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

[atomx2025]

Hello,

I reflashed the SD card on my Apollo II full node but cannot get past ~380,000 blocks. Connection status repeatedly goes on and offline. No errors, just warning when offline "warning Connection refused. Your node is not running." and when online I am connected to anywhere from 3-12/64 connections

I turned off the miner as suggested online, but still not progressing.

Submitted a request online with FutureBit 3 days ago with no response.

Anyone have any suggestions for what may be causing this?

[bubbAJoe]

Hello,

I reflashed the SD card on my Apollo II full node but cannot get past ~380,000 blocks. Connection status repeatedly goes on and offline. No errors, just warning when offline "warning Connection refused. Your node is not running." and when online I am connected to anywhere from 3-12/64 connections

I turned off the miner as suggested online, but still not progressing.

Submitted a request online with FutureBit 3 days ago with no response.

Anyone have any suggestions for what may be causing this?

Bad controller memory chips?  See post 2980. 

I see that Futurebit support response time hasn't improved, that's disappointing....

[atomx2025]

Hello,

I reflashed the SD card on my Apollo II full node but cannot get past ~380,000 blocks. Connection status repeatedly goes on and offline. No errors, just warning when offline "warning Connection refused. Your node is not running." and when online I am connected to anywhere from 3-12/64 connections

I turned off the miner as suggested online, but still not progressing.

Submitted a request online with FutureBit 3 days ago with no response.

Anyone have any suggestions for what may be causing this?

Bad controller memory chips?  See post 2980.  

I see that Futurebit support response time hasn't improved, that's disappointing....

I just read your response in post #2971:

"Reformat the SSD:  Settings/Extras.

This was suggested to me by FB support (after waiting a week for a response, of course) and it worked for me.  Had the same issue: "Connection refused""

It's holding its connection and syncing...fingers crossed. Thank you @bubbAJoe.

[t3c]

Another Feb 14th purchaser with the same issues I can see cited here by many in the thread.

The node simply will not connect and on the occasions when it did it never got past block 225K before restarting from scratch again.

Reformatted the SSD 4 times now, the same thing happens or I get Connection Refused error or There was an error getting stats for Node: ETIMEDOUT.

Miner is not running.
Port 8333 is open and reachable.
500mb/s up & down direct to premises fiber.
Tried both static and DHCP LAN addresses. Same issues.
I have reindexed. Same issues.
Unit now intermittently clicks when on and nothing is running (no miner, no node)

I'm an EU user so am starting to think the RMA process will be a painful and expensive experience for me along with the import taxes/duties due on this unit still to pay (i knew what i was getting into in respect to that of course).

I have logged a support request via the online form and email so I guess now I wait for a reply as the 14 day cut off to log an RMA is on Wednesday/Thursday since the unit was finally delivered to me out here, I take my support email as notice to FB in respect to logging a potential RMA.

So far it's been an extremely disappointing experience with my Apollo II. I run a few Bitaxes and was a Butterfly Labs OG back in the day so this isn't my first rodeo with mining hardware but my unit seems seriously buggy/flawed in how it's trying to operate. Starting to think I should've gone with Umbrel or Start9 in running my own node and simply got more Nerd/Bitaxes for hashing but like many here I wanted to support FB and have an all in one unit capable of hashing and running a node from one box. It's a great looking unit the Apollo II but if it cannot do the 1 main thing it was designed to do it's completely useless.

This was supposed to be a plug & play node/miner and so far after the 2 days I have had trying to get it to work correctly it has been far from it in that regard.

[jstefanop]

Another Feb 14th purchaser with the same issues I can see cited here by many in the thread.

The node simply will not connect and on the occasions when it did it never got past block 225K before restarting from scratch again.

Reformatted the SSD 4 times now, the same thing happens or I get Connection Refused error or There was an error getting stats for Node: ETIMEDOUT.

Miner is not running.
Port 8333 is open and reachable.
500mb/s up & down direct to premises fiber.
Tried both static and DHCP LAN addresses. Same issues.
I have reindexed. Same issues.
Unit now intermittently clicks when on and nothing is running (no miner, no node)

I'm an EU user so am starting to think the RMA process will be a painful and expensive experience for me along with the import taxes/duties due on this unit still to pay (i knew what i was getting into in respect to that of course).

I have logged a support request via the online form and email so I guess now I wait for a reply as the 14 day cut off to log an RMA is on Wednesday/Thursday since the unit was finally delivered to me out here, I take my support email as notice to FB in respect to logging a potential RMA.

So far it's been an extremely disappointing experience with my Apollo II. I run a few Bitaxes and was a Butterfly Labs OG back in the day so this isn't my first rodeo with mining hardware but my unit seems seriously buggy/flawed in how it's trying to operate. Starting to think I should've gone with Umbrel or Start9 in running my own node and simply got more Nerd/Bitaxes for hashing but like many here I wanted to support FB and have an all in one unit capable of hashing and running a node from one box. It's a great looking unit the Apollo II but if it cannot do the 1 main thing it was designed to do it's completely useless.

This was supposed to be a plug & play node/miner and so far after the 2 days I have had trying to get it to work correctly it has been far from it in that regard.

Just reply to your order email and will take care of it. As mentioned before in the current batch of controllers we are seeing a few % of them with bad memory chips (either production issue or actual bad chips), which is causing the node to fail to sync.

If you have gone through the normal troubleshooting (reflash your SD card, and reformat your node SSD drive by going to the settings and then extras menu) and it still fails to sync most likely thats whats going on.

If your in EU we can just send you the controller itself to swap out, its relatively straightforward to do.

[psch91]

Hello all!!

Been mining for the past 3 years and read through the whole thread in that time.
But now I have a question and problem.

I've got a batch 3 Apollo BTC Full Node that has been running flawlessly for years on Turbo.

About two years ago I got a batch 4 or 5 Apollo BTC Full node and that's when everything went wrong.

Long story short, as I was setting it up, I didn't realize that I cannot hot swap the HDMI monitor between both units so I thought the unit was broken, when nothing showed on screen.
I turned the new unit off and on, switching cables, and ALSO connecting BOTH MINERS via micro usb to micro usb cable on the OrangePi plug.

I thought that was one way to swap settings from one unit to another, not realizing that is only the case for hooking up a Standard Unit to a Full Node. But not with that cable ;(

Since that first initial setup phase, I have not gotten the miner to work.

The new Batch 4/5 miner blasts the fan at 100% on startup and I dont have a red light on the front.

I've copied the Bitcoin Blockchain from the old miner to the new miner's SSD and I bought a new SD card and flashed it with the newest OS.
Nothing. Fan Full speed and no light.

Doing a side by side from the old miner and and the new one, the new miner does NOT have a light on the bottom of the Pi, it does NOT have a light on the SSD board, and the ethernet light blinks yellow (or green?) but does not have two lights blinking and flashing.

Hash Board gets power from the PSU and part of the Pi works.

Are my boards damaged? What's the next step?

Thanks for any help.

[GPK260]

Hello all!!

Been mining for the past 3 years and read through the whole thread in that time.
But now I have a question and problem.

I've got a batch 3 Apollo BTC Full Node that has been running flawlessly for years on Turbo.

About two years ago I got a batch 4 or 5 Apollo BTC Full node and that's when everything went wrong.

Long story short, as I was setting it up, I didn't realize that I cannot hot swap the HDMI monitor between both units so I thought the unit was broken, when nothing showed on screen.
I turned the new unit off and on, switching cables, and ALSO connecting BOTH MINERS via micro usb to micro usb cable on the OrangePi plug.

I thought that was one way to swap settings from one unit to another, not realizing that is only the case for hooking up a Standard Unit to a Full Node. But not with that cable ;(

Since that first initial setup phase, I have not gotten the miner to work.

The new Batch 4/5 miner blasts the fan at 100% on startup and I dont have a red light on the front.

I've copied the Bitcoin Blockchain from the old miner to the new miner's SSD and I bought a new SD card and flashed it with the newest OS.
Nothing. Fan Full speed and no light.

Doing a side by side from the old miner and and the new one, the new miner does NOT have a light on the bottom of the Pi, it does NOT have a light on the SSD board, and the ethernet light blinks yellow (or green?) but does not have two lights blinking and flashing.

Hash Board gets power from the PSU and part of the Pi works.

Are my boards damaged? What's the next step?

Thanks for any help.

Had a smiliar problem after changing the fan on the Orange pi. it was down to the plastic cable that connects the Pi to the NVME was very slighly loose and wanst giving a good connection! Had to give it a really good push in again. took ages to figure it all out  without it you get nothing apart from a light flashing on the pi's an the fans at full speed. Once connected probably i started to get a light again on nvme and it booted up.

hope this helps

[Jota_US]

What is FutureBits' stance on the OP_RETURN debate? Would you give us an option to switch to Knots instead of Core for the node? And being able to filter out spam? I know it's an older version of Core right now but it's going to be updated eventually right?

[psch91]

Hello all!!

Been mining for the past 3 years and read through the whole thread in that time.
But now I have a question and problem.

I've got a batch 3 Apollo BTC Full Node that has been running flawlessly for years on Turbo.

About two years ago I got a batch 4 or 5 Apollo BTC Full node and that's when everything went wrong.

Long story short, as I was setting it up, I didn't realize that I cannot hot swap the HDMI monitor between both units so I thought the unit was broken, when nothing showed on screen.
I turned the new unit off and on, switching cables, and ALSO connecting BOTH MINERS via micro usb to micro usb cable on the OrangePi plug.

I thought that was one way to swap settings from one unit to another, not realizing that is only the case for hooking up a Standard Unit to a Full Node. But not with that cable ;(

Since that first initial setup phase, I have not gotten the miner to work.

The new Batch 4/5 miner blasts the fan at 100% on startup and I dont have a red light on the front.

I've copied the Bitcoin Blockchain from the old miner to the new miner's SSD and I bought a new SD card and flashed it with the newest OS.
Nothing. Fan Full speed and no light.

Doing a side by side from the old miner and and the new one, the new miner does NOT have a light on the bottom of the Pi, it does NOT have a light on the SSD board, and the ethernet light blinks yellow (or green?) but does not have two lights blinking and flashing.

Hash Board gets power from the PSU and part of the Pi works.

Are my boards damaged? What's the next step?

Thanks for any help.

Had a smiliar problem after changing the fan on the Orange pi. it was down to the plastic cable that connects the Pi to the NVME was very slighly loose and wanst giving a good connection! Had to give it a really good push in again. took ages to figure it all out  without it you get nothing apart from a light flashing on the pi's an the fans at full speed. Once connected probably i started to get a light again on nvme and it booted up.

hope this helps

Thanks for your suggestion. I opened the miner and looked at the cable connections. I removed the whole NVME board and cable and connected it again. Didnt fix the problem.
Full Fan and no red light on front.

A red light comes on, on the hash board near the fan plug. Ethernet port blinks green (no yellow)
I believe there is a red light that comes on, on top of the Orange Pi.

The NVME board does not have a red light on
The hasboard on my old unit has two green blinking lights near the Ethernet port, this newer broken unit does not have those lights active.
My old miner has a green light underneath the Pi, the new miner does not.

If the NVME board is broken, would that stop the miner from properly starting up, or is that just for the node?
Maybe the Pi isnt able to read the SD card?

What else could be an issue?

[Hamster123]

What is FutureBits' stance on the OP_RETURN debate? Would you give us an option to switch to Knots instead of Core for the node? And being able to filter out spam? I know it's an older version of Core right now but it's going to be updated eventually right?

Came to ask the same thing. Would like to run knots if possible.

[buyDFL]

I received my node on April 24th & haven't been able to sync it yet. I'm having the exact same issues with my Apollo II and I'm in Canada. I've done a few different troubleshooting things, including numerous reformats and I use a static IP as well. If the issue really is a bad batch of memory chips or production issue, what is FutureBit going to do to solve this issue? This is a lot of money to spend on a node (PLUS the expensive duty fee to get it across the border) to have this kind of mistake and their customer service response has been lacklustre! Very frustrating experience for my first BTC miner.

Another Feb 14th purchaser with the same issues I can see cited here by many in the thread.

The node simply will not connect and on the occasions when it did it never got past block 225K before restarting from scratch again.

Reformatted the SSD 4 times now, the same thing happens or I get Connection Refused error or There was an error getting stats for Node: ETIMEDOUT.

Miner is not running.
Port 8333 is open and reachable.
500mb/s up & down direct to premises fiber.
Tried both static and DHCP LAN addresses. Same issues.
I have reindexed. Same issues.
Unit now intermittently clicks when on and nothing is running (no miner, no node)

I'm an EU user so am starting to think the RMA process will be a painful and expensive experience for me along with the import taxes/duties due on this unit still to pay (i knew what i was getting into in respect to that of course).

I have logged a support request via the online form and email so I guess now I wait for a reply as the 14 day cut off to log an RMA is on Wednesday/Thursday since the unit was finally delivered to me out here, I take my support email as notice to FB in respect to logging a potential RMA.

So far it's been an extremely disappointing experience with my Apollo II. I run a few Bitaxes and was a Butterfly Labs OG back in the day so this isn't my first rodeo with mining hardware but my unit seems seriously buggy/flawed in how it's trying to operate. Starting to think I should've gone with Umbrel or Start9 in running my own node and simply got more Nerd/Bitaxes for hashing but like many here I wanted to support FB and have an all in one unit capable of hashing and running a node from one box. It's a great looking unit the Apollo II but if it cannot do the 1 main thing it was designed to do it's completely useless.

This was supposed to be a plug & play node/miner and so far after the 2 days I have had trying to get it to work correctly it has been far from it in that regard.

Just reply to your order email and will take care of it. As mentioned before in the current batch of controllers we are seeing a few % of them with bad memory chips (either production issue or actual bad chips), which is causing the node to fail to sync.

If you have gone through the normal troubleshooting (reflash your SD card, and reformat your node SSD drive by going to the settings and then extras menu) and it still fails to sync most likely thats whats going on.

If your in EU we can just send you the controller itself to swap out, its relatively straightforward to do.

[SysIO]

Same thing happened to me, I also received it on April 24 and it never synced, formatted seven times. Now when it freezes it looks like this:
https://ibb.co/rGMYm4kh
https://ibb.co/N6RD4hj6

[atomx2025]

Hello,

I reflashed the SD card on my Apollo II full node but cannot get past ~380,000 blocks. Connection status repeatedly goes on and offline. No errors, just warning when offline "warning Connection refused. Your node is not running." and when online I am connected to anywhere from 3-12/64 connections

I turned off the miner as suggested online, but still not progressing.

Submitted a request online with FutureBit 3 days ago with no response.

Anyone have any suggestions for what may be causing this?

Bad controller memory chips?  See post 2980.  

I see that Futurebit support response time hasn't improved, that's disappointing....

I just read your response in post #2971:

"Reformat the SSD:  Settings/Extras.

This was suggested to me by FB support (after waiting a week for a response, of course) and it worked for me.  Had the same issue: "Connection refused""

It's holding its connection and syncing...fingers crossed. Thank you @bubbAJoe.

It worked, and I am now fully synced and mining. Now I need to start running Bitcoin Knots. Thanks again

[bubbAJoe]

Hello,

I reflashed the SD card on my Apollo II full node but cannot get past ~380,000 blocks. Connection status repeatedly goes on and offline. No errors, just warning when offline "warning Connection refused. Your node is not running." and when online I am connected to anywhere from 3-12/64 connections

I turned off the miner as suggested online, but still not progressing.

Submitted a request online with FutureBit 3 days ago with no response.

Anyone have any suggestions for what may be causing this?

Bad controller memory chips?  See post 2980.  

I see that Futurebit support response time hasn't improved, that's disappointing....

I just read your response in post #2971:

"Reformat the SSD:  Settings/Extras.

This was suggested to me by FB support (after waiting a week for a response, of course) and it worked for me.  Had the same issue: "Connection refused""

It's holding its connection and syncing...fingers crossed. Thank you @bubbAJoe.

It worked, and I am now fully synced and mining. Now I need to start running Bitcoin Knots. Thanks again

Glad I could help!!
G;

[MakerAZ]

Is it possible to submerge Apollo II Full Node BTC Miner into an immersive cooling system?
If yes, please share step-by-step actions to remove the fans.

Immersive cooling is the inevitable future. Apollo must adapt it as soon as possible.

[atomx2025]

What is FutureBits' stance on the OP_RETURN debate? Would you give us an option to switch to Knots instead of Core for the node? And being able to filter out spam? I know it's an older version of Core right now but it's going to be updated eventually right?

Came to ask the same thing. Would like to run knots if possible.

Trying to find out how to run Bitcoin Knots on my Apollo II full node also. Any step by step instructions?

[heslo]

What is FutureBits' stance on the OP_RETURN debate? Would you give us an option to switch to Knots instead of Core for the node? And being able to filter out spam? I know it's an older version of Core right now but it's going to be updated eventually right?

Came to ask the same thing. Would like to run knots if possible.

Trying to find out how to run Bitcoin Knots on my Apollo II full node also. Any step by step instructions?

From what I understand there's a future update coming out that will let us chose our own node implementation software; I suggest waiting for that for ease of use

[Hamster123]

What is FutureBits' stance on the OP_RETURN debate? Would you give us an option to switch to Knots instead of Core for the node? And being able to filter out spam? I know it's an older version of Core right now but it's going to be updated eventually right?

Came to ask the same thing. Would like to run knots if possible.

Trying to find out how to run Bitcoin Knots on my Apollo II full node also. Any step by step instructions?

From what I understand there's a future update coming out that will let us chose our own node implementation software; I suggest waiting for that for ease of use

Great news! I appreciate the FutureBit team for a great product and look forward to this update.

[MakerAZ]

With Stratum V2 protocol getting more and more implementation is there a way with Apollo II Full Node to decide on my own block template? Where the block template is currently being configured? 

[MakerAZ]

My Apollo II Full Node has a static IP. How can I direct external miners to connect to my node and mine?