IOT solutions with Node-RED programming

Node-RED is an open-source visual tool created by IBM for wiring together hardware devices, APIs and online services and build Internet of Things applications really fast. The light-weight runtime is built on Node.js, taking full advantage of its event-driven, non-blocking model. This makes it ideal to run at the edge of the network on low-cost hardware as well as in the cloud.

Node-RED provides a browser-based flow editor that makes it easy to wire together flows using the wide range nodes in the palette.  Each Node offers a different functionality. Node-red comes with many built-in nodes for common functionalities like http request, http server, tcp server/client, delay, mqtt client, common database clients etc. We can add other libraries for specific functionalities or we can create our own nodes with node.js.

If application developer wants a specific logic that is not available in nodes, he can use function nodes to write his own function. We can deploy the flows to the run-time with a single-click. The flows are stored using JSON which can be easily imported and exported.

Node-RED in IOT platform

We have built many Node-ED solutions on the cloud, apart from our standalone IOT platform  application. This is the point where all the sensors communicate to, and we have a host of IOT devices to prototype and try out your solutions in a realtime environment. Considering node-red’s built-in support to create http endpoints, mqtt clients, this allows integrating various types of sensors into the application. Cold chain, supply chain visibility tracking solution using Node-RED application performs the following

– Convert sensor data form various devices into a common format
– Perform a DB/cache lookup Based on sensor ID, to enriched data
– Saved enriched data in a NoSQL DB Cloudant  or Mongo DB
– Determine if the sensor data has to create an alert – Rule engine
– Alert authorities by email if required
– Notify Remote monitoring using Drupal 8 on asset status changes
– Aggregate daily data and pass to DASH DB
– Invoke Rscript in DASH DB to perform predictive analytics

To wire together this application, we have used http endpoint node, function node, Cloudant or MongoDB nodes, email node, DASH db node etc. We were able to concentrate on logic rather than having to worry too much about making connections to various services. Read about Node-RED programming best practices

Call us to know about our expertise in connecting smart sensors, writing rules, triggers and events using Node-RED solutions for your IOT environment.