2 Personal Umbrel Full Nodes to create Lightning LN Channel?

Bitcoin and Lightning
1

I have been trying for a few weeks to get a Lightning Node and Channel operational on my Umbrel Full Node.

I have used this guide by Brett Colbert, as well as a few others, and have not quite been able to get it fully working. I am going to assume I just am not up to par with the author OR that the method is deprecated as after 3 times it has resulted in the ability to send or receive LN payments even though I did follow to the T and did not receive any noted errors.

So, I would like to ask if this other method is possible.

What if instead I just setup another Umbrel Full Node and use it as my counter-party for establishing a Lightning Channel?

Heck I could even have them right next to each other IRL. I would just use the address from one and another to create say a 1,000,000 satoshi LN channel and then be good to go?

Does this work?

Is there a better guide?

Anything else to be aware of?

My main emphasis is just to get it up and running to experiment with.

Thank you for any tips or help!

2

What hurdle are you running into when creating a channel? With the Umbrel interface, there isn’t much to it.

Sure, you could set up 2 nodes and create a channel between them - but you’ll need other channels to the rest of the network. Otherwise, you’ll only be routing payments between your two nodes.

Go to the Lightning section in Umbrel
Click the “+ Open Channel” button
Enter the address of the node you want to connect to
You probably want to keep your Amount to 2,000,000 sats or more
Set the Time slider to “24 hrs” to reduce setup cost
Then wait for the channel to open

You’ll need several channels with incoming and outgoing liquidity before you’ll see any routing, and even then it won’t be much routing, at least at first.

3

Thank you for the reply.

To answer your top most question my hurdle is that when I follow the guide I linked to in the original post I am unable to send or receive.

I try creating an invoice for say 2,000 sats with a description such as “3rd try”. No errors. I get a QR code.

I then open my Muun wallet which is loaded with sats in Lightning form and try sending it. It fails within 30 seconds. Mind you this channel has been open for days. I have however been able to send Lightning payments via my Muun wallet to other services so I am led to believe the wallet itself works, though not the channel I opened on my Umbrel.

Given this result I have determined I must be doing something wrong and am reaching out for help as I would really like to learn how it works and actually get it to work.

Moving forward I went through the brief steps you outlined.

I first increased my sats balance to at least 2,500,000

Next I clicked the “+ Open Channel” button.

I really am not sure what node I want to connect to. For instance it sounds like to dual node where I connect to my own node is not advisable because they both won’t connect to anything else. I read you on that.

So how and where do I choose?

To the uninitiated, like myself, if I follow the guide it just seems as though I am to copy and paste random strings of characters into some fields and then magic happens and I can send and receive lightning payments? I tried that again and the same result - failed payments to invoices.

Is there perhaps another guide which is more simple for beginners or perhaps one which explains they “why” of each step?

Conversely could you help me walk through the steps in this thread?

To be sure I am at the step of figuring out what Lightning Address to connect to.

Thank you for your time and patience I hope this reply is clear and will help others once solved.

4

Sounds like maybe you don’t have any incoming liquidity. If you open a channel, all the liquidity will be outgoing until there is a transaction that moves some satoshis from your side of the channel to the other side of the channel.

Can you post a screenshot of your open channels in your Umbrel dashboard?

To start, you’ll want to connect to a few big nodes. You can search at 1ml.com - Wallet of Satoshi is a big one https://1ml.com/node/035e4ff418fc8b5554c5d9eea66396c227bd429a3251c8cbc711002ba215bfc226

Then if you send some sats from your Umbrel to your Muun wallet, you should see the liquidity in your channel change, so there is some balance on both sides of the channel. Once there is balance on both sides of your channel(s), then sats can flow into your Umbrel.

Let me know if that helps get you started.

5

Thank you I will give that a try right now and see what we can find! Will post screenshots as well.

Question: How do I have “7 peers” even though I haven’t opened anything in either direction?

Here is what I am starting with:

Screen Shot 2021-09-15 at 3.24.06 PM
Screen Shot 2021-09-15 at 3.24.06 PM2102Ă—1294 177 KB

6

Alright I went ahead and used that suggested node to open a channel.

I know it is suggested to use 2,000,000 sats or more but in my estimation I have not much idea what I am doing and only opened one for 600,000 sats as that is what I can afford to lose. I hope that does not mire the efforts.

I adjusted to fee to be as high as I could so we could keep up the frequency of actions.

Looks like it is in the “opening” phase as shown in the screen shots.

Once this clears to a new phase I will try sending sats from my Umbrel to the Muun wallet as you referenced.

I will post this next step when available!

Thank you again for the help!

Screen Shot 2021-09-15 at 3.41.12 PM
Screen Shot 2021-09-15 at 3.41.12 PM1662Ă—1418 215 KB

1 Like
7

Alright, checking back in, on the road, thank you for patience.

Part 1 - I was able to get the channel opened and in the green. I then sent 2,000 Satishis from my LN Node to my Muun Wallet and was succesful. Woo!!!

Part 2 - I tried (twice) to then send back from the Muun Wallet to the LN Node and it would not confirm. Kind of stuck here.

I noticed on the Part 1 the network fee was 5 satoshis. Upon sending on the Part 2 I see Muun was only trying for a 1 satoshi fee.

Any idea how to make Part 2 be successful?

See pics for reference.

Thank you supremely for the help!

Screen Shot 2021-09-21 at 9.50.56 PM
Screen Shot 2021-09-21 at 9.50.56 PM2604Ă—1052 231 KB

8

Could be something inbetween your node and Muun.

The first payment probably went like this:
Node -> Wallet of Satoshi -> some other node -> Muun

So, going the other way, it has to find a route with enough liquidity. If you open some more channels and get inbound liqudity from some other nodes, maybe it’ll work.

This is my uneducated guess.

9

Hmmm, I am at a loss here as well.

When you send LN transactions to your node what wallet do you use?

Have you had this issue before?

Any other wallets I could try?

I have reached out to Umbrel and Muun about the issue.

Might also just start a fresh thread on the issue.

I do believe it should be much easier to open a LN channel and get this working so I am going to assume I am doing something wrong and keep trying.

I assume yours works fine?

Did you also use WalletOfSatoshi?

Thank you for all the help!

10

Well here’s a thing - Your Umbrel screenshot shows there is only 2,005 sats of inbound liquidity. If you’re trying to send in 2,000 sats, that is cutting it close. Seems like it should work, but maybe try just 1,000 sats from Muun to you Node and see if that goes through.

11

I agree. Which is why I tired to only send 1,000 satoshi, to no avail, 2 times, as shown in screenshot.

If it says I have inbound receive of 2,005 sats, and I try for 1,000, and it does not go through is that really the issue?

12

This process with Umbrel Lightning is completely confusing. Someone needs to give a better description of it and step by step processes that do not create confusion and errors!

13

I tried to pay using umbrel and I got the following error:

502 Bad Gateway

502 Bad Gateway

nginx/1.17.8

Anybody know what this means??