Topic: Official FutureBit Apollo BTC Software/Image and Support thread - page 58. (Read 48695 times)

Twitter, email, and this forum thread have been good support avenues so far and until the futurebit community gets into the 100s of thousands of people (which we hope!) there is no need to dedicated more resources to support currently. Company is run very lean and thats why we have survived 3 bear markets so far and can offer our products with very low margins.

With that being said product support will be revamped in the coming months with a dedicated support site that has most of the info in this thread + guides + faqs etc in a clean easy to use format.

We use mega because its the most crypto friendly host, sure they probably host more "sketchy" things on the internet than most but thats not Mega's fault, as long as your cross checking the checksums I post here and on mega and only downloading from links on here or futurebit.io your downloading the official images. I will start signing images for added security though.

satosato42
You brought some valid points. Perhaps jstefanop should address some of your concerns.

Regarding having to create forum account - to get support, you can always e-mail them, no need to participate in free discussion here if you don't want to. And if we were to move this to Telegram/Discord, account creation is required there also.
But still... Having "Official FutureBit Apollo BTC Software/Image and Support thread" here and its not officially listed on Futurebit website? How people should know about this official thread?

Last point I wanted to address:
Mega has been involved in what sketchy things?
One can host files anywhere on the planet, as long as hash matches, your file is 100% safe. jstefanop provides links to download together with hashes to check. You must check if file matches the hash, after you download it.

The dashboard should be at http://localhost:3000/, I believe.
May also just try http://localhost/ otherwise.

From what jstefanop last said, it is now safe to update the underlying OS independently from Futurebit updates. I'd just try; worst case, reflash the microSD.

I just flashed my SD card and restarted the Apollo BTC and now Ubuntu  wants to upgrade to 22.04. Should I install the update?

Also, when it booted back up after the flash, the dashboard never popped up. Is there a shortcut somewhere?

On the PC side with LEDGER Wallet, did/do you have the json file lss.exe RUNNING?  If so, what were your steps to get it to run on windows? Also did you have to open ports 8333 and 8332 on your router?

You are correct, I think I've seen mention of 80 to 90 degrees being safe here. I blow the dust out of mine every month or two and temps are around the 68 to 72 mark usually

I see two different temperatures in the GUI. I assume the one under "Hashboards" pertains to the hashboard and the one at the top is the OrangePi CPU? Is that correct?

Here's a screencap of what I'm referring to:
https://imgur.com/a/HKu2n7o

If so, what are the specs for the Futurebit in terms of how high these temps can go without it being an issue?

"Why is Futurebit using this forum as it's support and instruction/manual medium?"
Why not? What's wrong with it? This forum is just fine to communicate with support. And they have e-mail support also. In fact, I used e-mail support when I had to RMA the NVMe drive and it was quick and painless. \
For starters, it's not specified anywhere on their website that this is the "official" support platform. Second, a forum is a terrible place to handle support as evidenced by the over 78 pages on this thread. Third, it requires a user to create an account for a forum they may not want to create an account in.

"Why don't you guys have the instructions in this thread on your website?!"
Here, I agree. Instruction manual should be in PDF form available on the website. Maybe it is, but I've never seen or used it.
Agreed. It's not on their website.

"Why not have a Telegram or Matrix channel as well?"
Why would they? Managing and moderating Telegram/matrix channels cost time which Futurebit devs don't have.
You can outsource your moderation just like how it's being outsourced to whoever is moderating this thread. Moderation on a forum and on Telegram/Matrix is the same. There's a reason most other bitcoin related companies have Telegram/Matrix channels. It makes more sense.

"Where's the Github repo where we can submit issues for the Futurebit software"
https://github.com/jstefanop/Apollo-Miner-Binaries/issues
This is for miner binary only though. Feel free to report issue here if its regarding miner binary.
Is this the same as the OS or GUI interface software?

"download updates instead of having to download it from Mega?"
What's wrong with Mega? Did it not work, you couldn't download or something?
Mega has been involved in quite a few sketchy things in the past and so downloading files from their site in not my preferred method of choice for getting essential files that a manufacturer/company should be providing on their site, self hosted.

To sum up, I agree with your points that support could be much more modern, but this is not strictly necessary for product to be a success. So I respect devs choice to do what they want in that regard. As long as I am happy with communication (which I am). And product itself works perfectly fine.
The points I've brought up have negatively impacted my perception of Futurebit as a company. Whether you agree or not, that's just a fact. Therefore, I would argue that while strictly not necessary, these things are easy to do, standard across the industry, and would greatly improve Futurebit's brand which in the end is what will determine it's success once competition starts entering the market which it inevitably will. They've got first to market advantage which can only help for so long and I feel they're squandering it by not getting their shyt together in these basic things.

Lots of questions for someone first time here. Let me try to help.
"Why is Futurebit using this forum as it's support and instruction/manual medium?"
Why not? What's wrong with it? This forum is just fine to communicate with support. And they have e-mail support also. In fact, I used e-mail support when I had to RMA the NVMe drive and it was quick and painless.

"Why don't you guys have the instructions in this thread on your website?!"
Here, I agree. Instruction manual should be in PDF form available on the website. Maybe it is, but I've never seen or used it.

"Why not have a Telegram or Matrix channel as well?"
Why would they? Managing and moderating Telegram/matrix channels cost time which Futurebit devs don't have.

"Where's the Github repo where we can submit issues for the Futurebit software"
https://github.com/jstefanop/Apollo-Miner-Binaries/issues
This is for miner binary only though. Feel free to report issue here if its regarding miner binary.

"download updates instead of having to download it from Mega?"
What's wrong with Mega? Did it not work, you couldn't download or something?

To sum up, I agree with your points that support could be much more modern, but this is not strictly necessary for product to be a success. So I respect devs choice to do what they want in that regard. As long as I am happy with communication (which I am). And product itself works perfectly fine.

I have a batch1 and updated to v0.3.4 without issue. I didn't see the post about flashing the drive.
Since I was able to update to the latest version do I still need to flash?

With the latest release, is it safe to update software on our system without affecting operations?  I seen that Ubuntu 22.04.1 is available for upgrade.

after flashing to new mc1 image the miner is now running 15 degrees hotter, why?
prior temp was 70 degrees now temp after flash is 85 degrees

Why is Futurebit using this forum as it's support and instruction/manual medium? Why don't you guys have the instructions in this thread on your website?! Why not have a Telegram or Matrix channel as well? Where's the Github repo where we can submit issues for the Futurebit software and download updates instead of having to download it from Mega?

The new image resets the futurebit user password to the password you set in your dashboard setup. There is also a known bug if you use a special character in your password, so please use just alphanumeric password until we fix this bug.

Prior to the new MCU1 image flash, I was able to remotely connect sparrow to the node with and without TOR enabled (per configuration settings in a previous reply). Post-flash I'm unable to connect wallet via RPC or by SSH with puTTY. I've tried every combination of username (futurebit & futurebitbtc) and password (default futurebit123, custom PW created in initial setup and the Bitcoin RPC password as shown in the settings/node config) with no luck. I suspect it may have something to do with a username/password issue during initial setup because when I Log-Out of the dashboard or the OS, I'm immediately unable to log back in using any of the possible password options. Seemingly the only way around this is to power off and restart. I've reflashed image and setup 4x and keep running into these issues. Any thoughts?

I just received my new batch 4 order. 1 full unit and 3 standard miners. The full unit and 2 standard units work perfectly. 1 standard unit is not showing up on my dashboard and has the static red light. I have given it hours to load, rebooted, restarted and nothing seems to work. It will start to blink like the others but just returns to the solid red light. Anyone else having this issue?

totally new to mining.

just got my apollo about a week ago (batch 4). Is it normal for it to disconnect from the WIFI every day? I have to manually reconnect it every evening. Sometimes I don't notice it for over an hour.

This evening it stopped sending data to the pool. never disconnected from the WIFI, but in order to fix it, I had to turn the miner off completely, and then turn it on again.

Yea I should update the instruction and specify you need a separate computer and you need to physically flash the SD card by removing it from the apollo so its clear...

Satayasat- while perhaps obvious to most, those of us less technically inclined read the MCU Flash Instructions verbatim and ran into the same problem: Apollo wont run the balena-etcher-electron-1.7.9-linux-ia32 file. Power down the Apollo, remove the microSD card and perfom the flash instructions on a different computer. Re-install, power on, and re-configure passwords and settings as on initial device setup.