DIY Home Automation With Node-Red

There are many home automations systems available and choosing one can be very confusing.

However if you are technically minded and willing to learn it is possible to take a DIY approach and build your own system.

Not only will this save you  money but you will also learn about:

  • home automation
  • networking protocols
  • programming
  • APIs

Using Node-Red and Raspberry Pi

Node-Red is a very popular low code system for building IOT and other applications.

Because of this it is ideal for building smart home systems without requiring lots of programming knowledge.

Because an home automation system is always on the low power consumption and small footprint make the PI an Ideal device for hosting your own DIY home automation system and this will be the preferred device for most people.

In fact the popular open source home automation system home assistant runs on a raspberry pi.

However you are not limited to a pi as you can run node-red on any computer you want.

What Is Being Covered?

I will be creating project tutorials with example flows and dashboards that will show you how to:

  • Monitor Your Home Network and the Internet
  • Automate your Home.
  • Manage Tasmota and Shelly devices
  • Work with APis

If you have any questions then please use the Ask-steve page.

Getting Started with Node-Red

If you are new to Node-Red then I would recommend you take a look at this overview video.

Using MQTT

Although most current smart home devices use http for management and control MQTT is fast becoming the protocol of choice in IOT and home automation.

To use MQTT you will need to set up your own MQTT broker. Node-red has MQTT broker called Aedes which is installed as a node

See Install and run Aedes on Node-Red

For home automation  the Aedes broker works perfectly fine and doesn’t involve any other software.

However if you prefer to use mosquitto you can also install it on the Pi.

If you are using node-red in conjunction with home assistant then you should use mosquitto.

Quick Note:

Originally I was going to put the home automation with node-red tutorials on my home automation site but after conducting a survey I have decided to put them on this site.

New Tutorials will appear here.

Following Tutorials are on my other website

Monitoring Your Network

Home Automation

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