Using Your Hardware Node Every Day

A node sitting in a drawer is only useful if your wallets actually talk to it. Whether you bought an appliance like MoneroNodo or built a Pi node, this lesson shows how to point your phone and desktop wallets at it — at home and remotely — and how to keep it healthy.

Connect a Wallet on Your Own Network

Every Monero wallet lets you choose which node it uses. To use your own:

1. Find your node's local IP (e.g. 192.168.1.50) and its wallet RPC port (18081).
2. In your wallet's settings, switch from "automatic/remote node" to a custom node and enter 192.168.1.50:18081.
3. Save and let the wallet connect. It now scans against your node — no third party sees its queries.

This works the same for the official desktop GUI, the CLI wallet, and mobile wallets that allow a custom node — as long as the phone is on the same Wi-Fi as the node.

Reach Your Node From Anywhere — Over Tor

What about when you leave the house? Don't expose your node's port to the open internet. Instead, give it a Tor onion address and connect through Tor — your wallet reaches the node privately from anywhere, and your home IP stays hidden. Add a hidden service for the RPC port in your node's torrc:

HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/monero-node/
HiddenServicePort 18081 127.0.0.1:18081

Then set your mobile wallet to use that .onion address (over Tor/Orbot). See Connecting Over Tor for the full walkthrough. This is the same technique used to run a public node, just kept private to you.

Pair It With a Hardware Wallet

For the strongest setup, connect a hardware wallet through your own node: your keys stay offline on the signing device, and your blockchain queries stay private on your own hardware. Best of both worlds.

Keep It Healthy

• Leave it on. A node that's always running stays synced and is ready whenever you are.
• Update around network upgrades. Monero has scheduled upgrades; update monerod so your node keeps validating correctly.
• Watch storage. The chain grows; if disk gets tight, switch to a pruned node.
• Check status occasionally — an appliance shows it on-screen; on a Pi run ./monerod status.

That's the whole point of hardware: a private, always-available node you own, usable from every device you carry. Finish the course with Hardware Wallets with Monero.