Very glad I don't have a data cap anymore. My node since the last reboot. 
Depends on what you want to run. If you're trying to run all the things (Core, LN, electrum, mempool, etc..) then 16 gigs of ram bare min. My nodes' CPU is an i7. But bare min I guess if you're just doing core and LN then like 8 gigs of ram maybe 4, but it will be slow and clunky with 4. CPU...something like equivalent to an i3 \ i5. Not sure where you're located, but on eBay in the US an older dell optiplex with decent specs can be picked up for under $100.
Benefits are using LN in a self sovereign fashion. If your node is well-connected enough you'll earn some sats from routing but don't expect *any* form of profit unless you are spinning up massive channels. I mainly run a node becasue I dont trust 3rd partys and I wanted to learn about LN.
Lmao just found out I can use a custom block explorer for zeus. Brb popping up a new domain for my mempool instance.
What happend?
Not a Raspberry Pi.
Whatever software you choose to use, whether it's start9 or umbrel or my node or you spin up your own stack, just don't use a fucking Raspberry Pi. It's probably what I'm going to be emphasizing the most. You can argue all day about software stacks, but if you're hardwear a shit, then your node is gonna have issues in the long run.
Get a cheap refurbished device on eBay or just use an old computer you have lying around your house if you have one. Upgrade the hard drive bare minimum single terabyte 2tb preferably. If you're uncomfortable building your own computer, there are a couple people I can tag on Nostr who are selling nodes.
GM its Bitcoin meet up day. Looking forward to talking so much I lose my voice.
Gonna be talking about what it takes to run a LN node.
I really dont care about keet. Having an apk wont change that its not open source. If pear is actualy open source then cool. 👍
In all fairness, it's a damn good podcast app.
Sorry I used the wrong phrase its their tos. tldr despite being built on open tech (hole punch) they will sue you if you reverse engineer it and try to figure out how it works. They say they dont collect data but with a "balck box" we dont know for sure and I could be misremembering but I thought they talked about open sourcing keet. So I wanted to wait to use it until then but after reading the tos I doubted that it was likely and decided to stay away from it.
Not sure why I'm standing in the middle of the road, but it looks cool. 😂
Lol shit wrong one.
I'm glad I never used Keet. I was waiting until they open sourced it but then I read their privacy policy and decided I wouldent touch it with a 40ft pole.
If i can Squeeze in a nap, I might be down again. Half brain ded today though lol.
The way my set up works is im piping my icecast server into OBS with some video. Then that its getting fed to an owncast server then fed to zap stream.
You can skip the owncast part and stream to zap stream via OBS. They charge a small fee for streamtime that way.
Feel free to DM if you want help setting something up.
Zap.stream is the only one that I'm aware of where you can live stream. I actually have an ice-cast station set up to broadcast there already.