
The only thing required is a text editor and some node.js know-how. In that case, you can implement your own nodes pretty easily. ExpandabilityĮven though there are almost 3000 community-contributed nodes available to use, you might have some hardware or API that does not (yet) have some pre-made nodes. All in all, the implementation of my example use-case was pretty straight forward and required no programming know-how. All the other nodes (integration for Philips Hue and LaMetric) can also easily be added with the “Manage Palette” option in the GUI. Additionally, I wanted some web endpoints that I could call to trigger both actions manually.Īfter only a few minutes, I had the following flow:Īnd it works! I found a node that sends an event as soon as the sun goes down at my particular location. At midnight, turn off the lights and display a different message. Turn on the lights when it gets dark and display a message on my LaMetric near my TV.

After searching some nodes for these devices, I was really surprised that somebody already built some for these two devices (I was especially surprised about the support for the not so well-known LaMetric Time). I own some Philips Hue lamps and a LaMetric Time. To test some Node-RED features, I tried to come up with a slightly more complicated example. Whatever you can imagine, there’s a node for it. Tired of pressing light switches in your house to turn off and on your Philips Hue lights? Yep, there’s a node for that as well. Need support for slack? Yep, there’s a node for that.
#Node red contrib image tools install
There you can install new nodes with a single click. An even simpler option is to install these nodes using the “Manage Palette” option in the UI. You can find these nodes by searching for “node-red-contrib” in the npm repository. This has a big advantage, that new nodes can be added easily from the node package manager (npm).

Node-RED uses Node.js for its nodes (yes, the terminology “node” is overused in the Node-RED context 🙂 ). Nodes to make HTTP calls to different URLs, reading and writing files and much more are provided by Node-RED by default.
#Node red contrib image tools free
Of course, rendering static content on an endpoint is not the most exciting thing to do, but between the HTTP in and out nodes, you’re free to do whatever you want. Congratulations, you have just created your first Node-RED flow! After clicking the deploy button you can access localhost:1880/ to see whatever you’ve configured in your template node.

One of the simplest flows is the following one:ĭrag an “http in”, “template” and “http out” node into the flow and connect them. You are ready to go! Open your browser and go to localhost:1880 to access the Node-RED UI. Docker run -it -p 1880:1880 -name mynodered nodered/node-red
