Node-RED development

Node-RED is an open-source visual tool created by IBM for wiring together hardware devices, APIs, and online services and building 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 of 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 nodes with node.js.

If the application developer wants a specific logic that is not available in nodes, he can use function nodes to write his 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 development for real time asset tracking

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

– Convert sensor data from various devices into a common format
– Perform a DB/cache lookup Based on sensor ID, to enrich 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 learn about our expertise in connecting smart sensors, and writing rules, triggers, and events using Node-RED development expertise for your RTLS