Topic: Official FutureBit Apollo LTC Image and Support thread - page 40. (Read 49535 times)

Any recommended replacement fan, like stock or even something a little more quiet?

Yep. Thanks again for the double confirmation! Although I was more concerned about the PCIe cables since they are not PCI. But since that e apparently stands for efficiency, I figured it would be fine.

Also got your email update! Looks good. Can’t wait for them to arrive!

Yes you can easily run 5 Apollos in Turbo mode with that PSU.

I ended up getting the 900-1200W Server PSU I linked above. It came with the breakout board and (10) PCIe cables, 16AWG 6pin to 6pin. Which I'm assuming should work. But I could also be wrong.

This modular Coursair PSU has 6 PCI power ports and runs silent with my two Apollos on ECO: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015YEI7LK/. It could run 6 Apollos on ECO.

Right on! Order has been sent through! Thanks!

Thanks for the reply. If it happens again, I'll let it sit until I get to lay eyes on it myself. I just re-flashed it recently to 1.1, so I'm less inclined to think it's the SD card. We'll see if it happens again, and I'll report back.

1) Depends on the Amp rating on your breakers...most are 15A, so you dont want to push them more than 1500 or so so 900 is more than fine
2/3/4) Yes these are server rated PSUs designed to be run at max load 24/7...you can easily run 4 Apollos @ 800 watts on it
5)Just make sure you buy two pcie cables per Apollo and plug both of them in running turbo

S1)Because the input socket is standard for all PSUs (C14) but people have diffrent plugs around the world so its easier to just buy the PSU and buy your own power cable locally
S2)US shipments will have power cord for sure, ill probably stock one or two major Euro cord types (UK/Eurozone)

Could be your SD card starting to corrupt, which a re-flash would fix. Can you have someone physically check the device and see if its stuck on a red light? That would indicate some sort of hardware fault (Fan issue/MCU or ASIC overheat etc).

Alright. I don’t know. I guess I’m antsy. - I settled on one, but now I think I’ve decided that 5 Apollo’s sounds like a good amount.

But before I put the plan I’ve thought up in action, I figure I should share it and get some feedback from you kind folks who, unlike me, know your stuff. And really it’s a simple plan. - Since I’m dedicating space for an Apollo, I figure I might as well dedicated the entire outlet to Apollo(s).

I’ve done some research and have some numbers, but they are bit confusing, so instead of confusing everyone, I’m just going state my assumption that in an ideal situation, to run 4 Apollo’s, you would need a PSU that delivers about 1200W. - As that would give each Apollo 200W each use while running at 70% of it’s rated load.

However, the highest PSU I’ve found that will run off of a 120V outlet is 900W.

https://www.parallelminer.com/product/platinum-psu-kit-hp-1200-watt-x8-for-asic-gpu-miner/

My thoughts are that it seems like it could be pushing it to run 4 Apollos on a 900 Watt PSU. And it would be running at full load, which should be fine. But I’m curious to hear what you experts think.

Which brings me to a few more questions:

(1) Hooking all this up to one outlet should be fine, right?
(2) Does this plan sound reasonable?
(3) Is that PSU actually good?
(4) Would a 900W PSU support 4 Apollo’s running turbo?
(5) Is there anything else I should know?

Side questions:
(S1) Why don’t power supplies come with power cords?
(S2) Does anyone know if the official Future Bit PSU will come with the power cord?

Hi everyone. I had a nice long run with my Apollo on 1.0, with few to no issues. About a month ago I moved it to a new location which I visit once a week or so, and upgraded it to 1.1. Since then, on two occasions it has stopped mining. Because this is a remote site, I put an IP-enabled power switch at the location so I could remotely power cycle equipment at the site. Unfortunately, my Apollo is connected to an HP server power supply with a breakout board, which requires me to *also* physically press a button to turn power back on.

Anyhow, on the first occasion I tried power cycling the IP-enabled power switch, forgetting that the breakout board meant that I couldn't get the system restarted. So I don't have much diagnosis to go on. But on the second occasion when it stopped mining, I happened to be at the remote site. Before power cycling it, I could not get into the Apollo at all -- it wouldn't respond to SSH, ping, etc. It was down hard. I can presume, but cannot confirm, that the first lockup was similar.

I've since rebooted it and it is now mining successfully again. Is there anything I can look at -- log files, journal, etc. -- that may help diagnose what caused it to lock up? I had several months of successful running on 1.0 with no issues, and now two lockups on 1.1 within a month. (It may be mere coincidence, I'm just pointing it out.)

I'd like to get to the bottom of it, since I won't have the ability to remotely power cycle this thing except on weekends... until my Futurebit PSU shows up :-)

There is almost zero chance you'll hit a Litecoin block on Zergpool if you're using their merged/multi-currency switching (for example, unless you specify a coin to mine with mc=LTC). Because of "profitability" your miner(s) will be served work for the other coins far more often than LTC, if you get assigned any LTC work at all.

Would this thinking also apply to solo mining on zergpool? with zerpool I've made 0.73 litecoin in 7 weeks with 3 miners running middle mode which is making some profit ($70 after power costs). And there is still a chance I'd hit a litecoin block. Would this be the same as going back to litcoinpool and making nothing until/if a block is found?

Right on!  Thanks everyone!

I think for now I'll stick to the single Apollo+PSU I have already ordered, and well see what happens after it arrives!

Youll earn the same solo mining vs pool if you have enough hash rate within a certain amount of time. Remember mining is probabilistic...on average though there is no difference, your just reducing your "variance" by pool mining.

This is why people solo mine with small devices, because your betting on that variance (ie hoping that you hit that block next week instead of in 14 years). You essentially are buying one lottery ticket every day that has a 1/~5k chance of winning, which are much nicer odds than the real lottery 

I'm currently using an HP server power supply and Parallel Miner breakout board: https://www.parallelminer.com/product/baikal-bk-n70-power-supply-750w-110-240v-80-gold-92-efficiency/ At 750W, it could support 3 to 6 Apollos, depending on how you run them. On ECO mode 5 would be pretty safe; on TURBO it could handle 3 with a good margin of safety. You'd have to measure your power draw, and do some math to be sure.

Thanks jstnryan, devincrypt, and whiteogre! All great information and also some differing points of views!

I'll skip on Moon Landers and focus on the Apollo. - Which, I have another question, right now I have an Apollo + PSU + Card combo ordered. However the PSU from FutureBit only supports 1 Apollo. Are there any PSU that support 2 or 3 Apollos at a time?


I also was going to give solo mining a shot since the returns seemed bigger… however after some quick basic math, it seems that at the current rates, you would earn half as much as you would with pool mining if it did indeed take 14+ years to mine your first block!

Expected Rewards
24 hours   0.00491237 LTC   0.67 USD

Solo Mining Stats
Expected Time per Block   5190 days 23 hours

That will vary and it can vary a lot. Most likely the LTC difficulty will still keep slowly increasing so the LTC/month/Apollo will decrease and eventually it comes to the value of LTC itself. The history graph below shows the 24 hour reward for the last 3 months from litecoinpool with a single Apollo running 24/7. As you can see, the LTC/day is decreasing but USD/day far more unpredictable.




From efficiency point of view, it's not worth it. The Apollo can be tuned to run around 1.1 W / MH/s where as the Moonlander 2s I had were somewhere around 2.5 W / MH/s. On the other hand, there's the learning aspect of getting the Moonlander running in the Apollo which may be worth something.

Q1: I have 2 Apollos and get about $40 from pool mining - based on the current LTC price of about $134. While this isn't enough to quit your job I look at it a different way. I would have to have $24,000 in a savings account paying 2% interest to make $40/month (30 days). So I leave my Apollos churning away without having to come up with that $24,000! Another item is the potential price growth of LTC. When I started less than a year ago it was $20ish.

The pool I use shows the # of blocks I captured, which currently = 0. If I would have been mining at a site that only paid when a block was found I'd be sitting here with $0.00!

Q2: Patience (from what I've been told). Solo mining does not mean you'll find a block easier. It will reduce your network latency.

Q3: I have 5 Moonlanders because I bought them pre-Apollo. They do their little part on a powered USB hub connected to a cheap Rasp. Pi. If you bought 10 Mooners they would crank out maybe 40 MH/s - and you'll need a few powered hubs connected to a computer. For the same price you can buy one standalone Apollo that, in Balanced mode, will give you 3x that for about the same price without all the extra hubs and computer.

You picked a good product, in my opinion, to get started. The price per hash-rate is higher than other miners, but in exchange you get compact physical size, somewhat lower noise level, ease of management, and energy efficiency. Assuming this is your first mining hardware, you could have done worse.


Your assertions are correct, but the choice to solo vs. pool are really a personal choice. The way I look at it, it's a decision between taking a chance and "winning big" in the solo mining lottery (the reward for finding an LTC block will far outweigh the cost of electricity and hardware for a long time, yet odds are against you "winning" anything), or taking the conservative pool route, and slowly "earning" back your investment. If you can dismiss the hardware costs, personally I find solo mining more exciting -- making money is nice, but it accumulates so slowly at this scale that it gets dull rather quickly.


The Apollo does not currently work as a full node. I won't speculate too much about how it will work when the FutureBit folk get it all sorted out, but I can almost guarantee the intention is that it will be a "node" and a "miner" at the same time (technically, they're the same thing, but that's another discussion). ASICs use specialty chips which would be useless if it didn't mine.

If you want to solo mine with the lowest barrier to entry, the way to go would be to find a mining pool which allows solo mining. "Solo mining pools" (despite the contradiction) are a sort of hybrid between pure solo mining and pool mining. The pool does the 'hard work' of setting up the hardware so all you have to to is point your miner at the pool (just like regular pool mining), and in exchange takes a small fee from the larger block reward.


A few people have had success running one or more Moonlanders from the USB port on the Apollo, but it's a more involved process than just managing the Apollo by itself. You'll probably need a separate powered USB hub, and you'll definitely need to "get your hands dirty" in the command line interface. I'd suggest playing around with just the Apollo first, before jumping into USB miners. There's plenty to learn from the Apollo, first, and then you can better decide which direction you want to go.