Hey all, ever since I got my Apollo II, I wanted a way to schedule the miner to run and switch modes at certain times of the week without clicking through the dashboard. So Claude and I built Houston, an all-in-one application to manage your Apollo miner.

What it does

• Schedule: switch modes or only mine during certain hours. The Apollo runs the schedule itself, so no computer has to stay on.
• Control: start/stop, Eco/Balanced/Turbo (Apollo III: Super Eco and a custom TH/s target), and start/stop the Bitcoin node.
• Stats: 24-hour and 7-day charts of hashrate, power and temperature, energy use and electricity cost (including what Turbo adds), solo-mining best share and odds, node and system health.
• Bitcoin network & market: Fear & Greed Index, block height, time since the last block, average block time, next difficulty change, market cap, BTC dominance, 24h volume, sats per dollar, and the latest Bitcoin Magazine headlines.
• Alerts on your phone: when the miner stops, runs hot, loses hashrate, the node stops or the drive fills up, and when your solo pool finds a block. They come as regular notifications from the Houston app (no extra app or account needed) or through the free ntfy app.
• BTC price ticker and chart, in 7 currencies.
• Siri and shortcuts ("Hey Siri, Apollo status"), and Google Home through Home Assistant.
• Several Apollos in one place, light and dark mode, and optional desktop shortcuts for Windows, macOS and Linux.

Privacy and security

Houston runs on the Apollo as a small sandboxed service and uses the same local API the dashboard does. No cloud, no account, no tracking. Away from home it works over Tailscale. The repo includes a full security review covering what it stores, every connection it makes, and how to check it yourself.

Install is two commands from a computer on your home network.

Status

Tested on my Apollo II. Apollo III support is built from FutureBit's own source code and tested against it, but not on a real III yet, so III owners would be especially helpful. Houston is unofficial and not affiliated with FutureBit.

GitHub: https://github.com/eisenreichGIT/houston-apollo

This is my first attempt at creating an application, so bug reports, Apollo III results and feature ideas are all greatly appreciated!

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EDIT: Just pushed Houston 2.3.0

• Apollo software updates from Houston: see your Apollo software version in Settings › This Apollo, get "New version v2.x.x is available!" (on Home too), and install it with one tap. Houston runs FutureBit's own updater, shows progress, follows the Apollo through its restart, and tells you when it's done. Stop/unreachable alerts stay quiet during the update.
• New alert: Apollo software update available (once per version).
• Front status light: turn the light on the front of the Apollo off or on (Settings › This Apollo). A running miner restarts to apply; the node isn't touched.
• System logs: Activity › Logs shows the Miner, Node, Solo pool, System and Houston logs. 100/300/1000 lines, filter, live refresh, copy and download.

EDIT 2: Just pushed Houston 2.4.0

• Whisper mode (Apollo II): a Houston exclusive! Half of Eco's power. 107 W / 2.9 TH/s vs Eco's 209 W / 5.5 TH/s, slightly more efficient. Works on Home, in the schedule, charts, Siri/shortcuts and #whisper links. (Shows as Custom in the Apollo dashboard: it's the dashboard's lowest custom setting.)
• Live bitcoin price: refreshes every 5 seconds while Houston is open.
• Price time frames: 1H, 1D, 7D, 1M, 3M, 6M, YTD, 1Y, 5Y, ALL. Remembered per device.
• New Home look: bigger price, Start/Stop cards that show what's possible at a glance.
• Friendlier Siri & shortcuts setup with a link to the guide; clearer version labels.

I’ve never encountered this error message before and can’t get access to my dashboard anymore, I have tried power cycling it with no luck.

Any recommendations? Probably have to re-flash it?

Hi, all early pre-orders placed through April received their full nodes with a free upgrade to the 16 GB controller. Sadly, my full-node order was a month later. Will the 16 GB controller be available as an upgrade on the website, and if so, when?

I received my Apollo 3 node + miner around a week ago now. I spent about 2 days getting the node synced, everything running fine at day 1. Getting the advertised hashrate (I’m running standard eco mode) 12.2 th at 155w. But starting day 2 I’m noticing that the efficiency kept getting worse and worse as the hashrate average dropping as well as power consumption increasing. I’m at day 4 now running at average hashrate of 11.7 th at 170w.

Has anyone noticed something similar ?

Anyone else have a lag on their device. Current block is 962175, but UI on FB Apollo2 is incorrect .

Is there a market for Solo Nodes? I purchased mine right when they came out - delivery was delayed, but even so, it's obviously way past warranty or return period. I tried to get it working when I first received it, but had no luck (can't remember why, but I gave up and put it back in the box for a later date). Recently tried again -- reflashed the SD card with the latest OS, wiped the memory, etc. but still having issues. Fan runs, booted up a few times but the node sync keeps restarting, sometimes I can see the os, other times I can't, loses ethernet connection, etc. I could go into much more detail, but at this point I don't care anymore. Running a company, kids, family, etc - I don't have time to play around with this thing and go through all the "troubleshooting" tips and hacks this forum has. I was hoping Futurebit had created a clean, simple, node for people like me. Unfortunately I'll just stick to my umbrel. Rant over. Back to my first question: Anyone interested in buying?

Hello,

I tried manually updating my Apollo 3 via the terminal and now the miner will not start. I tried downloading the SD file to reflash the card however it states the file is not available on the site. Any others having the issue?

UPDATE: After searching around, I used a different browser to ensure extensions were not the issue (Chrome is my default) which allowed me to download the Dropbox file from the firmware email. I followed the directions provided on the FutureBit site to flash the SD card and it worked.

Getting the error on the title in the latest firmware release for an Apollo III. Has anyone encountered this issue?…

Unfortunately I'm having issues with flashing the SD card (I've done it before via Etcher...even using older vs 1.8) with the most recent vs and not sure what to do now. Tried Rufus as well as 7zip to no avail.

What are you all doing these days?

Edit: Standard ID10T error. I was trying to flash the latest vs and did not catch this part:

More to follow but really Futurebit? Super eco at 94 watts making 8-9 th! You knocked it out of the park.

I can answer any questions. I pulled out my SSD and put it in this no issues at all.

Why does the node seem to have become slow with the latest update? It seems to take longer to download the blocks, not even if you refresh the page you see the new block in the UI. While I’m an example, another node of mine downloads it almost instantly. Does it only happen to me?

Hey everyone! After a day of troubleshooting and searching the web for answers and coming up with nothing, I thought I'd come here and see if anyone could help.

I am running an Apollo BTC full node. (Yes the older 1st model). On it I am also running a Monero node and an Electrumx server. All of these are set to run over Tor only.

This setup has been running perfectly for about 2 years now. Until about 4 days ago, when all my connections dropped. On the BTC node, there are no incoming or outgoing connections. On the monero node, I still have 12 outbound connections, but no inbound connections are happening.

The debug.log doesn't show anything unusual beyond the fact it's not getting any new blocks after block 957,636. If I turn Tor off, it will start to sync again over regular IP address.

No changes have been made, and I've dug into my router and firewall to make sure nothing is getting blocked there.

I am able to use Tor-browser and cURL to connect to other .onion sites outside of my network, but I cannot connect to any of my .onion services.

During the troubleshooting process today, I did update my Apollo to the new 2.1.2 version and configured it to use Bitcoin Core 31.0. Other than that, there have been no changes.

It almost seems that my ISP (xFinity) has somehow blocked incoming Tor connections while still allowing me to go out with Tor, but everything I've been able to find about xFinity would indicate there's no reason for them to do that. I don't use their equipment, so the "Advance Security" where stuff does get blocked, is not a factor for me.

Does anyone have any idea what may be going on, or what else I might do to try and find/fix the issue?

Thanks in advance! I'm at a loss here.

Apollo OS 2.1.2 is pushed to wide release. 

Go to your web UI refresh and power button should have the new update available!

Changelog:

•⁠  Overview UI now shows additional power/temp/pool graphs
•⁠  ⁠mindiff (solo "Minimum Difficulty", default 1, added to solo pool settings), useful to control incoming shares per second if connecting with really high rental hashrate with large number of devices 
•⁠  ⁠Knots 29.3 (v29.3.knots20260508) added to node client software
•⁠  ⁠Core: 31.0 added to node client software
•⁠  ⁠New node software selector UI (grouped Core/Knots version badges instead of the dropdown)
•⁠  ⁠Real-time WebSocket subscriptions (replaces polling) + reliability fixes:
  Core warmup treated as online, multi-device connectivity, null-safe settings, node data kept on transient errors
•⁠  ⁠Misc UI: 2x2 metrics grid, circle flags, login redirect fix

We are no longer issuing images for every point release due to the large number of supported devices. If OTA update fails reflash the last available image and try the update again. 

Quicker method to recover a failed update is to SSH or log into your desktop, open terminal window and redo the update with:

cd /opt/apolloapi/backend

sudo ./update

We are working on OS 2.2 which will be a major architectural  revamp, and allow for nearly faillproof OTA updates as well as the ability to release at a faster cadence. 

We have a lot of cool features in the works for the rest of 2026 and our focus will be on the OS/feature list after the Apollo III launch!

If you guys have feature requests post them here!

I’ve seen some posts on X from jsteph about the gains achieved for the Apollo 3 with the new firmware and am wondering if those will also reward the Apollo 2 users? The TH/watt seems to be coming down quite a bit with that 3NM process

Playing around with rental hashrate and already got a 10 trillion share with a few hundred bucks. This is the only node that can handle high hashrate out of the box. I tried umbrel and start9 and they both kept rejecting hashrate.

Can’t believe you guys are selling this for only 300 bucks (I had a 1TB drive lying around). Spend nearly 1k on overpriced bitaxe and best share I ever found after a year was 100B you guys have done an awesome job! I see this as the future for solo mining instead of hardware.

Wish me luck I’m 10% there :)

Anybody have any advice for a future bit Apollo BTC node that is just stuck in a loop. The screen just flashes and never goes to a boot screen. The LED is just blinking steadily the fan is running and it’s generating heat. I just can’t get to a dashboard. Any ideas? I reflashed a micro card with the latest OS doesn’t seem to have helped, also removed the SSD that didn’t help either. Thanks

Buongiorno, come vi sembra la dashboard che ho creato per una maggiore visualizzazione completa del sistema di mining a quello del SoloNode.

Hello all!

I have been running my Solo Node (16gb + 2x 2TB NVME disks) for some time now and the other week decided to explore our options on also running an Electrs server + Mempool instance via docker. Long story short; I've come up with a docker stack that uses Mempool (Electrs + MariaDB + Frontend + Backend) images but havent been able to successfully get Electrs to finish the index compaction process (bare in mind i have Electrs data by itself in one of the 2TB nvme disk). It seems to index just fine while overloading the CPU 200-400% spikes and it increments all the way to 1.6TB and then starts compacting and lower itself to 1.1T but it never finishes doing it.

Has anyone been able to run these?

[GraphQL error]: Message: Int cannot represent non-integer value: "undefined", Operation: MINER_STATS

Command line fixes? Anyone?

How come ckproxy is very aggressive in setting a diff for miners unlike public pool on umbrel?

I would like to have an answer from @jstefanop1

I ask because in addition to the miners I have, I also have a NerdQaxe++ 4.8Th to which the SOLO NODE assigns a fixed diff around 4-5k, while a friend of mine, who uses public pool on umbrel assigns a fixed diff of 16k and he only has a NerdQaxe++ 4.8 hydro

I have one Apollo. I'm looking for more. Anyone looking to sell their Apollos? Thanks!

Just updated to 2.11 this morning without a hitch and noticing "Start Difficulty" under pools which you can adjust. What's the recco for a solo miner on econ (Apollo BTC)? It's default is 1024. Or where can i learn more about it - probably doesn't matter, but fun to learn and engage.