⚡️ Blitzbank Dashboard 🏦

Here‘s to the #reckless! ⚡️ Dashboard for your Bitcoind/LND full node.

👉 Disclaimer

This is an early stage project. Right now this is my personal playground for figuring out how to approach Lightning node management from an UX perspective. Potentially everything is subject to change.

Nevertheless: As we are all figuring stuff out, I am putting this project out here and invite feedback. Let me know in case I can help setting up the dashboard – that's how we can improve the documentation too. 😉

🗜 Prerequisites

The app requires at least Node.js 10.13 (tracking the latest active Node.js LTS version). This guarantees a reasonable level of backwards compatibility.

You will need a Bitcoin and LND full node to run the app. For development you can use the Polar app, which spins up Lightning networks for local app development and testing.

🖥 Screenshots

Here are some example screenshots:

Home | Peers | Channels | Invoices | Payments | System

📦 Setup

I will make this easier at some point, but for now … SSH into your full node and execute the following commands:

# create a new directory for the dashboard
mkdir dashboard
cd dashboard

# initialize an empty project and install the app
npm init @blitzbank/dashboard

# edit the .env file in your favorite editor
# (see the list of variables below)
vim .env

# start the app
npx blitzbank

You will most likely need to setup a process manager to keep the app running. See the start script section below.

✨ Environment variables

These env variables should be set:

• BITCOIND_RPC_PROTOCOL - default: http
• BITCOIND_RPC_HOST - default: 127.0.0.1
• BITCOIND_RPC_PORT - default: 8332
• BITCOIND_RPC_USER
• BITCOIND_RPC_PASSWORD
• LND_RPC_HOST - default: localhost
• LND_RPC_PORT - default: 10009
• LND_CERT_BASE64 - the base64 encoded string of the tls.cert file
• LND_MACAROON_BASE64 - the base64 encoded string of the macaroon file
• SERVER_PORT - default: 4000
• SSL_CERT_PATH
• SSL_KEY_PATH
• PUBLIC_HOST - public host name that is used for connecting via Zap, Joule, etc.

You also need to define the credentials for the dashboard and API requests:

• AUTH_USERNAME
• AUTH_PASSWORD

🚀 Start Script

On a Linux system you can use the service manager Systemd. Add the following service configuration to a file named /etc/systemd/system/dashboard.service:

[Unit]
Description=Full Node Dashboard

[Service]
Type=simple

# YOUR ADJUSTMENT START HERE:
ExecStart=/usr/bin/npx blitzbank # the npx path might need adjustment: use `which npx` to find the location
WorkingDirectory=/home/admin/dashboard # absolute path to the dashboard folder
User=admin  # your user
Group=admin # your group
# YOUR ADJUSTMENT END HERE.

Environment=NODE_ENV=production
StandardInput=null
StandardOutput=syslog
StandardError=syslog
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Note that you have to set the values in the YOUR ADJUSTMENT part.

After having created the file you can enable the service using the following command:

# one time enabling of the service
sudo systemctl enable dashboard.service

# after that you can use commands like start, stop, restart or status
sudo systemctl start dashboard.service

✨ Upgrading

To install the latest version use the following command:

npm install @blitzbank/dashboard@latest

🛠 Development Setup

Install dependencies:

npm install

Use mkcert to setup the SSL certificates.

Create a build and rebuild on file change.

npm start

See this blog post for details on some of the technicak decisions.

👛 Tip jar

🖖 Alternatives

Here are some other projects with similar goals, you might want to have a look at those too:

• RTL – Ride the Lightning
• lnd-admin
• lndash
• ln-dashboard