Steve’s Node-Red Guide

node-red-iconWhat is Node Red? –Node red is a Open Source flow based tool and IOT platform and Dashboard developed by IBM and written in Node.js.

Node-red lets you easily build applications by joining together black box functions (nodes) using a web interface, and it requires very little, if any, programming knowledge.

Because of its flexibility and ease of use node-red is ideally suited for building IOT and Home control dashboards and automations as well as many other applications.

Node-red can be installed locally on Windows and Linux and also because of its small size also on the raspberry Pi.

It is also available as a cloud server from IBM and others like FRED

Node-Red Overview

Here is a the official introductory video from the node-red team which give you a good overview of what node-red is.

Node-Red Tutorials – Quick Links

Getting Started

Before you can use node-red locally you will need to install it and start it running.

This tutorial Installing and Starting Node-Red explains how to do that.

The next step is to become familiar with the editor interface.

Node-Red Administration

Like all applications there is a certain amount of administration and configuration that needs to be done. These tutorials cover the main administration aspects.

Tutorials

Node-Red Install and Setup Quiz

This quiz is for beginners to node-red and test basic knowledge

node-red setup

Test your knowledge of Basic Node-red setup

Node-Red Nodes and Programming

Node-red works by passing messages between nodes and this is critical to understand before you start wiring nodes together and is explained in Understanding The Node-Red Message Object

Tutorials

Node-Red Dashboards

You can create node-red dashboards for IOT and Home automation and for a myriad of other applications.

However the nodes that allow you to do this aren’t part of the core nodes and need to be installed.

Tutorials

Node-Red IOT and Home Automation

Industrial IOT and home automation applications will generally use one or more of the following protocols.

  • MQTT
  • HTTP

Nodes for these protocols are part of the core nodes.You can find out how to use these nodes in the following tutorials:

Tutorials

 

However Industrial IOT projects also use modbus and there are modbus nodes available that you will need to be installed.

Tutorials

 

Node-Red Data Storage

Tutorials

Storing IOT data in a SQLite Database

Videos

Useful Tools

Summary Of Terms

Note: These are the terms and meanings used in tutorials and videos.

Workspace – Contains all of your flows

Flow – A collection of nodes and wires

Flow Canvas – The Flow Edit screen

Node – A packaged JavaScript function with data.

Wire – A connection between nodes.

Resources



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