Review of Futurebit Apollo II BTC Founders Edition Full Node HEAVY ON PICS

Just sharing my thoughts and insights on the Apollo 2 BTC Founders Edition Full Node Miner. The packaging from Futurebit reminds me of Apple in its high quality. This hardware is a beast and super well constructed. Overview: Really like that you can switch the UI to "Dark Mode". Mining: Over 9TH at 345W in turbo mode, which is awesome for home miners. Plus, no need for a separate PSU is a big win. Mining Integration with Apollo Gen1 BTC: Flawlessly easy. Just plugged it in, and the hashboard popped up right after a reboot. Couldn’t be simpler. Adding one Gen 1 Apollo pushes it to over 12TH at around 544W according to the GUI. *It’d be nice if the GUI showed the best share submitted for the session when using any pool other than the built-in solomining option.* Pool Configuration: Pretty straightforward, no complaints. *Would be cool to have an option for a failover pool.* SoloMining: The stats appear to be legit on the local solo mining pool in solo mode, though there’s a slight delay in showing the last submitted share. "SOLO LAN Mining Point any Bitcoin Miner on your local network to your Solo Pool with the following URL: IP:3333 Username: <bitcoin address>" Does this support btcadd.workernames? I’m assuming it does since they show up in the UI. But it’d be nice to have more clarity on this to avoid confusion. Can multiple users connect? It seems like it, but I’m waiting for more info before testing it out! Also, displaying the difficulty per workername would be useful. *Some mouseover explanations for each stat would help average users understand better.*

Small Farm Solo Mining Capabilities Here we are at over 1PH And here is the CPU / Memory use with that hashrate With the Futurebit Apollo II and CK's pool code integration this looks like it can really offer a small farm a fighting chance!

Great news! Can't wait to get mine. I ordered as soon as orders went live so I'd imagine I'd be one of the first to get the non FE units

I'm still waiting on 2 standard units as well that were purchased in close proximity to when I ordered the FE.

Thanks for the photos! Definitely made me more eager to get mine now. I know you're waiting on two more but at least you've got one to play with :p

Thanks for the cool writeup! Solo page is still a WIP, but lots more functionality will be incoming in the months ahead. Good to see lots of workers attached since we didn't really test more than 3-4, need to work on the UI for that. Regarding your questions: Yes, you can add more "users" via a different payout address, workers can be broken out with a .xxx at the end of the address as you have done. Adding explainers on the whole UI is on our to-do list We set diff really low so users can connect ANY device (even nerd miners ) easily. If diff is too high they will never find a share and it wont show up in the UI. Our stratum implementation quickly corrects to higher diff, but as you can see there are lots of rejected shares on startup. The max connection node setting works, but the UI is hard configured to show xx/32...as you can see you are at 39 connections so its working...will probably add this option in the node settings so the UI is updated properly.

@jstefanop Really appreciate the work you put in on this as well as your response here on the forum. I did notice that when adding a 2nd user the user does show up under the solo-mining page as connected however there were no stats being displayed for that 2nd user. It may be helpful to have a pool page so that you can view the mining stats for every user individually that is mining to the Apollo II.  Just a thought! But I'll say again well done on bringing this to market.

Well found out my unit has shipped by getting the customs duty email from FedEx At least it's on its way, can't wait to get mine and have a play!

With the halving / halfening or whatever you want to call it upon us and the pool code I have been working on is just not there yet so.... I decided to throw the house at the Apollo II's solomining pool just to see how it would hold up. I have to say this things a beast in a box. Here is the performance at 4.55PH And a look under the hood to see how the entire system is doing while mining and acting as a solo mining pool. Impressive right?? Okay so I decided to throw all I had at it and I mean everything in my private mining and pro arsenal... About 7.5PH. Why you may ask?  My answer is simple... Because I had to take the Apollo II where it had never gone before!   What kinda odds does the Apollo II predict?? What's the true load on the unit after 4 days online and tinkering? And how have I done so far?? NOT ENOUGH BUT DAMN!!!!   I standby my earlier opinion that this may be a great turnkey solution for a small farm if they want to take a shot at the big prize. The Apollo II can take it!

That's really awesome! Mine is about two days away according to FedEx, can't wait to play!

Landed today! Already set up and hashing... node synching away! Excellent machine and don't regret the purchase one bit!

Excellent!!! To be honest I must say that I am truly impressed! The pool / miner hasn't had any issues when sending a good share of hashrate to it. @heslo Make sure you do your update! To check all you need to do is click the power button on the top left (seen in yellow on your screen) and then click on the software version to check for new updates!!

Update already done! Just wanted to get it all up and running (I'm impatient) then ran the update. Was gonna flash the SD card but tried the OTA update and that worked flawlessly too. Very impressive so far!

nice choice of power setup. a hefty switch and nice 3 pin connection. seems to be just about 38 watts a th maybe 36 watts. the 350 watts is a good energy point.

Great thread Sledge0001. What's been your best 24 hour SATS so far? Is anyone out there leveraging the node piece of this device to drive traffic, running lightning node, etc? Cheers.

I've just solo mined since I got it but will definitely be pointing it to another pool to see how many sats I get per 24hrs. Have yet to run a LN node on it yet (waiting for someone else to do it so I can follow their guide haha) I wonder if FutureBit still has plans to integrate Lightning into the UI software?

Glad you enjoyed the write up. This really is a great piece of hardware for the home miner or small farm. I am only solomining directly to the Apollo II so I can't really give you a number of how many sats per day. Based on the calculator here: https://miningpoolstats.stream/bitcoin   (You'll have to look for it on the page) 9 TH/s Daily est. coins 0.0000064 BTC Daily est. earnings 0.41 USD However, I see no place to calculate power consumption so this may not be accurate.

I just got my Apollo II home miner and have a question. I know it can solo mine, but is it possible to have it be part of a pool mine instead?  If so, I haven't found any articles or information in how to set that up. If anyone has any insight or any pooled mining recommendations, please share.

Yes you absolutely can mine to a pool if you prefer and not take advantage of the built in solomining function. Once logged in click on settings on the lower left side. The first page that pops up there is Pools which allows you to select from a pre-populated pool or choose a custom one so that you can enter in the pool info and mine to whatever pool you choose.

Thanks so much sledge. I've got everything hooked up and seems to be running...just need to wait and see if it syncs with Ocean.xyz (the one I chose).