Apollo II and Apollo BTC Support

Full Node Unit

Full Node units have a full Linux Controller and SSD Drive built into the unit. It’s a standalone unit you can use as its own Desktop Computer.  

You have two options to setup your unit, over Ethernet or using a Monitor/Mouse

Setting up with a Monitor, KeyBoard, and Mouse

This is the simplest method to setup your unit, and it doubles as a full desktop computer as well! Simply connect an HDMI based monitor to the HDMI port (on the side of your unit) of your Apollo, and plug in a keyboard/mouse to the back USB port.

Make sure your Monitor is powered on and connected before powering up your Apollo. To power up your Apollo plug in the provided power cable to the back power port, and switch on the red power switch. You should see a red glow, and fan should start spinning up to full speed during the boot up process.

The fan will slow down when the device boots, and you should be presented with the Login screen on your HDMI monitor. The Default password to login is “futurebit123”

Follow the onscreen instructions to setup!

Setting up over ethernet

You can use the Full Node Apollo over its Web UI without needing a separate Monitor, Keyboard or Mouse. To configure this way you will need your own ethernet cable (not provided) and plug one end of the ethernet cable to the back of the Apollo, and the other end to a spare ethernet port in your home network or back of your Internet router/modem.

After you power on the device it will be accessible over your local network using any other Computer/Laptop/Smartphone that is connected to the same network. To access the Apollo you can try the two links below:

futurebit-apollo-2.local

futurebit-apollo-btc.local

These usually work on Mac and Linux systems, otherwise you will need to find the local IP address of your device.

You can find the IP address by either using a network ip scanner app like fing or ipscanner. This will list all your local devices, and the Apollo should have a name next it it similar to “FutureBit Apollo 2”. You can also log into your router and go to device list to find it that way. Most modern routers/hubs have easy to use Apps that list all connected devices and their IP addresses.

Once you have this ip address all you need to do is enter it in the web browser of your local computer/smartphone, and the Apollo’s web interface should come up.

Just follow the onscreen instructions to continue setup!

Upgrading OS/Flashing SD Card

The main OS of your Apollo Full Node resides on the small white Micro SD card on the bottom of your device (not the larger Node SSD drive that is right next to it). This holds the software that runs your system, and you might need to periodically update this OS or reflash the SD card to fix corruption issues that can happen after power outtages/hard shutdowns.

You can find the latest OS releases for your device in the link below:

Apollo OS Releases/SD Card Image Download

A Step by Step Guide to Flash your SD card can be found below if you have not done this before:

How to Flash Your SD Card

Please note our web UI also provides periodic OTA (Over the Air) updates that dont require an SD card reflash, you’ll see a yellow icon wiggle on the top right of the Apollo Web UI when those updates are available.

You can also visit our support thread below for additional community support

FutureBit Apollo Support Forum

Standard Unit Support

Our Standard Units are just USB controlled miners, that can either be attached to a Full Node unit for easy hash power upgrade, or connected to another PC/Laptop to mine. Below are two ways to run a Standard unit:

Setting up with another Apollo Full Node device

The Apollo Full Node is designed to automatically detect and configure Standard USB Units. Just follow the steps below:

1. Plug in the AC power cable to the back of the Apollo II Standard unit (or plug in the two PCIe power cable if you have an Apollo BTC unit)

2. Plug the included micro USB cable to the back of your standard unit, and the other end to a spare USB port on your Apollo Full Node unit

3. Log into your Apollo Full node and reboot the system.

4. It should automaticly recognize the standard unit and start hashing!

If you are trying to connect an Apollo II Standard Unit to your Apollo BTC Full Node unit, you need to first upgrade to the Apollo OS 2 with Apollo II support first! Follow the reflash instructions to upgrade to your OS below:

Apollo OS 2 Upgrade

Setting up with a third party PC/Laptop or RASPBERRY Pi

If you are controlling your standard unit via another PC or Rasberry Pi etc please download the software for the system you are using below:

Standard Unit Control Software

Please note the software to control your unit is command line based, so you will need basic knowledge of how to run .bat and bash scripts on either Windows or Linux. Our software is compiled for Windows X86 systems, Linux x86, and ARM 64Bit CPUs.

After you download the release binaries for your system, there are start scripts inside the download folder. Please follow the instructions inside the start script to modify pool information, and miner settings.

Flashing your SD Card

Your Apollo Full Node’s entire OS is run on a small industrial Micro SD card that is located on the bottom of your Device. See image to the left to locate it!

You might need to reflash this card periodically to reset your device to stock state, or fix corruption issues that can occur after power outages or prolonged used. This needs to be performed on a separate computer/laptop.

Please Note: Any data on your Micro SD card will be erased/lost! This includes all files on your desktop/home folder. Make sure you backup any saved files/wallets, or move the files to the SSD drive on your Apollo before flashing

First on a seperate computer system you need to download the latest SD Card Image for your device. This can be found in our image release link below:

Apollo OS Releases/SD Card Image Download

All Apollo II devices use the image named Apollo II/BTC MCU2. If you have an Apollo BTC you will need to download either the MCU2 image or MCU1 images linked above, this depends on the device type you have. Follow the link below to determine which Apollo BTC version you have:

Apollo BTC MCU1/2 Identification

After you have downloaded the appropriate image file (it can take a while they are nearly 2GB in size) follow the instructions below to flash the image:

• Do not decompress, open, or touch the downloaded image file in anyway. It needs to be flashed in the state you downloaded it. You can verify its SHA 256 checksum to ensure your download was not corrupted

• Download the easy to use flash program called etcher that will take care of most of the flash process for you (www.etcher.io) UPDATE: Recent versions of etcher have a major issue that fail image flashing on most systems, please download this last stable release that works: https://github.com/balena-io/etcher/releases/tag/v1.18.11

• Now shutdown your Apollo from the shutdown menu, your Apollo has fully shutdown after the fan starts spinning high, you can safely power off the power switch in the back after this.

• Remove the white SD card on the bottom of the device. It’s in the open slot next to the SSD drive inside the silver slot on the blue controller. You press in the sd card until you hear or feel a click and it will pop out a little. The space is a little hard to pull it out so we recommend using tweezers to pull it out all the way so it does not acceidgently drop in the case.

• Insert this SD card into your computer/laptop you downloaded the image/etcher to flash. If your laptop has a slot you can use this, otherwise you might need a USB to microSD card adapter (you can get these for 5-10 USD from amazon).

• After you have inserted the SD card it might tell you that card is not recognizable, you can ignore this since its formatted for a different OS

• Launch etcher, and click “Flash from File” to select the downloaded image in the previous step, and for the “Target” select the SD card you just inserted (it will be the 16GB sized card)

• Press flash and etcher will take care of the rest!

After you flash the drive wait for etcher to verify it successfully flashed. Your computer might complain about not being able to read the SD Card, ignore this your SD card was still flashed correctly if etcher displays Successful flash.

You can now eject it from your computer and re-insert it to the Apollo. Make sure you hear a “click” so it’s properly inserted. You can then power on the Apollo and it should boot to the updated OS. You will need to set up your device again.

Frequently Asked Questions

Coming Soon!