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I’m not technical and I have done this myself some months ago.
Most important: do it yourself. Locally. Don’t run a node in the cloud. You want self custody. You want to run your own sats bank on your own hardware. You don’t want any other eyes looking at your transactions. This is key!!!
You don’t want to ask anybody permission to access your funds and keys!!!!
And my bitcoin node has been running since. Without interuption.
I recommend the following:
Hardware A Raspberry pi 4 with 8 Gigabyte. An SSD card of 1-2Terrabyte You need a screen with HDMI that connects to the Raspberry PI 4 A card - the ones you put in a digital camera (the Raspberry Pi will have one otherwise you buy one).
Internet You need stable internet of say 50 mb per second. Downloading the bitcoin blockchain with this speed will take a week . 7 days at least.
Software Umbrel. This is the easiest open source like app store. With umbrel you can install apps like Bitcoin, Lightning, Wallets, Bitcoin browsers. You need to install the umbrel appstore first and then download all those apps for free.
Process
  1. Go to the umbrel site https://umbrel.com/
  2. Download the umbrel software
  3. You need to use a software (umbrel will tell you that) to put the downloaded software on the sd card (the one you used for your digital camera)
  4. Insert that SD card in the raspberry pi 4 and restart.
  5. Umbrel will be set up. It first puts an operation system on the raspberry pi. Like Windows 2000 (but another operating system). Then it installs Umbrell.
  6. Log in in umbrel and download Bitcoin core.
  7. Have patience. This takes 1 week. It needs to download 500 gigabytes of blockchain to sync.
  8. When bitcoin is ready install lightning. By going in umbrel appstore on your raspberry pi and installing it.
  9. Install wallets you want.
  10. Install NOSTR. For chatting. This if you want this.
  11. Install a blockchain browser. So you can check transactions.
Now you are ready.
You have your own bitcoin core. You have your own working node and you can verify everything.
Stack stats!!!
I did this myself some months ago.
The Raspberry pi 4 is about 200 dollars on Amazon. The SSD card - this means solid state and is fast. It needs to be fast would not cost more than 200 dollars.
For 450 dollars you could have your own node.
My node runs for months without going down.
Good luck. Let me know how it went.
You can do it!!!