Topic: Announcing the FutureBit Apollo BTC - A Full Node/Mining Platform for the Home! - page 26. (Read 15828 times)

I'm in at #3410.

@jstefanop odd question, the address I am having it shipped to, if it gets delayed past May how difficult is it to change the shipping address? The house is up up for sale and although I doubt it, there might not be anyone there past late May.

Also, is the controller a custom spun device or something off the shelf.

-Dave

order 3416  so it looks like he has at least 24 buyers. I got a full unit.

Order placed as well! 

I WILL order full package for 600.

At jstefanop good luck with this.

Mid April correct?

The mostly blue SBC board model on the site looks awfully lot like an Orange Pi 4. If it is, does it come with the onboard microphone still attached?

I just got a reply aswell saying the same thing. So it all falls down to how much shipping will cost from each continent, as far as I'm aware the shipping cost gets taken into account when paying duties.

Just got email back

I charge ex-VAT for UK customers (export outside EU similar to a export to Switzerland). I add a customs declaration and a commercial invoice. You will probably get charged import VAT locally in UK cause the Amount will be greater than 400 GBP. Below GBP 1000 there is no customs inspection and certificate of origin necessary

Most of these details are on the site, but the processor is a 6 Core Cortex A72 ARM running at 2GHz. Yes OS is running kernel 5.9, and is an ubuntu flavor. Wifi is a dual band AC chip, so should work with any setup you have.

On the storage front we had to balance storage and price. 500gig is enough for ~2 years or BTC storage, and it is upgradable so figured its better to go on the low end now with lower price and users can upgrade at half the price in 2 years from now. Controller has USB 3 so fast SSD external storage can be used as well.


From what he has told me brexit caused a special deal with EU that makes it easier to ship to UK than even before. I think its some clause that its tax free under 1k Euro.

Firstly good to see the NO PSU option included and relevant price adjustment.

Secondly, I'm curious about this aswell. I would assume the US and EU would be dealt with the same by UK Border/Customs. So to be honest its probably a 50/50 who to buy from. I have however emailed bitshopper.de directly through their website to clarify the issue as currently I would have to pay 19% tax plus I would assume I would then have to pay 20%vat once it arrioved in the UK, essentially paying double tax. If I were to order from the US I would only pay it once.

I would imagine with Brexit it would be cheaper to order and import from US to the UK now than order from EU.

This looks really cool; would love an Au/NZ reseller, definitely would buy then

Excellent, thanks. They also updated their webpage to reflect that. Everything clear now.

I am planning to buy version without controller. Will this run on Raspberry Pi? What software is being used to run it? Is it normal bfgminer/cgminer etc?

Looks great.  Love the power consumption to hashing ratio. What is your expected production run for first batch???

I think bitshopper already sent out an email, his listing will go live at the same time, so Midnight central Europe time (GMT +1)

Thanks jstefanop for another great product!

bitshopper.de will launch sales at the same time as US, or there will be some delay? As I am not sure if I should buy directly from Futurebit on the launch day, or wait for bitshopper.de, don't want to miss it when it's sold out.

I'm really excited about preordering one of these, they look like a lot of fun! Thanks jstefanop.

There is already a unit only option for the standard hashboard, will be adding no PSU option on the Full Package with controller and SSD.

From what I understand it is now easier to ship between EU/UK for anything under 1k. Either way it should be way less cost to order directly through bitshopper than through our site. Shipping will be 40 USD + with fedex plus whatever you import charges are.

Seeing as this is the official thread I will just add the requests from other users here:-

Can there be a unit only option (no psu)??   As most of the community already own enough PSU's so paying additional tax & postage doesn't.

Also nice to see there is a EU/UK distributor. Although not sure how the shipping thing works between the EU and UK yet (I'm in the UK)

RESERVED

Hey guys, super excited to finally be entering the Bitcoin market. As most of you know the team and I have been building and refining our home mining system/platform over the years, and our number one request has been when we will release a Bitcoin product. I believe the Apollo has finally matured enough where our production capabilities and hardware has reached a point where it makes sense to release our Bitcoin version.

The FutureBit Apollo BTC has been in development for over a year now, and our focus from the beginning was to create a unified platform where anyone can run any aspect of the Bitcoin system in one easy to use, quiet, lower power device, and I think we have achieved that. Our platform essentially combines the 300-800 dollar node market, with a controller that is more capable, and a mining hashboard on top for "free."

This aspect is critical to why I founded Futurebit and its mission. Almost no new users to the Bitcoin space run nodes or mine, and both are important in maintaining Bitcoin's independence and decentralized nature. We wanted to create a device that combined both these features in a seamless zero-config way, and offered utility beyond just sitting there looking pretty running a node or mining. The powerful SBC with our custom designed NVMe drive bay can host a Full Bitcoin node and run almost any Bitcoin Application we can throw at it. We hope more Bitcoin devs join our Platform in the future and provide even more utility to the device.

On the mining side we wanted to build a low cost hashboard and cram as much hash power within the thermal and noise limits that make sense for a home setting. Those limits were 1) not exceed power that would have any significant impact on anyones electric bill (sub 200 watt), and 2) Run quiet in anyones home/apt. In ECO mode (~125 watts 2TH/S) our custom designed fan runs under 2k RPM and is almost inaudible. In Turbo mode (~200 watts 3TH/s) its no louder than a typical desktop system.

These design choices were made so we can start to tell Bitcoin users interested in the future of the ecosystem that there are solutions where everyone can be mining, and not worry about what the ROI or power costs are, and only care that the are accumulating Bitcoin in a cost effective way over the long term and securing the network.

I really hope we get to the future where the network is secured by 10's of millions of individual devices like mine and others, instead of the of the couple hundred centralized mines that secure > 50% of Bitcoin's hashrate today.

Im not going to post all the details of the device here as almost everything is covered in the below two links:

https://www.futurebit.io
https://shop.futurebit.io/products/pre-order-apollo-btc-a-bitcoin-asic-miner-and-desktop-class-computer-running-a-full-node-and-much-more-batch-1-ships-in-late-april-to-may?variant=33404796928099

Pre-Order starts this Friday at 6PM EST at the above link. Well be handling all NA orders there directly. Happy to also announce that Bitshopper.de will be participating in the Pre-Order, and will be handling all UK/Euro orders directly.

Also might have an Australia/NZ distributor up for pre-order but not sure yet.

For Rest of World we have really good Fedex rates and can almost ship anywhere. Obviously check with your local laws for import costs/fees etc.

Shipping will start at the end of April into May barring and major delays. Design is complete and we have running prototypes, and all major components including ASICs are on order. We have learned a bunch from our past launches and have built thousands of units so we dont anticipate any major setbacks. As always this is a pre-order so expect delays regardless.

Ill keep this thread up as the main community discussion/question thread for the time being, and open a support thread when we have our OS and support docs finalized in the coming weeks.

Even if this is not the device for you hope all you guys at least appreciate what we are trying to do and spread the word out to people that might be interested, especially newer users that would never consider mining or running a full node!

Thanks for all your support over the years...its been a wild ride and hope it gets even crazier in the future