Anon on Nostr: My thoughts after using Alby Hub for Windows to connect to an LND node running on the ...
My thoughts after using Alby Hub for Windows to connect to an LND node running on the same machine....
(1) There seems to be an issue when LND uses self-signed certificates, which is the default behavior. AlbyHub complains that the certificate isn't trusted, and this happens even if the self-signed certificate is added to the Trusted Root Authorities folder in the Windows Certs console. What I ended up doing was creating a dedicated DNS entry for LND (lnd.mydomain.com), and then getting a free SSL cert from one of the countless free providers, including that DNS name on the certificate. I forced LND to use that certificate instead of the self-signed one and then referenced it in the AlbyHub setup. That seemed to clear up the error.
(2) If you make any errors during the initial setup of AlbyHub, even something simple like a misspelling or forgetting into include the Grpc port suffix (:10009), you can't correct it. You'll end up getting an error along the lines of "the product has already been setup." I believe I sent you a screenshot. To fix this, you have to close the app, delete the alby data folder from both %appdata% and %localappdata%, restart the app, and try the configuration again.
(3) Since this is a UI app, not a service, you'll probably want the default behavior to minimize the app to the system tray when the user clicks the close button, rather than terminating the app. That's the way long-running apps usually behave if they have a UI (see bitcoin-core UI, Telegram, Signal, etc. for example). It's what we Windows users expect. :)
(4) It would be nice to see BTC quantities expressed in BTC instead of sats, or at least provide the option to toggle. Not a deal-killer, just a personal preference issue. Dealing with unwieldy sat quantities (e.g. 78,300,000 sats) instead of more reasonable BTC quantities (e.g. .783 BTC) presents an extra mental conversion hurdle, albeit a small one, that users have to jump through when figuring out how much they want to send or receive. I'm guessing the decision to use sats has something to do with GetAlby's history as a preferred method of "zapping" NOSTR users, which is typically done in micro quantities, like 50 sats at a time?
(1) There seems to be an issue when LND uses self-signed certificates, which is the default behavior. AlbyHub complains that the certificate isn't trusted, and this happens even if the self-signed certificate is added to the Trusted Root Authorities folder in the Windows Certs console. What I ended up doing was creating a dedicated DNS entry for LND (lnd.mydomain.com), and then getting a free SSL cert from one of the countless free providers, including that DNS name on the certificate. I forced LND to use that certificate instead of the self-signed one and then referenced it in the AlbyHub setup. That seemed to clear up the error.
(2) If you make any errors during the initial setup of AlbyHub, even something simple like a misspelling or forgetting into include the Grpc port suffix (:10009), you can't correct it. You'll end up getting an error along the lines of "the product has already been setup." I believe I sent you a screenshot. To fix this, you have to close the app, delete the alby data folder from both %appdata% and %localappdata%, restart the app, and try the configuration again.
(3) Since this is a UI app, not a service, you'll probably want the default behavior to minimize the app to the system tray when the user clicks the close button, rather than terminating the app. That's the way long-running apps usually behave if they have a UI (see bitcoin-core UI, Telegram, Signal, etc. for example). It's what we Windows users expect. :)
(4) It would be nice to see BTC quantities expressed in BTC instead of sats, or at least provide the option to toggle. Not a deal-killer, just a personal preference issue. Dealing with unwieldy sat quantities (e.g. 78,300,000 sats) instead of more reasonable BTC quantities (e.g. .783 BTC) presents an extra mental conversion hurdle, albeit a small one, that users have to jump through when figuring out how much they want to send or receive. I'm guessing the decision to use sats has something to do with GetAlby's history as a preferred method of "zapping" NOSTR users, which is typically done in micro quantities, like 50 sats at a time?