Node-RED 2.0 | Hacker News Reader

Node-RED 2.0

nodered.org

216 pointsdetaro62 comments

Node-RED is one of the coolest pieces of software I've ever used. It's so fun to build with and really powerful-- it's truly a secret weapon. It's included I believe by default on most raspberry pi's too.

Some of the main contributors (Nick O'Leary & others) of the project evidently are cooking something up on top of Node-RED: https://flowforge.com/

For more context on FlowForge see https://flowforge.com/blog/first-deploy/

I'm the investor behind it and right now we plan something open core, a business model similar to GitLab.

Looking forward to learning more and getting hands-on access!

I've been using node-red for around 7 years now for all sorts of generic web-service integration.

Fantastic app and excited to see what's next.

It's really incredible what it can do.

I once used it to demo a vulnerability on a client's website using NodeRed that I could trigger from my phone.

Basically I made NodeRed spit out a JS file which I enbedded on their site using the vulnerability and could trigger the content of the js from my phone

Felt so movie hacking-like. Website looked normal until I flipped a switch on my phone, now all images are replaced by kittens

Wow my mind is blown. Can you provide a sketch of how you did it so I can learn from this experience? Was the vulnerability due to uploading files? What workflow did you use to deploy straight from your phone?

I taught a group of twenty second graders how to build cardboard IoT houses with a Raspberry Pi and Node Red! They set up automated lights, little computer fans for ventilation, and a web interface to control everything. It really is an incredible hidden gem among the default Raspberry Pi apps.

I use Node-RED to do home automation with Home Assistant, and I like it. As others have mentioned, it's easier to do than YAML automations - especially because you can throw in a JS "function node" when you need to just write a few lines.

Something I wish they'd get to is looping support. It's unusual that you need a third party extension to do a for-loop. Fingers crossed this can make its way into NR proper in a future release.

How are you integrating Node-RED into Home Assistant? How does Home Assistant talk to Node-RED? I recently set up Home Assistant (love it) and an MQTT broker for some sensors and I can think of many ways in which Node-RED could also be involved but don't know which is considered canonical.

node-red-contrib-home-assistant-websocket is considered the canonical, it's the one built into the community Node-Red plugin. https://github.com/hassio-addons/addon-node-red

And if you are not using supervisor, for the other side of the pipe, companion component hass-node-red - https://github.com/zachowj/hass-node-red.

Not GP, but I just expose node-red flows via http and hit those from hass. There's probably a more elegant way, but having them communicate via http also lets me hit the flows via flic buttons or Apple Shortcuts without having to go through hass (which I never let see the public internet).

If you're using the hassOS version of homeassistant, you can activate plugins, and one of those is Node-RED with the necessary integrations.

Using Haas Core unfortunately.

> Something I wish they'd get to is looping support. It's unusual that you need a third party extension to do a for-loop.

Out of curiosity, what do you need a for loop for?

I've so far only created a single loop: it randomly changes the colors of a couple lights in my office.

This uses a delay component and a switch (controllable from Home Assistant) called "office_lights_cycle". The switch both initially triggers and breaks the loop. When executed, it picks a random color for one light, sets the other to a complementary hue 90° away, sets them with a transition time of 300s (very slow fade), and the loop triggers again a few minutes later.

https://i.imgur.com/XM53DO4.png

Instead of looping through things I split items, process in parallel, and then join.

I’m curious - how do you split items up and process them in parallel?

A map call?

Not actually parallel, but I presume that's what they meant.

> First up is a Flow Debugger. This acts like regular code debuggers, but at the flow level. You can set breakpoints on node ports, either inputs or outputs. Then, whenever a message arrives at a breakpoint, it pauses either at that node, or the entire runtime.

Really dig the developer experience upgrades.

Btw, I'd long ignored Node-RED because it was synchronous. Turns out the big change as they dropped 1.0 ~2 years ago was switching to an asychronous processing model. This makes it far more interesting imo. https://nodered.org/blog/2019/08/16/going-async

I'm really excited to see this, and this release addresses a lot of my nitpicky complaints.

If you are on the fence about using node-red, please give it a try. Despite being a skilled engineer and actively writing in a half dozen languages, I still use node-red heavily for low code tasks. Some recent examples:

+ Automated task to check a county court website for updates to a case I'm following

+ Let me know when several clinical trials I am following post results

+ Price/stock tracking

+ Prototype dashboard/debugging for a garden monitor device I built

[off-topic]

Interestingly, "half a dozen" makes it sound bigger by relating to twelve (12), while "a handful", while closer to the truth, would somehow diminish the impact.

PS: I suggest that "a hanfdful" is closer to the truth, because any value different than 5, 6, 7 could have been named more appropriately.

e.g. 2-3: a couple 4: a handful 5-6: a handful - half a dozen 7: half a dozen (somehow) 8-9: about ten 10: ten 11-12-13: a dozen ...

If I sounds like I'm pointing fingers, see me as a target as well. I want to highlight this as a funny/interesting bias in numbering as a communication technique. If someone in the crowd has a name or reference for it, I'm still curious.

I also find this interesting. I'd argue that "a couple" can really only refer to two, but "a few" could be 2/3/4.

I think the issue though, is when you say "a handful is closer to the truth" it sounds like you're correcting gp and telling them how many languages they know/use. Perhaps gp does use exactly 6 languages so saying a half dozen IS accurate?

I personally use a "fair number" of languages on the regular as well.

In this vein, the funniest thing I ever heard is that the Bible (of all documents), actually tells us what a “few” is. Namely, eight.

See 1 Peter 3:20 at https://biblehub.com/niv/1_peter/3-20.htm

I am obviously not in a position to claim any authority over the number of languages GP is working with :)

Even if "half a dozen" is accurate, the usage of such indirect phrasing has some effect on the reader. Whether it is conscious or not, "half a dozen" reader bigger than 6.

No harm intended on my end.

I'd argue that a “handful” is a bad measure as it is far too subjective. Even in the physical world rather than the murky depths of analogy. I've seen handful used to mean a wide range of numbers, some using it as an alternative to “a few”, some to mean around the order of 10, and so on. Half a dozen is much more likely to be interpreted by each reader as more-or-less the same scale.

Heck, it might be entirely accurate or even an understatement. I use four languages actively (c#, JS, SQL, Bash), five if you count PowerShell (though I only touch that at most once or twice a month ATM, so I'm not counting that as active). I find it very easy to believe many out there actively create new stuff in 6 or more, especially if they work on multiple sets of projects (day job current, day job legacy, personal experiments, open source projects, ...).

For all those who tried using Node-RED and couldn't get along with the visual "pipe" paradigm of programming it, Huginn [0] is an excellent alternative.

0. https://github.com/huginn/huginn

Despite my endless hatred of Node ecosystem, Node-RED is an absolute gem of a software. It hasn't skipped a beat in over a year running my home automation.

Recently became a NR user as I found it as a much more attractive way to create automations in Home Assistant vs YAML. Pretty amazing the workflows you can stitch together after some basic education.

I got briefly excited at the text editor, but it's just for 'function nodes'. I do understand that it's essentially the opposite reasoning of why Node-RED exists in the first place, but I really want a sane version-controllable file describing the configuration.

Essentially, I'd like to be able to use NR as primarily a viewer (probably also editor) of a 'source of truth' config file.

As it is, at very least nonsensical node IDs make it.. not impossible, but not useful beyond as a backup; no meaningful diffs.

(Project creator here)

The flow configuration is stored in a JSON file. That can pose challenges when it comes to getting meaningful diffs.

That said, we do have the Projects feature that brings version control (backed by git) into the editor. And when you view a diff of a flow, as we know what it is, we present a structured visual diff of the flow contents, rather than the raw JSON diff.

Still an area I'd like to improve.

I wondered whether Node-RED supported complex event processing (CEP), like Siddhi's efficient regexps across non-adjacent events.[1] A quick search turned up node-red-contrib-cep[2], seemingly little used. Perhaps something might be done with node-red-contrib-actionflows[3]? It seems Node-RED's emphasis is perhaps more on integration than analysis?

[1] https://siddhi.io/en/v5.1/docs/query-guide/#pattern [2] https://github.com/carloszimm/node-red-contrib-cep [3] https://flows.nodered.org/node/node-red-contrib-actionflows

Node-RED is a completely nifty piece of software and I hate it. Mostly because it doesn't do things how I like to interact with them (Not a visual programming person). Also it gives me flashbacks to dealing with Labview.

Briefly came in contact with it some time ago when our team had to hack up some demo for the IBM voice assistant. We disliked it very much, I have a hard time understanding what people see in it. Everything is cumbersome and slow.

You're simply not the target audience. It's brilliant for those that need what it does. I'm a developer, but when I need something quick and easy, I pull it out and it's great.

I haven’t used node red, but primarily program PLCs in function block or ladder logic.

If your problem can be well represented by a block diagram or transfer function then it probably lends itself to function block programming. The visual animation of the logic is very helpful to me in understanding the influence of different components on the final result and troubleshooting misoperating machines.

Don't think about it as visual programming because that's both inaccurate and will only mislead you more. Reason about it as a rule system for messages. You're designing little conveyer belts (or pipes if you prefer) for packets.

Excellent! Node-RED has come a really long way in a very short time, and this update fixes a lot of problems I've had in the past (I use it to manage my smart home setup and a few smaller automation things)

Pretty cool, I played with it at work to get some kind of printer dashboard that polled the printers periodically through SNMP for consumable status, displayed on one of our monitors in the IT department. It was also flexible so it displayed well on mobile too. It only required a Raspberry Pi, hooked up behind the TV.

It worked quite well, but we switched to a fully-managed printer provider since so I don't have to care for the printers anymore.

Actually, 2.0.1 is already out with a small fix. But great news altogether, especially because Node 12+ (I use 14) makes for a more stable runtime.

My favourite open source project, still amazing and it just keeps getting better. Amazing work and kudos to all the hard work from the community

Past related threads:

How-to normalize home volume levels with Node-RED - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23349902 - May 2020 (28 comments)

Node-Red – Flow-Based Programming for the Internet of Things - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18859019 - Jan 2019 (77 comments)

Replacing a Pool and Spa Controller with Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Node Red - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18142335 - Oct 2018 (3 comments)

Node-RED: A visual tool for wiring the Internet of Things - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13495156 - Jan 2017 (6 comments)

Node-Red, a tool for wiring together hardware devices, APIs and online services - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8419984 - Oct 2014 (8 comments)

Node-RED - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8310536 - Sept 2014 (1 comment)

Node-red, a visual tool for wiring the Internet of Things - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8217664 - Aug 2014 (3 comments)

Programming the Missing Links in the Internet of Things - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6459564 - Sept 2013 (1 comment)

Others?

Can someone share a secure node-red-at-home use case.

What is the equivalent or better tool for python? I like the idea, but JS seems the wrong language for me, also I want to use lots of Python libs.

I'd shell out to python from nodes in node-red. I don't think there is any visual flow-based programming tool as comprehensive and well-built as node-red is today. They've been working on it for years and it shows. A lot of tools come into this space and then get abandoned after a few years unfortunately.

As a Pythonista since version 1.2, I have to (sadly) report that there is absolutely nothing out there that even comes close to what Node-RED has done. I have searched high and low, and eventually gave up.

You can generally (but not always) avoid writing JS, especially if you use some of the more clever mapping blocks. If you do write JS, it'll almost always be shuffling data structures around.

I wonder, would it be easy-enough to have a Python HTTP server running along side, and Node-RED will just call your pre-defined endpoints?

absolutely, or just shell to python if you want to use something from a python lib

If you care about what language it's running on then you should probably be using a different tool.

If you need to extend the functionality there's nothing stopping you from running a python based server next to it.

> Node-RED is a programming tool for wiring together hardware devices, APIs and online services in new and interesting ways.

> It provides a browser-based editor that makes it easy to wire together flows using the wide range of nodes in the palette that can be deployed to its runtime in a single-click.

> Why is it called Node-RED? The name was a light-hearted play on words sounding like 'Code Red'. It stuck and was a great improvement on whatever it was called in the first few days. The 'Node' part reflects both the flow/node programming model as well as the underlying Node.JS runtime. We never did come to a conclusion on what the 'RED' part stands for. "Rapid Event Developer" was one suggestion, but we've never felt compelled to formalise anything. We stick with 'Node-RED'.

I used NodeRED by happy accident in 2016 as the backend for some dashboards being sold by the tiny startup I worked at at the time. Bizarre use case but handled things brilliantly. Glad to see this, will take another look at NodeRED for the many little project ideas I have.

I love Node-RED, I use it to collect data from all kinds of devices and shove it into a database. Plus it is a very visible solution, just go to the Node-RED address and you can see all the things going on as opposed to some daemon or scripts running somewhere, hidden from view.

The feature I missed the most in this amazing tool is the ability to compose existing node types to create new node type. It this adressed somehow in 2.0 ?

This was addressed a while back, the feature is called subflows.

How does this compare with Octoblu?

None of Octoblu's github repos have been touched in a year, some are 5+ years without any commits. Is it still alive?

I'll say "yes" if it improves the odds of someone who has used both explaining what the difference between Node-Red and Octoblu is.

How does Node-RED stack up against n8n?

Having used both. Node red has more “nodes” from the community than n8n, and is more powerful but easier to create a new “node”. Installing a new node is as simple as publishing it to npm. N8n on the other side is very cumbersome with that, last i tried it.

There licence for one, and part of OpenJs Foundation.

The integrations within n8n seem a little higher level I.e app to web service, Node-RED has lower level nodes such as Http, Mqtt, Websockets etc and a stack of domain specific stuff like OPC/UA

n8n have a for me slightly odd licence. From there site “ While n8n's source code is publicly available, our license restricts our code from being embedded in commercial software products without a separate license agreement.”

https://n8n.io/embed

For me that’s troublesome and stopped me even looking at it.

Be great if someone told me I am wrong.

Node-RED sounds eerily like the infamous Code Red virus. Not great marketing.

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