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Let's get all the required parts and assemble the Raspberry Pi.
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This guide builds on the easily available and very flexible Raspberry Pi 4.
This amazing piece of hardware is a tiny computer-on-a-chip, costs about $60 and consumes very little energy.
This guide is written for the fastest Raspberry Pi 4, as it makes a lot of hacks and workarounds obsolete. A recommended setup could be something like:
- Raspberry Pi 4 with 4 GB RAM (8 GB recommended for future-proof)
- Raspberry Pi enclosure
- Official RPi power adapter 5V/3A
- MicroSD card (min. 16Gb, recommended 32Gb)
- MicroSD USB reader
- SSD unit: 1 Tb (2 Tb recommended for future-proof)
- SSD enclosure
To run a Lightning node, the full Bitcoin blockchain must be stored locally, which is near 400 GB and growing daily. I recommend getting a modern 2.5" SSD that can be powered through the USB connection to the Pi directly, which also speeds up initial sync time significantly.
You will need several passwords and I find it easiest to write them all down in the beginning, instead of bumping into them throughout the guide.
They should be unique and very secure, at least 12-20 characters in length. Do not use uncommon special characters, spaces or quotes (‘ or “).
You could use the random.org string generator, which is a good source of randomness.
Or you can roll some dices and concatenate some random words for each password using the list from EFF's New Wordlists for Random Passphrases
[ A ] Master user password
[ B ] Bitcoin RPC password
[ C ] LND wallet password
[ D ] LND seed password (optional)
If you need inspiration for creating your passwords: the xkcd: Password Strength comic is funny and contains a lot of truth. Store a copy of your passwords somewhere safe (preferably in an open source password manager like KeePassXC) and keep your original notes out of sight once your system is up and running.
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