I recently participated in an introduction to Node-RED tutored by Sensative AB.
Node-RED is a visual programming tool focused on expressing data flows as linked nodes that perform functions on the data. In theory no coding is required.
As Node-RED is written in JavaScript for Node.js it can run on most platforms, including e.g. Raspberry Pi or cloud hosting. In this case we mainly accessed Node-RED on a local server. It’s also very easy to install.
We each suggested a scenario to implement, to make it more concrete. I opted for a solution where a Pycom LoPy (it could have been any of the Pycom boards, as I used WiFi), connected to a Pysense sensor board, would send the sensor data in JSON format via MQTT over WiFi to an MQTT broker running on my PC that then Node-RED subscribed to. The rest was implemented in Node-RED.
During the day I learned how to effectively use Node-RED, convert and visualize data, as well as how to send data further to Sensative’s Yggio IoT platform and my own visualization tool Abiro IoT.
I believe Node-RED can be a useful tool for quickly creating situation- and customer-specific sensor data logic and visualizations, complementing other solutions.
Click for larger pictures.
Pycom LoPy + Pysense
My Node-RED project
Node-RED visualisation
Yggio
