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swissrouting / lnpingbot

Telegram bot to look up information about Lightning nodes
MIT License
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LNPingBot

Test Status

LNPingBot ("Lightning Ping Bot") is a small Telegram bot designed to look up information about Lightning nodes.

Usage

Chat with @LNPingBot on Telegram. Use /help to see the available commands.

Support is available via this Telegram group.

Features

/ping

Usage: /ping PEER_PUBLIC_KEY@HOSTNAME:PORT

This command tests whether a node is reachable on a certain IP address, hostname, or onion address.

For example, when spinning up a new Lightning node you may use this command to test whether it is running and externally reachable on the IP address set in your config file.

Note: This is not a payment probe. The bot simply attempts to add the given node as a peer and measures the time this takes. Forwarding a payment through a node with an already established connection is entirely different and will likely be faster than the /ping command.

Development

Create Telegram Bot

Chat with @botfather on Telegram to create a new bot and get the secret key.

Run Locally

First copy .env.sample file to .env and fill in the required variables. You will need to provide valid base64-encoded credentials for an LND node and the host/port for the gRPC server. You may also need to provide a base64-encoded TLS cert for the server. Here are instructions for generating the credentials.

Then use the following commands to spin up a local development environment:

nix-shell
yarn dev

The API server will be available at http://localhost:8888/api/bot

Forward To Internet

If you want to configure a Telegram bot pointing to this backend, use ngrok:

nix-shell
ngrok http 8888

Then call the Telegram API to set the new backend:

https://api.telegram.org/bot{YOUR_BOT_TOKEN}/setWebhook?url={YOUR_NGROK_DOMAIN}/api/bot

Releases

New versions are automatically released by a CI/CD pipeline whenever the code is updated. After your pull request is merged, changes should be live within a few minutes.

If you want to run your own self-hosted version it's quite simple:

Donations

This Telegram bot is maintained and hosted by Swiss Routing. It costs a small amount every month to keep the backend server and Lightning node running.

If you'd like to help contribute to the hosting costs, you can send us sats.