Topic: Official FutureBit Apollo BTC Software/Image and Support thread - page 118. (Read 48581 times)

Ok so I've been playing around with the Custom Mode on the miner for a few hours and seem to have hit the sweet spot on my miner, I think.

Power 75%
Freq  60

Getting 2.8 - 2.9 Th for 190w. According to the GUI its 68w/Th which is the most efficient high speed I can get.

Whats everyone elses?

Adding my vote for this enhancement.

I have 1 full and 2 standard units, and every 24 - 48 hours one of them goes to zero across the board but there is no way to tell which one it is because all three are still running (fans full speed and hot).

Stopping and restarting via the dashboard fixes it.

Definitely needed. An auto restart feature is necessary.

Another option request. it seems my internet may drop sometimes because the miner will stop. Its hard wired and it seems every couple of days it stops mining. I just have to start again.

So can some sort of auto-restart option be added?

Here's a fringe request but would be cool if you could implement it. Any chance you can make a scheduler for the mining side on the full unit so you can just set and forget it to only run through certain hours?

Yea running it on windoze. Nothing runs well on windows anymore. I found that out with the Gekko Gear. Speedily switched back to a Raspi

Running on windows and keep getting "WAITING FOR USB COM1" error iterated over and over while nothing happens. It can find the pool etc. Guessing this is some simple operator error?

Adding to this a bit.

I am running this on 95% with the frequency at 54 and was getting around 3.5-3.6 TH/s on the pool. I tried it at 60 but the TH's rate fell to 2 TH range for a bit so I bumped it down. I've also been messing around with the Newpac USB miners and one of the things I've noticed while overclocking those is that it seems each chip had its own ideal frequency range. Some chips run faster at 485 MHz than at 515 MHz for example. I suspect these might be similar. Gonna try 55,56, 57 next and see which level it runs best at. Afterwards I think I will decrease the power range a bit, I just tested it at 90% and saw the same or similar TH/s results. Note - I added 2 fans that I connected through USB and currently get temps of ~55° C to 65° C. Normally the temps were 65° C - 73° C so I think they easily drop the temps by 5-10° or so. I felt adding it would make the stock fan work less hard over time and operate more efficiently.

PSA for anyone that wants to get a cheaper PSU that I can confirm works with these:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/173879120490 -  Dell 03MJJP ~$20 (after tax/shipping)
https://www.ebay.com/itm/304058899205 - Breakout board ~$20 (after tax/shipping)

According to my calculations, this can actually host the full package + 2 standard units all overclocked to the max by itself for less than $40-$50 after cables. It seems these pull about 270W maxed out so if you used this PSU to run 3 units you should be under the 900W this puts out on a standard plug. As always DYOR but just wanted to put it on people's radar.

I am currently running this + 2 gekkoscience usb mining hubs with no issues. I was initially worried the PSU might be too loud since its from a server but it seems the entire set up is surprisingly quiet.  When I move it to balanced the PSU slows down the fan speed as well and gets even quieter so that's pretty cool & unexpected. You can't hear it at all over the AC.

Is there an easy way to get the Bitcoin Core GUI installed? or use electrum? I want to try to use the node to broadcast a transaction. ideally it would be cool to be able to use it with a hardware wallet that already has bitcoin in it.

I installed bitcoin core using the "snap" program listed on the bitcoin.org website but there doesn't seem to be any program actually installed after I did this, nor any instructions on how to run bitcoin core after its installed.

Sorry I've never actually used a node and I am a complete Linux/Ubuntu noob.

edit:

I rebooted and the Bitcoin core icon showed up but now when I start it up i tried selecting "/media/nvme/Bitcoin" as the directory but that did not appear selectable on the Bitcoin core installer. I typed it in manually hoping it would find it because the folder is definitely there if I look locally but the Bitcoin core program doesn't seem to find it and now just says "Error initializing settings: failed saving settings file: unable to open settings file: /media/nvme/Bitcoin settings.json.tmp for writing"

I tried editing the permissions but it says that I am not the owner so not sure what to do now.

Update button will show up on the top bar of the UI.

I can answer part of your question.

I have 1 full node and 2 standard units and I have each one running on a it's own 500watt power supply.
I have power set to MAX (95%) and frequency set to MAX (60).
Max power usage is 277, 270 & 268.
I'm getting ~3.8 Th/s on all three.
Total hashrate on the mining pool is 11-12Th/s


I've had them running for 1 week and so far they have not caught fire.  :-)

I have 3 more standard units coming from the 2nd batch and I assume they will run fine plugged in to the powered USB hub.

Thanks for the great Poduct, these have exceeded all of my expectations!


I have a couple questions, that although they have been mentioned on here, no definitive answers were given.

How many Slave/USB ASICS can the main unit control?  

Right now I have 2 Full node/controls units with SBC and 6 Slave/USB ASICS.  

Can I remove or disable the SBC to use the second contoller as a slave/USB ASIC?  Possibly just plug into first control unit?

The second question will be a tricky one..  

I am upgrading power supplies on all ASICs and I want to maximize the hashrate but definitely don't want to blow them up.  SOO, each ASIC will have 375w available, I want to maximize Hashrate without killing the hardware.  FYI I am using HP Titanium(up to 96% effiecient) server power supplies w/PCIe breakout boards.

In the Custom Miner mode can I put the power all the way to max as I have 375w availbale to each unit?

 I guess Frequency will be a try and see..  Inch it up until things start acting odd?

Last thing I want to do is melt the  hardware down, but I want to utilize the extra wattage in the most efficeint way possible.

Third thing, I have a linux box(Mint Mate) running full nodes for Digibyte, Decred, and soon Unibright.  Would I be better served using that as my controller for the Futurebit ASICs?

Thanks again for an amazing product!!

$DGB

Happily running my new Apollo, I was wondering a few things, forgive any ignorance, not very knowledgeable with code level stuff.
Even though it’s a full computer, but since it’s running the miner, is it’s possible to run additional miner software on the full unit?
Or, will there, could there, ever be drivers released so to recognize plugging in a usb miner(s) for some additional hash? Antminer, Gekko, etc?
Maybe even recognize a Moonlander, or two? lol

Hows the update going to be implemented? Simple update button in the UI or will it require a reflash of the SD Card?

Yea make sure you are powering down the unit though a monitor using the built in system shutdown ( I know it sucks right now with the WebUI shutdown function not working), otherwise there is a high chance your SSD with the node will get corrupted. Most of the support cases so far with this issue is because of hard shutdowns. Or at the very least you can shutdown the node manually through the webui, then power off the device if you dont want to hook up a monitor. At least the node will properly shutdown and save its state that way and should minimize any corruption issues.

Hopefully well have the update out in the next few days.

Your are right. Just tested It works

Thanks

if you reflash the micro sd card the miner will reset to defaults and SSD drive will resync itself. Image is in first thread I think