you hit 3 numbers, this is still not enough to win, but this is your new best. Every new block @10 mins is a new lotto drawing, your old best number from another block means nothing toward the new block other than a way to show how close you had come to winning. The lower your hash rate is like only buying one ticket compared to the mega farms/pool buying millions of tickets every 10 minutes or for every new block.

When Apollo shows 13B Best Shares, does it mean that I managed to pull 13B winning tickets, that I managed to FIND a Valid Block at the current network difficulty level BUT did it too late?

The winning combination is @the new difficulty number (the winning lotto numbers). Now it's set up to average a block/winner every 10 mins, so if there is a winner faster the difficulty amount of numbers increase to make it harder to find the right numbers and if it goes longer than 10 min the difficulty amount of numbers goes down.

This is clear.

When Apollo shows 13B Best Shares, does it mean that I managed to pull 13B winning tickets, that I managed to FIND a Valid Block at the current network difficulty level BUT did it too late?
NO its more like you matched 13 Billion of the 103 Trillion numbers needed to win.  

So the number of Best Shares that Apollo shows contains only the Best Shares for my latest attempt (last 10 min) or ALL historical Best Shares since I started mining?
All historical

[bubbAJoe]

Thank you for your reply, but honeslty that equation is not clear to me.
Does it mean my best share number should be between 90 and 100T to have a chance to find a valid block?

Yes. Or current network difficulty.  Recently, network difficulty has been ~90-100T, but has jumped to ~104T this week.

And what is the maximum Best Share number that a single Apollo II Full Node Miner can achieve?

Well, there was a block recorded by an Apollo II on Oct 28, when the network difficulty was ~96T, so that's the max so far.

https://mempool.space/block/0000000000000000000182972ccbfabb41ec5c385540dcab2f48c75cf73a695f?goal=0_8330f4b43c-4e94bca21d-290920248&mc_cid=4e94bca21d&mc_eid=b9ceea1eb1

[MakerAZ]

When Apollo shows 13B Best Shares, does it mean that I managed to pull 13B winning tickets, that I managed to FIND a Valid Block at the current network difficulty level BUT did it too late?
NO its more like you matched 13 Billion of the 103 Trillion numbers needed to win.  

So the number of Best Shares that Apollo shows contains only the Best Shares for my latest attempt (last 10 min) or ALL historical Best Shares since I started mining?
All historical

I truely appreciate all the responses I get from the members, but I feel myself completely dumb as I cannot understand this Best Share, Accepted Share and Rejected Share terms.

Mining BTC is a LOTTERY.
It doesn't matter if I mine with 200 EH/s speed mining farm or 5TH/s home Apollo miner. In BOTH cases, mining BTC is a LOTTERY. As such I either WIN or LOSE roughly every 10 min.

Of course as higher my hashrate as bigger my chances to find a valid block within 10 min, I do understand that.

Now, what Apollo's or ANY miner's Dashboard would show me to be informative and meaningful?
1) Hardware health status: CPU and Miner Temp, Fan Speed, Power Consumption
2) Software health status: Errors, Issues, Bugs, Latest version, Updates, etc.
3) Hashrate speed and its Fluctuations over time.

As for assessing a performance of any miner it should come down to: What is the MOST DIFFICULT Hash found by the miner, i.e. the biggest number of leading zero's and the comparison of that number to the network's current difficulty requirements.


To my understanding EVERY SINGLE HASH irrespective of the number of leading zeros, i.e. its difficulty, is a Proof of Work. It means EVERY SINGLE HASH is the Accepted Share. Rejected Share could be hashes that simply failed validation.

This may be a topic for a separate discussion, but mentioning it here might help my understanding. I honestly get confused when the network's difficulty number increases. How come? Harder difficulty would mean there are LESSER valid hashes within the range of 2^256-1.

Please shed some light on this.

[Sledge0001]

If you are solo mining on the Apollo the only stat that matters to you really is best share.

You want to see your best share above Bitcoin's network difficulty.. Currently it is 103.92T

You can see it here... However note this does update about every 2 weeks.

Confirm the current difficulty here:
https://newhedge.io/terminal/bitcoin/network-difficulty

The accepted shares just means your pool and miners are working on valid jobs (work on the current block that is trying to be found) from the built in pool.

If they are rejected it means the pool said meh to the share submitted by the miner which most likely was still working on a stale job (work on a block that has already been found).

[poonasor]

I have a question, is it possible to have a miner solo mine to my node that is not on my local network?

I have ddns setup on my router and port forwarding setup for port 3333

The issue I see right now is when I check if port 3333 is open, it said it’s closed.

I have friends who have miners, we all want to point our miners to a single solo node

Is that even possible?

[Sledge0001]

I have a question, is it possible to have a miner solo mine to my node that is not on my local network?

I have ddns setup on my router and port forwarding setup for port 3333

The issue I see right now is when I check if port 3333 is open, it said it’s closed.

I have friends who have miners, we all want to point our miners to a single solo node

Is that even possible?

I wouldn't say "node" in this case.....

But I will say this:

It is possible for miners outside of your network to point their miners to your Apollo's built in pool assuming you have your network setup to allow such.

Port forwarding and firewall rules on your router must be configured correctly for this to work. Additionally you must have your Apollo running in solo mining mode.

If that is all set then have your friends use your ddns in their miners by them using:    stratum+tcp://WHATEVERYOURDDNSDOMAINIS:3333

[aurel57]

I have a question, is it possible to have a miner solo mine to my node that is not on my local network?

I have ddns setup on my router and port forwarding setup for port 3333

The issue I see right now is when I check if port 3333 is open, it said it’s closed.

I have friends who have miners, we all want to point our miners to a single solo node

Is that even possible?

Yes it should be if your router/firewall is set to allow it. But I think that is why we have to use 8333 port forward is it allows the other nodes to connect to our node? I am sure there are others hee that understand it all better than me

[terra.tec]

When Apollo shows 13B Best Shares, does it mean that I managed to pull 13B winning tickets, that I managed to FIND a Valid Block at the current network difficulty level BUT did it too late?
NO its more like you matched 13 Billion of the 103 Trillion numbers needed to win.  

So the number of Best Shares that Apollo shows contains only the Best Shares for my latest attempt (last 10 min) or ALL historical Best Shares since I started mining?
All historical

I truely appreciate all the responses I get from the members, but I feel myself completely dumb as I cannot understand this Best Share, Accepted Share and Rejected Share terms.

Mining BTC is a LOTTERY.
It doesn't matter if I mine with 200 EH/s speed mining farm or 5TH/s home Apollo miner. In BOTH cases, mining BTC is a LOTTERY. As such I either WIN or LOSE roughly every 10 min.

Of course as higher my hashrate as bigger my chances to find a valid block within 10 min, I do understand that.

Now, what Apollo's or ANY miner's Dashboard would show me to be informative and meaningful?
1) Hardware health status: CPU and Miner Temp, Fan Speed, Power Consumption
2) Software health status: Errors, Issues, Bugs, Latest version, Updates, etc.
3) Hashrate speed and its Fluctuations over time.

As for assessing a performance of any miner it should come down to: What is the MOST DIFFICULT Hash found by the miner, i.e. the biggest number of leading zero's and the comparison of that number to the network's current difficulty requirements.


To my understanding EVERY SINGLE HASH irrespective of the number of leading zeros, i.e. its difficulty, is a Proof of Work. It means EVERY SINGLE HASH is the Accepted Share. Rejected Share could be hashes that simply failed validation.

This may be a topic for a separate discussion, but mentioning it here might help my understanding. I honestly get confused when the network's difficulty number increases. How come? Harder difficulty would mean there are LESSER valid hashes within the range of 2^256-1.

Please shed some light on this.

That is correct for the bitcoin network difficulty.
But each pool has its own smaller difficulty for each miner because it is neither possible nor necessary for the pool to check every single hash.
For solo mining the Apollo runs a "mini pool" in the background.

The network difficulty increases as more/faster miners find valid hashes.

[poonasor]

I have a question, is it possible to have a miner solo mine to my node that is not on my local network?

I have ddns setup on my router and port forwarding setup for port 3333

The issue I see right now is when I check if port 3333 is open, it said it’s closed.

I have friends who have miners, we all want to point our miners to a single solo node

Is that even possible?

I wouldn't say "node" in this case.....

But I will say this:

It is possible for miners outside of your network to point their miners to your Apollo's built in pool assuming you have your network setup to allow such.

Port forwarding and firewall rules on your router must be configured correctly for this to work. Additionally you must have your Apollo running in solo mining mode.

If that is all set then have your friends use your ddns in their miners by them using:    stratum+tcp://WHATEVERYOURDDNSDOMAINIS:3333

Yes it should be if your router/firewall is set to allow it. But I think that is why we have to use 8333 port forward is it allows the other nodes to connect to our node? I am sure there are others hee that understand it all better than me

yeah so I have 8333 and 3333 already port forwarded to my apollo node
weird that the 3333 port showed it was close yesterday but now it shows open, I guess all I have to is test now - will update when I get my results

thanks

[redcomet]

I updated to 2.0.6 today and the apollo-api service no longer starts. Anyone got any tricks to debug?

All I get in syslog is

systemd[1]: Started Apollo API & UI app.
systemd[1]: apollo-api.service: Main process exited, code=killed, status=7/BUS

And running the systemctl command myself

sudo /usr/local/nvm/versions/node/v21.6.2/bin/node /opt/apolloapi/src/init.js
Bus error


Seems its still mining, but the UI is broken.

[MakerAZ]

That is correct for the bitcoin network difficulty.
But each pool has its own smaller difficulty for each miner because it is neither possible nor necessary for the pool to check every single hash.
For solo mining the Apollo runs a "mini pool" in the background.

... each pool has its own smaller difficulty... - This one has just blown my mind. What does that even mean?

To my understanding the pool would check a single hash ONLY if it is submitted as a valid block. There is simply no other reason to validate a block.

I know that Apollo runs its own pool, but I don't understand how could that pool have its own smaller difficulty that is different from the bitcoin network difficulty? It makes no sense.

The network difficulty increases as more/faster miners find valid hashes.

If by "the network difficulty" you mean the bitcoin network difficulty, then of course I understand this, as it is a core principle of the bitcoin network, but I cannot correlate it with the "Best", "Accepted" and "Rejected" Shares on the Apollo's Dashboard.