I'm pretty green with tech stuff, but I've managed to set up a LND node on umbrel, and linking it to Alby hub and Go as well as Zeus was easy once I had my set up working. Took me a long time to get to the point of actually doing it, but with all these ways to interface with my own node coming out I'm sort of glad it took that time.
Yeah I feel like that is where I’m at; taking the time to learn everything and then dive into doing this. Why not the start9 for you? Also, are you accessing the node remotely?
Just the first time I got something running consistently other than an SSD on an old laptop with Bitcoin core and constant resyncing when I needed to use Sparrow. Finally managed to get umbrel working after having reflash a couple times. I occasionally access through Tor but Zeus has been sufficient. And I still use the laptop with Sparrow connected to my electrum server. Like I said I'm not very good at all this. Sort of just my play thing right now. Now that I've got one going I'd like to get a Start 9 OS running someday.