Topic: Official FutureBit Apollo BTC Software/Image and Support thread - page 6. (Read 52476 times)

I truely appreciate all the responses I get from the members, but I feel myself completely dumb as I cannot understand this Best Share, Accepted Share and Rejected Share terms.

Mining BTC is a LOTTERY.
It doesn't matter if I mine with 200 EH/s speed mining farm or 5TH/s home Apollo miner. In BOTH cases, mining BTC is a LOTTERY. As such I either WIN or LOSE roughly every 10 min.

Of course as higher my hashrate as bigger my chances to find a valid block within 10 min, I do understand that.

Now, what Apollo's or ANY miner's Dashboard would show me to be informative and meaningful?
1) Hardware health status: CPU and Miner Temp, Fan Speed, Power Consumption
2) Software health status: Errors, Issues, Bugs, Latest version, Updates, etc.
3) Hashrate speed and its Fluctuations over time.

As for assessing a performance of any miner it should come down to: What is the MOST DIFFICULT Hash found by the miner, i.e. the biggest number of leading zero's and the comparison of that number to the network's current difficulty requirements.


To my understanding EVERY SINGLE HASH irrespective of the number of leading zeros, i.e. its difficulty, is a Proof of Work. It means EVERY SINGLE HASH is the Accepted Share. Rejected Share could be hashes that simply failed validation.

This may be a topic for a separate discussion, but mentioning it here might help my understanding. I honestly get confused when the network's difficulty number increases. How come? Harder difficulty would mean there are LESSER valid hashes within the range of 2^256-1.

Please shed some light on this.

Yes. Or current network difficulty.  Recently, network difficulty has been ~90-100T, but has jumped to ~104T this week.


Well, there was a block recorded by an Apollo II on Oct 28, when the network difficulty was ~96T, so that's the max so far.

https://mempool.space/block/0000000000000000000182972ccbfabb41ec5c385540dcab2f48c75cf73a695f?goal=0_8330f4b43c-4e94bca21d-290920248&mc_cid=4e94bca21d&mc_eid=b9ceea1eb1

When Apollo shows 13B Best Shares, does it mean that I managed to pull 13B winning tickets, that I managed to FIND a Valid Block at the current network difficulty level BUT did it too late?
NO its more like you matched 13 Billion of the 103 Trillion numbers needed to win.  

So the number of Best Shares that Apollo shows contains only the Best Shares for my latest attempt (last 10 min) or ALL historical Best Shares since I started mining?
All historical

You mentioned 12B accepted shares so your Apollo managed to pull 12B loser tickets and 13B is your highest loser ticket.

In a pool this would be your proof of work and would be used to calculate the reward.
For solo mining these values are for information purposes only. Except for rejected shares, too many may indicate an error.

From Venice.ai Pro:

Here's a brief explanation of "Best Share" on the Apollo Miner solo mining dashboard:
* The "Best Share" refers to the most valuable share submitted by your miner to the network.
* It represents the highest difficulty share your miner has found and submitted.
* This value is typically measured in hash rate or difficulty units.
* A higher "Best Share" value indicates that your miner has found a share that is closer to the actual block solution, which can increase your chances of solving a block and earning rewards.
* The "Best Share" can give you an idea of your miner's performance and potential for finding a block.

The highest share shown on our solo mining dashboards represents the historical best share submitted. My units have shown a "best share" of 55,748,041,309 for quite some time (currently at 43,592,290,933 accepted shares).

Hope this helps.

So the number of Best Shares that Apollo shows contains only the Best Shares for my latest attempt (last 10 min) or ALL historical Best Shares since I started mining?

When Apollo shows 13B Best Shares, does it mean that I managed to pull 13B winning tickets, that I managed to FIND a Valid Block at the current network difficulty level BUT did it too late?

This is clear.

Basically in simple terms, think you're playing the lotto and buy one ticket. You have a chance of winning with just one ticket, but your odds are very low, and they increase if you play with more tickets. (the big mining pools and farms are playing with millions of tickets).

Now think if they pull the winning numbers first, ( the difference is instead of only 6 numbers to win, the winning correct numbers needed are thousands trillions) and we need to buy random tickets looking for the right combination of numbers before anybody else does. Your one ticket hits 1 number, not enough to win, but that is your best ticket, now you buy another, and you hit 3 numbers, this is still not enough to win, but this is your new best. Every new block @10 mins is a new lotto drawing, your old best number from another block means nothing toward the new block other than a way to show how close you had come to winning. The lower your hash rate is like only buying one ticket compared to the mega farms/pool buying millions of tickets every 10 minutes or for every new block.

The winning combination is @the new difficulty number (the winning lotto numbers). Now it's set up to average a block/winner every 10 mins, so if there is a winner faster the difficulty amount of numbers increase to make it harder to find the right numbers and if it goes longer than 10 min the difficulty amount of numbers goes down. So as mining hash rate increases, block speed will as well, and it makes the difficulty go up. If mining hash rate drops so will the difficulty to tray and bring the average block finding back to the 10 min. (This adjustment happens only so often)

Thank you for your reply, but honeslty that equation is not clear to me.
Does it mean my best share number should be between 90 and 100T to have a chance to find a valid block?
And what is the maximum Best Share number that a single Apollo II Full Node Miner can achieve?

BestShare=Network Difficulty=90-100T=Block

Mine is just 13B. I still cannot understand what this Best Share number is all about?
I also have 12B accepted shares, which tells me nothing.
I am mining SOLO with Apollo II Full Node.

my new best share 256,887,704,896
still a long ways away I know, but glad to see higher numbers.

I agree mine acts the same way as yours. Even the case runs cooler sideways with the heatsink pointed up.

I copied the part of the email they sent out about placing it sideways ( my first thought was your post):

Running your Apollo II in Balanced or Turbo mode requires more airflow over the top slots to keep the power supply cooled with our passive airflow technology.

The Apollo II is designed to be run on a flat surface that restricts the amount of airflow that goes in through the bottom vs top this means:

1) DO NOT place your unit sideways. While this might reduce fan RPMs slightly it will cause your power supply to over heat due to not enough airflow through the top. This is also the case for shelves that have wire mesh or not a flat solid surface

I never saw that e-mail.  my experience is the CPU/system temp is fine.  System temp doesn't go above 70.  Fan does increase on its own. without the miner running.  Airflow is the key to cooling and those bottom vents and spacing in original design don't give enough airflow trapping heat causing fan to run faster.   All dust falling to the tabletop get sucked into those vents.   To lay flat there needs to be at least 1" of space below apollo to allow for proper airflow volume as fan speed increases.  The top vents would have to be double the width.  Fan speed and sound is always my key indicator to how efficient a system is running.  Faster fans means higher temps needing more airflow.  In this case constricted airflow needs higher fan speeds.

When my miner is running system temp is 43C with cpu idle and miner at 68-70C.  3600RPM.  This higher fan speed seems to cool the cpu fine.  Laying the apollo flat in eco mode works fine and the fan speed is quiet enough.

RE running miner outside.  Other than ambient humidity and environment.  I think the Miner should run fine in turbo mode and keep the miners cool. Fan speed is key.  You need faster fan speeds to move the air to cool the miners.  For longevity of the miner processor i think those temps should stay below 75C.  With antminers those fans would keep the miner temp between 60 and 70C.   I ran antminers outside in the garage and they ran great with temps below 60F.  Lower fan speeds keeping system cool.  Running these fans at full speed helps move maximum airflow but does put stress on those fans causing higher risk of failure.  Running at 3600RPM/half speed and the fans can last a long time with very low risk of failure.   Always listen to the sounds your fans are making.

Case Study:  I just turned my apollo down, lay flat running in balanced mode.  Temp increase to 72-74C on the miner.  Fan increase 4000 to 4500RPM.  No change in system temp 43C. So that email suggestion is a big fail on my apollo II.  Dust is building up on top slots after 2 months of running so will need to be blown clean soon. Bottom slots on the side operation seem to be clean and cool.  Isn't the bottom where the raspberry pi CPU is located?

I want to run my miner in Turbo mode most of the time. Apart from it is beeing noisy at that mode, my appartment is quite warm during winter season. Is it OK if I operate the miner outdoors? Outside temperature during winter can range from 15 Degrees C to close to 0. We may have a few days below 0 in February. Humidity is below 80%.
I will locate the miner in my balcony and will fully protect it from any dust and rain.

eagleye did you get the email from FutureBit telling us not to run them on their side? My temps are defiantly lower on its side but they say it could not properly cool the psu.

Fan speed and air flow and temp.  My unit runs balanced at 69-71 deg. C. 3600RPM optimal.  When it gets hotter RPM jumps to 3800 rpm.  That is optimal to me.  Also I have my unit turned sideways to get maximum airflow through the bottom(now the side)vents.  These bottom vents give maximum cooling flow.  Top vents are too restrictive.  In ECO mode they are ok.  Fan runs too hard when all the vents are faced down.  Room temp 74-78 deg F.   1" stilts or a open frame stand to lay flat

Turbo mode works, but then it sounds like an antminer with turbo fan.  
3600RPM is ok.  3800RPM is  a little loud and happens when ambient temp increases above 78F.  Check and blow dust out every 2 / 3 months.  The fan speed would also indicate this when it increases unexpectedly at lower temps. Listen to your fan as a heartbeat telling you how your miner is doing.

I haven't been able to leave my apollo II alone for extended periods.  My unit is still not stable enough.  I've had occasional power brownout surge knock my apollo offline and shut down running high speed fan.  No remote reset or monitoring beyond the firewall for me.  It can run 7 days non-stop with no issues then the node crashes after only 1 or 2 days of a reboot.
v2.0.6 didn't work for me.  Apollo would freeze.  Crashed more often than v2.0.5.  Still running v2.0.5 stable.

Thanks, I did see this, I'm also wondering if there is a recommended temp range per mode (ECO, BALANCED, etc.), not just a max of 80c. I'm trying to maximize the lifespan and not just try to stay under the max.
jstefanop, any thoughts?

Check out the post from jstefanop on August 16, 2024-  #2397 https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.64433384
He addresses some heat limits there.

Cheers!

Hello, is there a recommended max Temperature for the Apollo 2 full node and miners that is a healthy steady temp for long-term use? Asking because I'd like to try to maintain BALANCED mode as much as possible, but if the indoor temp increases, I would just reduce it to ECO until indoor temp drops again.

Whoa . . . when you say "board being in the 80s on eco mode" I assume you're referring to the temp being in the 80's as in Celsius (not Fahrenheit). If so, that's too high and you are probably over-heating. And that's why it's stopping. Sounds to me like it's repair time if it's not already cooked. You might want to reach out to Futurebit for a fan replacement.

Cheers!