When it rains, I use an umbrella to keep my node dry. Nodes don't like water.
Discussion
So literal. I love it
🤙 😂
Anyways... I run an Umbrel node too. In 2 months, it will be 2 years of using Umbrel. I use Zeus on my phone to access my node to manage channels and pay invoices while remote. I use Thunderhub to manage channels and liquidity while at home. I use BTCPay server to host LNURL / LN Addresses. I then use Cloudflare to point to my home IP address, to keep my IP private. Any sats sent to pay@derekross.me wind up directly on my node.
As for guides, I don't have any to link, but I will say find a couple large nodes to setup channels to, this will help you route payments in the beginning. It's good to join liquidity swaps with others. I like using https://lightningnetwork.plus for this. Join a swap or create one. You'll get an incoming channel and you'll setup a new outgoing channel. Do many of these.
You could also post your public key on nostr. I'm sure other plebs are in your situation and would love to open channels with you.
Any more detail on how you configure cloud flare to hide your ip?
Quick and dirty: Buy a domain name. Create an account on Cloudflare. Update the DNS for your domain to point to your home IP. Enable the "Proxied" button. Your IP is now behind Cloudflare. Now, when your IP changes, you'll need to update this. I am doing this automatically via a script I wrote. It runs on a server I have, but I used to run it on my node. This requires a little more work, but not a whole lot. You'll need to do some other things though to, this gets a little tricky. You'll need to run Nginx, you can run this on another computer/server/node you have or on your Umbrel. You need to setup a reverse proxy to point to your node and BTCPay Server. You can find guides on how to setup Nginx and reverse proxy. This is the only hard part and will take a lot of work for someone that isn't familiar.
402 payment required’s awesome guide about how to expose your lightning node on clearnet without using cloudflare or exposing your personal IP. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzKj5garlIE&t=750s
Cool thanks for the overview. Adding it to my list of things to do when I move and reset my online privacy
Appreciate all the setup knowledge you are dropping! I definitely want to try to set this up in the future
This is ultimate self custody goals
I struggle to justify putting the liquidity into node whilst running enough channels.
That’s is the hard and risky part for me.
Smart!