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

[bubbAJoe]

Was sitting at 6.7B for best share from my 2 Apollo IIs for the longest time.  Just hit 112B best share from my USB Apollo II.

Only 962x short of network difficulty, LOL.

Just short of my best share 132,337,685,248

Has anyone with an Apollo II hit a best share in the trillions yet?

[Hamster123]

Was sitting at 6.7B for best share from my 2 Apollo IIs for the longest time.  Just hit 112B best share from my USB Apollo II.

Only 962x short of network difficulty, LOL.

Just short of my best share 132,337,685,248

Has anyone with an Apollo II hit a best share in the trillions yet?

Closest I've come in about five months of hashing = 55,748,041,309

[f0973]

I have an Apollo BTC full node I've been running since April 2022.  It failed recently, and it appears to be the Orange PI 4 V1 board.  When it failed this board was too hot to touch, and the mining boards weren't hot. 

I'd like to get a replacement board and get it running again.  Any advice on ordering a compatible board, or things to watch out for when doing the swap would be appreciated.  Thanks.

[PennyBit]

Was sitting at 6.7B for best share from my 2 Apollo IIs for the longest time.  Just hit 112B best share from my USB Apollo II.

Only 962x short of network difficulty, LOL.

Just short of my best share 132,337,685,248

Has anyone with an Apollo II hit a best share in the trillions yet?

Closest I've come in about five months of hashing = 55,748,041,309

I managed to pop a 335B best share back in Sept or maybe Aug 2024. Nothing better or close to that since. Yet.

Cheers!

[Franck68]

My Appolo II keep on disconnecting of WIFI.
I have to reboot the system every 2-3 days. Did that happen to anyone? And how did you solve this?

[Hamster123]

My Appolo II keep on disconnecting of WIFI.
I have to reboot the system every 2-3 days. Did that happen to anyone? And how did you solve this?

Yes, with my Apollo 1 node/miner unit AFTER updating to upgraded software package last year. Before upgrade never had issues on wifi. Solved by setting up old router as wifi relay on my network, placed it near the node/miner, and hardwired the Apollo to it. No issues since.

My other two clusters of miners, all Apollo II units, are wired to my network. Never tried the wifi on those.

[Frisco415]

Anyone in here hit the block.....  https://mempool.space/block/0000000000000000000269d52c24ea451225613aab095d90d771d4e29aa96cdd



LUCKY>>>

[bubbAJoe]

Anyone in here hit the block.....  https://mempool.space/block/0000000000000000000269d52c24ea451225613aab095d90d771d4e29aa96cdd



LUCKY>>>

Not really that lucky.  There was a ton of hash being directed to that Apollo II node.  Discussed many posts above...

[Wolf_schiesst]

The only officially supported NVMe drives are Kingston NV2s and Curcial P2/P3s.

We have also noticed some newer Gen4 drives are not compatible and this is a hardware issue. Our custom SSD drive adapter for this board is only designed for 2x PCIe Gen 2 lanes.

There is no need to buy higher end NVMe drives for this system as its a waste, they will either fail because they draw to much power, or newer Gen4 pcie protocol is incompatible with our hardware.

We are currently sourcing Kingston NV3 drives, but only one type with a certain controller works with our system, they have two types with a different controller that does not work.

Also I know 660GB/1TB seems like the drive is almost full, but bitcoin is growing at about 100GB/Y even in its current maxed out full blocks state. 1TB drives have at least 2-3 years of life left, and 2TB drives will literally last the life of the system at over 10 years.

2TB is boarderline overkill, 1TB will last enough where you can get a 2TB for half the cost in 2 years.
[/quote]



Does a Gen 3 drive work? Specifically a Crucial P3 Gen 3 x 4
model# CT2000P3SSD8

[/quote]

I successfully installled a 2TB Samsung SSD 980 Pro on my Apollo BTC which works with smooth temperature.
Apollo support team confirmed most low end M.2 SSD drives will work. They do not recommend to buy higher versions as the Apollo can't take advantage of faster link speeds (sometimes will not work due to power requirements -> The Apollo BTC controller is rated for 3A at 3.3V so max is around 10 watts acc. to them).  They have tested Kingston and Crucial drives with their Apollo systems.


Other questions:
- For the (very unproble case) that my Apollo Solo Miner will maybe find a block (lottery) in the future somewhen, where would this be shown in the Apollo 2.0.6 Web-IF?
- Anyone knows why Apollo miners use private MAC addresses?

[eagleye]

I've got a FIKWOT FN955 PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe 1TB that works fine and I haven't had any problems on the Apollo II.  I also have a PNY 1TB Nvme M.2 that works and use as a backup.  Read/Write speeds are no more than 200 MB/sec when monitored on the Apollo II. On my system

[Sledge0001]

I can confirm that the SAMSUNG 990 PRO w/ Heatsink SSD 2TB, PCIe Gen4 M.2 2280 Internal Solid State Hard Drive DOES NOT WORK with the Apollo II.

The drive with heatsink is too large first off and secondly the drive will crash at some point. They work initially but then crash out causing the node to fail.

I experienced this with 2 of them so I would steer clear of them at all costs for this application. 

[FBmineraz]

I just got a new Apollo 2 with node and then an additional Apollo 2 add on delivered yesterday. When I boot it, the thing goes to turbo mode and nothing happens. No status light on the front. Checked SD card, it was fine. Then reflashed SD card following instructions and still nothing. I’m so frustrated especially with amount of time I’ve spent messing around with this thing. Does anyone have any ideas? I pulled the SSD and put it back in seems fine.

[Franck68]

Ok. Will try that.
Thanks

My Appolo II keep on disconnecting of WIFI.
I have to reboot the system every 2-3 days. Did that happen to anyone? And how did you solve this?

Yes, with my Apollo 1 node/miner unit AFTER updating to upgraded software package last year. Before upgrade never had issues on wifi. Solved by setting up old router as wifi relay on my network, placed it near the node/miner, and hardwired the Apollo to it. No issues since.

My other two clusters of miners, all Apollo II units, are wired to my network. Never tried the wifi on those.

[Wolf_schiesst]

I can confirm that the SAMSUNG 990 PRO w/ Heatsink SSD 2TB, PCIe Gen4 M.2 2280 Internal Solid State Hard Drive DOES NOT WORK with the Apollo II.

The drive with heatsink is too large first off and secondly the drive will crash at some point. They work initially but then crash out causing the node to fail.

I experienced this with 2 of them so I would steer clear of them at all costs for this application. 

This is a high end Gen4 SSD. Also the version without the additional heatsink will IMHO not work. Wasted money for an Apollo miner....

[FBmineraz]

I just got a new Apollo 2 with node and then an additional Apollo 2 add on delivered yesterday. When I boot it, the thing goes to turbo mode and nothing happens. No status light on the front. Checked SD card, it was fine. Then reflashed SD card following instructions and still nothing. I’m so frustrated especially with amount of time I’ve spent messing around with this thing. Does anyone have any ideas? I pulled the SSD and put it back in seems fine.

Figured it out. Flashed it again on a new SD Drive and it booted properly. Did anyone have it freeze when upgrading to V2.0.6? It got to 30% and it froze. 

[eagleye]

The original microsd cards seem very unreliable and old.  I had same problem.  Upgraded to a new Microsd and it worked fine.  Those supplied with the apollo II seem old and unreliable.  16GB was outdated a while ago.  Old cards sold at a discount in the major outlets are 32 and 64GB.  I bought an ONN and PNY 32 and 64 gB flashed v 2.0.6 and they worked fine and are very stable. They are slower microsd cards but time to boot is only 25% slower and while operating, OS minimal speed difference vs a newer fast memory card.

[qootle]

Hi, I bought the FutureBit Apollo 2 miner and have the node fully synced but I'm unable to mine to a non-solo mining pool.
Solo mining works perfectly though.
Can anyone please advise on how to troubleshoot?

My node is fully synced.
My network connections are about 62/64.
HDD remaining space is about 24% (am using a 1TB ssd).
On the miner page, the hashboard is active status and showing normal hashrate (6+TH/s). But the pools though is active status but is showing 0 TH/s, with connection of 1024.
In the pool settings, neither the preconfigured Braiins nor the Ocean.xyz pools seem to work. My bitcoin wallet address starts with bc1 and password set to x.

Have checked my mining status on both Braiins and Ocean but does not show my btc wallet address.

Thanks for your help

[vgomelo]

Good afternoon.

I recently got one Apollo II full node with 2TB storage about a month ago. I've been looking for information, but I can't seem to find anything about this here. It says that you can install a Bitcoin Core wallet, but I'm not sure if I can install the latest version (28.1) or if I have to stick with the version that matches the API running on FutureBit (I think it's 25, but I could be wrong).

If I install 28.1, I don’t know if the current node software can actually run it or if it would just manage the miner without being able to activate the node from the FutureBit app. Also, I'm not sure where exactly I’d need to install the 28.1 update.

So, to sum it up—what would be the best approach for installing the wallet? Should I stick with version 25, or is it safe to update to 28.1? Which version should I install, ARM or Aarch64?

Thanks a lot, everyone!

[terra.tec]

Hi, I bought the FutureBit Apollo 2 miner and have the node fully synced but I'm unable to mine to a non-solo mining pool.
Solo mining works perfectly though.
Can anyone please advise on how to troubleshoot?

My node is fully synced.
My network connections are about 62/64.
HDD remaining space is about 24% (am using a 1TB ssd).
On the miner page, the hashboard is active status and showing normal hashrate (6+TH/s). But the pools though is active status but is showing 0 TH/s, with connection of 1024.
In the pool settings, neither the preconfigured Braiins nor the Ocean.xyz pools seem to work. My bitcoin wallet address starts with bc1 and password set to x.

Have checked my mining status on both Braiins and Ocean but does not show my btc wallet address.

Thanks for your help

At least with Braiins you mine to your account name and not your btc address.

[PennyBit]

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

just an update on this, the ddns on the route with no-ip and port forwarding did the trick without any problems.
if anyone is interested in solo mining with other apollos send me a dm

@poonasor
Just reading some older posts and came across yours which begs the question of how your Apollo would deal with remote high-diff miners pointed to your node/pool?  In other words, how do you and the Apollo deal with high-diff miners? Is it a problem?

Cheers!