Regular readers may be aware of The Script, created and developed over many months to simplify the otherwise often torturous job of taking a basic Raspberry Pi complete with Raspberry Pi OS and installing a bunch of tools and utilities including Node-Red, Mosquitto MQTT broker, graphing tool Grafana along with…
Category: Node Red
BigTimer
Node–RED is a fantastic and powerful yet easy to use programming tool for wiring together hardware devices, APIs and online services in new and interesting ways. For more information on Node-Red go to the Node-Red site. After all, you probably don’t turn the outside lights ON at 6pm!! You most…
RFLink – 433Mhz Remote Control and Node-Red
Many moons ago I just happened to be staying overnight with my pal Jonathan and he had some surplus (and so free) Byron 433Mhz wireless doorbell-pushes to demonstrate. He showed me a universal RF 433Mhz receiver board he purchased with which could look at the signals from the various kinds…
More Node-Red Dashboard Success
This is a blog entry from 2016 that I’ve just updated.. In an even earlier entry the subject of Node-Red Dashboard, you’ll see I can hide that top menu if needed (the blue menu is great on a phone – not much use on a thermostat)… and then I discovered…
Handy Node-Red Date
While working on my thermostat I found myself repeating the same code all over the place – as I use function nodes for inline debugging and info – far more useful at times than the debug output. I’ve now attached this simple code here to a function in my init…
The Wall Display
This blog has been updated as I’ve discovered that these displays are, after all, still freely available from AliExpress. I’ve recently spent time working on my hallway wall display, an amount of time which would be considered commercial suicide. Good job it isn’t commercial. Of course I’ve not just been…
Waiting for Peter, closing out 2017
MrShark at the console, while we’re all waiting for Peter to come back, let’s try to add some new content to the blog 🙂 I’ve a couple of new boards to test, unfortunately they’ve to wait I receive their PSUs… material for an other time 🙂 So, I’ll add some…
Node-Red and Alexa with Big Timer
I’ve recently updated my setup at home, finally doing away with HA-Bridge and I thought you might like to see this simple setup. So for beginners, HA-Bridge is a piece of software (a very nice piece of software) that runs on for example a Raspberry Pi, who’s job (in my…
Graphing System Info in Node Red and Grafana
We were just talking about getting system info into graphs in the comments in a previous blog entry – and I realised I already had some code for getting that info in Python – and using a library that can provide a LOT more. So – as it was there…
More Alexa Marvels
Some of you may recall that in the dim and distant past, Aidan and I wrote a SKILL for Amazon’s Alexa – which let us do anything by simply passing the speech back to Node-Red… and we could sent text as speech to Alexa. Well, that relied on SSL port…
Node-Red BigTimer Example
I am constantly asked about using Bigtimer (node-red-contrib-bigtimer) and so here’s an example of how I am using it in conjunction with both Amazon’s Alexa (voice control) – and the Node-Red Dashboard.
Saturday Node-Red Sermon
I just learned something new! ONLY of interest if you are using Node-Red and will lead to a description of the new node-red-contrib-diode node. If you are into Node-Red – you really want to see this one…
Garden Data Collection
This entry is all about InfluxDB, Grafana and a cute little Bluetooth garden sensor! Some time ago a pal of mine and I did some swaps of spare kit and I ended up with a Mi Flora sensor. A rather pleasing looking device, the MI Flora has a 3v lithium…
Android Phone as Server
Why am I showing you a picture of a cracked-screen phone? Well because this particular phone is a bust Oukitel K10000, the phone with the world’s longest-lasting battery and an excellent workhorse. My friend Aidan gave me this (rather than chucking it away) some time ago and it has been…
Node-RED Global Flow and Context
There’s a mouthful. This short article is about the various kinds of variables used in Node-Red and more importantly how to initialise them and how to view them. So in Node-Red when you want to use variables – there are three basic types as well as local variables. So for…
Node Red and HighCharts
First things first – HighCharts are not free for commercial use. However, for your own website, a school site or a non-profit organisation they are free to use. You are also OK to make modifications. So – that’s the “cover my back” bit out of the way – now, how…
NR Templates and the Inject Node
When testing Node-Red, the common INJECT node is invaluable. Indeed it is just about the only way to instantly inject information into another node. Here is a typical example. It doesn’t get any simpler than this. Here I have merely dropped an “Inject” node onto the Node-Red working surface along…
Thermometers
Three thermometers in a row for Node-Red (or as many or few as you like really) for Node-Red Dashboard. Another fine example of simple gauges and unlike some it is easy to make multiple gauges on one page – I will demonstrate three. Here is the library source, I grabbed…
Another LCD
When writing that last blog entry about an LCD with time and date display and programmable temperature for Node-Red Dashboard, it occurred to me that it would be worthwhile making a simple one-liner (6*1) LCD with a 20-character display. At the same time I wanted to simplify it right down…
LCD Display for Node-Red
As must be obvious by now, I’m on a roll here. Having decided that Node-Red Dashboard is the way forward ( would in the past have used BLYNK or Imperihome) I’ve been getting to grips with the dashboard and as you’ll see if you check recent blogs I’ve had a…