Topic: Official FutureBit Apollo LTC Image and Support thread - page 41. (Read 49938 times)

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.

Hey there,

No idea what I'm doing, however I got excited and preordered an Apollo last night! Woke up this morning and realized I probably should have waited to order until after I had read through this thread. lol

But I must say, I ordered it is because I've been curious about this whole mining thing for awhile. And the fact that its Litecoin, (which I assume has a much lower difficulty to mine than bitcoin) relatively cheap, and simple to set up sold me on it! - Also, I have "free" electricity, so why not?

Anyways, I have a few questions:

Q1: Solo Mining vs Pool Mining

From what I've read, pool mining seems to be the way to go with these, right? (Since the hashing power is rather limited and the potential of finding a block is much smaller.)

However it seems that with pool mining, you'll earn something roughly like .11 LTC/month/Apollo right? - While if you solo mine, you earn nothing unless you find the block, at which point you earn the 25 LTC reward. At least until the halving.

Is that correct? If so, then the choice to pool vs solo mine really comes down to if you want a stable income vs gambling to find the block?
-

Q2: What would be the optimal way to Solo mine with the Apollo?
From what I've seen, it doesn't look like full node support is currently available? But when it is, how will that work? Would you need to dedicate an Apollo solely to act as a node (and therefore it doesn't mine?)
-

Q3: Moon Landers…?
I saw someone mention these things a few times and it took me longer than I care to admit to realize what they were… Because I thought they were just little foam pads/skis they put under their Apollo. lol

That said, are they worth picking up and plugging into the Apollo? If so, what's the ideal Lands per Apollo? And is the USB on the Apollo have any other plans in store?

Thanks!

You should probably start with reading the Moonlander Support thread here and posting your question there...this thread is for Apollo support.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/official-futurebit-moonlander-2-driver-and-support-thread-2420357

There is no need to worry about MCU temps (unless they are over 80c). These are designed so you don't have to worry about crazy cooling solutions to keep them cool.

I have my 2 Apollos on a wire rack shelf. Turns out blowing air from the bottom-up cools the miners significantly - more than other options I tried, including USB fans blowing into the front of each, window fan blowing directly into the fronts, etc. Bottom-up is best. Thanks for your feedback!

The H2+ on the Orange Pi Zero is 14x14mm. There's probably no harm in oversizing the heatsink, except that the micro-USB connector may be in the way. The real issue is available height, since it is mounted below the hash board.

You may want to consider a small fan, instead. Airflow underneath the unit will help far more than a heatsink in stagnant air. In casual testing, I've found that simply blowing air across an Apollo (from a desk fan, for example) has a significant effect on MCU temperatures.

I've found another odd behavior in the UI. It seems the device settings are stored (cached) in the UI, and can fall out of sync with actual device settings.

Environment used for testing:
Chrome 74 for MacOS and iOS

Steps to reproduce:
1. Set Apollo to Eco mode; save (leave window open)
2. Using another device or browser change Apollo to Balanced mode; save
3. Return to original window (step 1); refresh settings page

Observed:
The UI still shows Eco mode, while the device is in Balanced mode. The workaround is to log off and log back in.

Expected:
The UI should show Balanced mode after page refresh (a page refresh on the settings page should fetch current, actual settings).

From an earlier post someone mentioned sticking a 20mm heatsink on the MCU. As it's getting warmer/hotter here I'd like to keep things as cool as possible.

Found this on Amazon - would this be the correct type? With thermal tape (0.15 or 0.25?) I'd presume. Would thermal compound be better than tape?

https://www.amazon.com/Karcy-Aluminum-Heatsink-Cooling-Raspberry/dp/B07QLM1C48/ref=sr_1_5

Hi everyone i updated my psu for a cooler master MWE gold 650 for my two Apollos today but i can't make it run i don't know how to process ....  any suggestion ?


UPDATE :

For those who will buy it : you have to plug it on a motherboard for the initial run then it works .....

mmm I think we have to look at this because as said by John this wasn't tested before. I think that connecting to "external" IP it continues to relay on "internal" ones so you get timeouts. Thanks for notice this, don't waste other time, I will check it and hope to solve this by next release.

I am able to reach the dashboard normally if using the LAN address, however when using the WAN address I am prompted for Initial Setup regardless of whether I am physically connecting via LAN side or WAN side. I've re-imaged the SD card (the checksums match, written with balena Etcher, no other settings changed), and the problem remains. The port redirect is simply WAN_IP:81 -> LAN_IP:80; confirmed in multiple browsers, cookies, etcetera.

Using Chrome DevTools, I was able to enter my password in the form (behind the Initial Setup modal), and submit. The password input is replaced with the "Loading..." indicator, but never goes beyond that. I get XMLHttpRequest timeouts in the console.

Does this occur when you only access the Apollo from outside your local network, or does it happen from your local IP as well? If it only happens outside it could be a bug, as I have not tested this case.

If its happening in both cases then sounds like the SD card got corrupted and is not accessing your already configured flag.

After setup (my Apollo is working fine), I have port-forwarded from the WAN side of my router to the Apollo portal, but it always displays the "Initial Setup" modal, blocking the login form. The expected behavior was that I would be able to log in and configure as usual. I'm hesitant to do the 'initial setup' again, because I don't want to overwrite my existing setup. Did I miss something, or is this a bug?

Ok thanks for the authoritative response. I'm gonna give a go at putting some 92mm dust filters around the 3 sides then, keep them as exhausts and see if that helps the dust situation for the next 3 months or so.

hi

sorry should have been EMEA region

or europe ie UK where i'm at

thanks

EMA?

The heatsink is specifically designed for the fan to run as an exhaust instead of pushing air through the top. While you can run it this way it was designed like this to have the highest thermal efficiency at low fan speeds. If you run it reverse you'll find that the fan will need to run at much higher RPMs to keep the same temps. I guess if noise is not an issue for you there is no harm in trying since the controller will compensate for reduced thermal efficiency...I wouldn't do this in Turbo mode though since even at 5-6k RPM that fan might not be able to keep up in this configuration.

Has anyone done any testing on switching the fan from an exhaust to an ingress orientation? I am thinking about doing that, after cleaning out the heatsink (full of dust) and putting a dust filter over the top if I do switch the orientation. Ultimately what I'm trying to do is get better temps over longer periods of time, with less maintenance. This is the first time I've had to clean dust out of the heatsink, but it's taken about an hour to do. I more like the idea of periodic cleaning of the dust filter instead

EDIT: The other option I'm considering is just applying more dust filters to the present intakes (on the sides), and at the front; luckily 92mm dust filters mostly line up with the screws that hold the sides onto the main frame. That said, a single 92mm filter leaves a small gap near the rear end of the side intakes, about 1cm wide, where there's no filtration.