BlueWallet and Umbrel

I’ve got my Umbrel node up and running. I would like to be able to provide access to the lightning network for my family. I installed BlueWallet on my phone and connected it to my node, then created a new LN wallet. So far, so good…

Then I created an invoice in BW and went into umbrel and tried to pay it. I got an error saying I can’t make payments to my own node.

Questions:

  1. How do I get sats into the mobile lightning wallet from the wallet on my umbrel node?
  2. If I can’t make payments to my own node, will family and friends that I connect to it be able to send payments to each other?
  3. If I connect a family member or friend’s BW to my node and they create a LN wallet and use it for a while, and then decide to run their own node, can the simply go into BW and change the network settings to point to their node? Will their wallet and funds still be available, or will they be permanently tied to my node?
  4. If my node were to suddenly and permanently disappear in the future, could my family and friends recover the funds in their LN wallets?

Sorry if these are newb questions, I’ve spent several hours trying to find the answers myself, but have not found any good sources.

Thanks.

Do you have any channel connected to your node?

Please, first step always check a guide “how to…” in the Guides section of this forum. We’ve posted there a ton of guides FOR YOU to read.

In there are 2 special ones exactly describing your situation:

When I say read them, is pay attention to details. I mean it.

Add this line in your lnd.conf: allow-circular-route=1

  1. You can’t. Are the same. Is the same liquidity, only that is displayed separately. What you can do is that in BW app, go to created LNDhub wallet and select fund wallet, from external. You will be prompted to deposit onchain, pay it from another wallet and it will be converted into LN. You can also use the LN invoice to deposit from another LN wallet, but that depends of your inbound liquidity in your LN node. So start there building your channels with enough out and in liquidity.

  2. Yes and also to external destinations.

  3. Just transfer all the sats to a new wallet to their node. You cannot export and import your own LNDhub wallet into another node, because is not the same node.

  4. BW LNDhub is still in initial phase, it doesn’t have a good backup way to do it. I recommend to use LNbits LNDHub that have an easier way to backup the database of internal wallet. And works much better than BW LNDhub. But keep in mind: funds in LNDhub wallets are YOUR NODE funds. Are not separate, just displayed separately.

Thank you for the thoughtful reply. That was helpful.