Steve’s Node-Red Guide

What 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.

• Getting started
• Node-Red Admin
• Node-Red programming
• Node-Red Dashboards
• Node-Red Data storage
• Node-Red IOT and Home Automation
• Videos

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.

• Introduction to the Editor
• How to create and manage flows
• Deploying Flows
• How to Export and Import Nodes and Flows

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 Settings.js File – Node-Red Admin
• Local Installs and Managing Node-Red Projects
• Securing Node-Red with SSL and User name Authentication

Node-Red Install and Setup Quiz

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

• Using the Node-Red Function Node- Beginners Guide
• Storing Data in Node-Red Variables
• Initialising Node-Red Flows
• Using The Node-Red Library
• Working with JSON Data And JavaScript Objects in Node-Red
• Using the Node Red Status Node
• Understanding and Using Buffers In Node-Red
• Using the Node-Red Template Node
• Message Object Cloning

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

• Create a node-red Dashboard
• Using the UI Dashboard Template Node (Widget)
• Using the Node-Red Template Node

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

• Node-Red HTTP Request Node for Beginners
• Node-Red Web Server -HTTP-IN and HTTP Response Nodes
• Configuring the MQTT Publish and Subscribe Nodes in Node-Red
• How to Install and Run The Mosca MQTT Broker on Node-Red

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

Tutorials

• How to Use Node-Red with Modbus
• Writing Modbus Data with node-red
• Modbus Node-Red Dashboards and MQTT Modbus Bridge
• My Modbus Working Notes

Node-Red Data Storage

Tutorials

Storing IOT data in a SQLite Database

Videos

Useful Tools

• On Line JSON checker
• On Line Smart Quotes removal tool

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

• Node red Documentation
• Google icons on W3Schools