Topic: Official FutureBit Apollo BTC Software/Image and Support thread - page 41. (Read 49004 times)

This makes no sense. Mining solo, pooled, to your own node or not, is all possible without touching any kernel code. Also, this is literally a home mining product, why do you think anyone here is in favor of big farms?

As far as I can tell, while I do agree that it takes too long for software updates, they seem to try their best and in the interest of the customer.
If you're getting impatient, even completely replacing the operating system is not as daunting a task as you may think. My (probably outdated now) step-by-step guide is found here. Just use the latest version of everything and save the /boot/dtb/rockchip/rk3399-orangepi-4.dtb file to a USB disk before re-flashing the device, so you can put it back into the new OS (as described in the guide).

You quoted him. The chips and protocol are closed, i.e. kano can't just add support for the Apollo. He typically works together with the creator of a device (sidehack for GekkoScience products) who provides the required hardware information (I guess mostly protocol) so that he can write the driver.

Did you try to use cgminer?
What is stopping it from working with the Apollo?

I heard it's still not ready for release.
I bought the full node for solo mining but so far it's not worth the extra 300$.
My standard does as good.

Not sure what you mean here.

The literal meaning makes no sense because of course you don't need to modify the kernel to mine with the Apollo BTC.

If you mean that it's hard to use, well, it's simply a binary that you run on the command line. It's extremely simple to use, and has documentation.

As I mentioned before, it's a niche product, for very specific people. People that want to have a home miner that looks nice, and can be setup to mine in silence with relatively decent hash rates (1-2TH/s silently).

The only drawback that I didn't know beforehand is that the code is closed sourced. I wasn't aware of this fact before I bought it. I was expecting to use cgminer with it just like you can with the stick miners. Other than that, it has performed exactly as advertised.

I have a problem with an nvme drive that came with one of my Apollo Full package units.

I'm wondering it it is worth it trying to fix it or if I should just buy a new one, maybe larger.

The node in my first full package Apollo always worked and it had eventually downloaded the blockchain and is up to date.

The 2nd Full package Apollo never showed the 1TB nvme drive in Files and I ignored that for some months because I had more important things to do.

But now I got around to test it out and it seems there is something wrong with the 2nd nvme drive.

When I swap the good nvme drive into the other Apollo, it works and the node starts connecting and updating.

When I put the bad nvme drive into an external USB housing, it was not working properly. Could not format it, Linux disks utility reports the file system is OK but fails when trying to repair it. After a few attempts, it reported "Successful repair" or something like it and the nvme drive showed up in Files and I could read and write to it.

So then I used dd to image the good nvme drive and then restored the image to the bad nvme drive. It failed a couple of times but eventually succeeded. Now the bad nvme gets detected when it's in the USB external housing and also when I put it into an Apollo. I can read the files, it all looks the same as in the good nvme drive, but for some reason the node does not start. It does not seem to write anything at all to the bad nvme drive.
But I can create a new folder in the Bitcoin folder on the bad nvme drive, so write access seems OK.

When I put the good nvme drive into the same Apollo again, the node starts to connect immediately upon booting up.

Any idea what could be going on and how I can troubleshoot this?

I think I'll get a 2TB nvme drive and restore the image to that, then try if it works.

Why do you think that is so?

Well unless you read and write kernel code you have no business mining this should be told to people. Stay strong big farms!

When will direct node mining be offered? The full node package would be much more meaningful with mining the own node solo.

It's certainly a niche market but it's not a scam by any means.

It's a nice looking miner, perfect for home mining as you can set it up to run basically completely silent and still mine at 1 or 2TH/s.

Also it consumes a reasonable amount of energy, so your electricity bill won't be impacted too much.

Sure, an industrial miner will be more efficient, but they're not as polished looking as this one, they consume lots of more energy and they are incredibly noisy.

They are different products for different types of people.

What a pile of BS. Show me other home miner, which is quiet, works via USB, draws 100-200W, and fits in my PC case. Futurebit miner ticks all these criteria. Miner is inside a PC, I don't hear it at all with one single fan spinning slowly, other fans in that machine are making more noise.
I can't be more happier with home-friendly Futurebit miner. You keep that Antminer T9+ for yourself, I am not interested to keep 1500 Watts, 76 dB noise jet in my living room

I cant seem to download the OS image from the OP, it starts to load the page but never finishes. id there another location for the file?
nermind, finally got the page to load

My Apollo's mine using 77W/TH but a T9+ uses 136W/TH.

They are also much smaller, quieter and more versatile for use in locations where most would not want to run a T9+.

However, you are correct that most of the promises are not fulfilled, especially that it is insecure because software updates brick it, so the full node and lightning wallet etc are really a bad idea to run on a stock Apollo.

But, the build quality is very good as far as I can see. I'd call it a premium dev kit. It's true, it costs much more than what could be used instead, but would I ever have taken the plunge?

The Apollo's are doing wonders for my Linux skills and my knowledge about Bitcoin is improving much faster than before I started mining. I doubt I would have jumped in to mining without the Apollo offer.

I got the basics covered now (Armbian OS properly updating thanks to n0nce's guides and very effective additional cooling for quiet operation, with 3D printed parts made from fire retardant polycarbonate) and will continue to install a full note and a wallet and Lightning wallet and whatever else I want on the Apollo.

Now that I know a lot more, I am starting to buy larger used miners to continue building my skills tapping in to every bit of stranded energy that I can get my grubby paws on. 

Are you connecting all the standards to the Full package Apollo via USB?

I find that the USB connection on my Full packages is very sketchy.

You could try to connect just the faulty Standard unit, or swap the order in which connect them to USB, maybe another one starts to malfunction then.

When I suspect USB issues, I disconnect the USB hub before rebooting the Full package unit, then reconnect the USB hub and standard unit after it has booted up.

Changing the USB port also helps sometimes, there seems to be no rhyme nor rhythm to it, just that once one of the USB ports is having a dummy spit, it causes weird issues until it is allowed to power up without a load on it.

Ive have 3 standards and a full node.  they have all ran fine for quite awhile.  the full node and 1 standard are first batches and i have since upgraded the ssd.  like i said they have all ran fine for months.  one of the standards stopped and won't ever start back up.  i power it down and restart and it will go through the process but eventually it will just completely stop and stay that way.  tried restarting the whole thing numerous times as a reboot usually seems to fix any issues.  but not with this one standard unit.  any ideas?  thanks

dont buy this hardware over a year of empty promises futurebit as a company in new york should say it all. scam central this decive still doesnt do half of what it claimed it was going to do and this guy rolls in over a year later saying he rewrote a 5 year old softare as if java is out of data.

this is a pieced together miner mostly useless to anyone its not more efficient than miners from 2017 do not waste your money. just another crypto company taking advantage of regular people. let us see what happens next.

people paid a premium for a mediocre turn key solution and got a dev kit that doesnt relaly do anything you cant do on your own with a t9+ ($100 with power supply) and an old laptop. these are the companies that are killing crypto do not support futurebit.

Sounds like there is an issue with your nvme drive and node is syncing to the SD card. Have you reached out to support via email?

Where did you buy it (new or used)?
And did you try reflashing the microSD card?

This is not the first time I've heard something about the OS in Futurebit miners acting as if it was infected.. Like, taking down your home network? That should never happen with stock Linux OS.
Any Armbian release is also much smaller than 13.88GB, so that would support my hypothesis that this is pre-owned (and maybe pre-infected).

A long time ago, I made a bash script that sorts the folders of a particular path by largest usage, but it's on my PC somewhere, and I need to look for it. But it will do the job if he's only got the CLI - it only uses stock GNU commands.

Issue 2 could be due to Issue 1 still not resolved. Find out first what took entire SD card space. Ubuntu most likely has a visual tool to check free space, if not, do quick search to find out what tool you can use. I personally use Filelight tool to check occupied space by any file or folder. But with zero free space you may not be able to install it.

Until you get an official reply, my suggestion is to use a new SD card and 'etch' the FutureBit OS image on it and try again with that.

Sounds like the SD card is not operating properly, but I'm no expert.

On page 1 of this thread are instructions for how to write the FutureBit OS to an SD card. Make sure you pick the correct version (there are 2 versions) by looking at the OrangePi board to identify which one you have.