Hi
Welcome to the short course. The course is made up of a collection of videos and tutorials and arranged in order to get you started.
The course is free but if you do find it of value then you can always buy me a coffee.
Quick Overview of Node-Red
Installing Node-Red
Before you can start using node-red you will need to install it.
You can install it on both Windows and Linux the install instructions are here:
Note at this stage we are going for a basic install and we will be running node-red manually and not as a service.
Although you can run under docker I don’t recommend this for learning node-red.
On raspberry Pi it may come pre-installed.
We will look at the settings.js file and the node-red folder and other options later on.
Overview of the Node-Red Visual Editor
This video introduces the visual editor and the workspace where you create flows.
Creating Your First flow
This video show you how to create a simple flow using the inject and debug nodes.
The following is my video on basic flow creation that also shows the node-red console.
Now that you have a grasp of the node-red visual editor and can create basic flows it is important to understand the basics of how node-red works.
Node-Red flows are event driven and nothing happens unless it is triggered by an event.
In the previous flow with the inject and debug node the vent was triggered by the inject node.
Node-Red Message object
A node red flow consists of a series of interconnected nodes.(wired nodes).
All nodes must have an input and can have 0 or multiple outputs.
Nodes exchange data between each other using the msg object.
You can also find more details in the tutorial here
Questions
By recapping on the previous videos and tutorials try and answer the following questions.
Q1- What is the Purpose of the Inject node?
Q2-What is the purpose of the Debug node?
Q3-How are nodes organised in the left sidebar.
Q4- What is in the right sidebar.
Q5-How do you start node-red?
Q6-What is default port for the node-red editor?
Q7-Can you run the node-red editor from a remote machine?
Q8 – Are dashboard nodes installed by default?
Q9- What is the default port for the node-red admin page.
Q10 – Messages are passed between nodes using the msg object. True or False?
Answers are here