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Node-RED: Low-code programming for event-driven applications

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Re: Node-RED: Low-code programming for event-driven applications

#61

Post by deepspace »

eBombzor wrote: post #58

What do people automate at home? I genuinely have never thought to have the need to buy a home assistant but apparently lots of people in this thread do

Lights are the most obvious use case. Done right, you may almost never have to touch a light switch again.

In my house, the central lights turn themselves on when it becomes too dark (except after bedtime), and off when it becomes too bright. Lights turn on automatically when someone enters a room (when it is dark) and turn off when they leave.

When the last person leaves the house, all lights go out, except when I am on vacation, in which case the lights turn themselves on and off in a pattern that looks like I am at home.

After lights come extractor fans (keeping the humidity constant) and heat/air conditioning.

It is all about maintaining a comfortable home environment without having to manually turn things on and off all the time.

Re: Node-RED: Low-code programming for event-driven applications

#63

Post by recursive »

deepspace wrote: post #61
eBombzor wrote: post #58

What do people automate at home? I genuinely have never thought to have the need to buy a home assistant but apparently lots of people in this thread do

Lights are the most obvious use case. Done right, you may almost never have to touch a light switch again. In my house, the central lights turn themselves on when it becomes too dark (except after bedtime), and off when it becomes too bright. Lights turn on automatically when someone enters a room (when it is dark) and turn off when they leave. When the last person leaves the house, all lights go out, except when I a…

I wish I could figure out how to de-automate my bathroom light. It tends to wrongly notice that I've left the room leaving my in total darkness. My workaround is to leave the light on in the adjacent closet, which, for some reason has no such amenity. I doubt a lifetime of saved button pushes would ever make up for the inconvenience of troubleshooting this not-quite-smart-enough light system. But other people have different utility functions.

Re: Node-RED: Low-code programming for event-driven applications

#64

Post by deepspace »

Graffur wrote: post #38

I'd like to hear from some people that don't like Node-RED.

I am personally not a huge fan because my brain is not wired to do visual programming.

I have Node-RED installed and running alongside HomeAssistant, but I never use it because automations that are easy to do in NR are just as simple to create directly in HA. Automations that are complex enough to need NR are easier (for me) to code and debug in Python.

I think NR is great for non-programmers and maybe for quick prototyping, so I am not disparaging it in any way. The functionality and implementation is excellent; it's just not for everyone.

Re: Node-RED: Low-code programming for event-driven applications

#65

Post by natenatenate3 »

knolleary wrote: post #24

Node-RED co-creator and project lead here. Happy to answer any questions you have.

Thank you for this wonderful piece of software.

my use of it for hobbyist projects helped me get my foot in the door for my current employment in automation and controls. I have multiple instances of it running to track various things, run my chicken coop door, send alerts, aggregate data... It's uses are endless and I enjoy the puzzle of using the new updates to the software to make my old flows better.

Re: Node-RED: Low-code programming for event-driven applications

#66

Post by rcarmo »

darkteflon wrote: post #41

I run a Homebridge / Homekit ecosystem at home but have always been curious about leveraging Node-RED to handle more complex automations. Does anyone have any recommendations and/or recommended reading on putting these two together?

I have a setup with homebridge, zigbee2mqtt, z2m (for better glue between both) and Node-RED, and a few write-ups here:

https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2019/01/13/1900

Essentially you can use Node-RED to either act as another HomeKit bridge or to handle MQTT events from homebridge itself (I chose the latter).

You can easily "fake" and inject new accessories into homebridge via the homebridge-mqtt plugin (which allows you to dynamically add accessories and "see" them in MQTT).

Re: Node-RED: Low-code programming for event-driven applications

#67

Post by rcarmo »

SEJeff wrote: post #50

This software is great on the esp8266 and esp32 series of microcontrollers for those who like to tinker.

Erm. You can't run Node-RED on those, the NodeJS runtime alone would eat three times the flash storage. You can _talk_ to them, though, from a more powerful system.

Re: Node-RED: Low-code programming for event-driven applications

#68

Post by rcarmo »

eBombzor wrote: post #58

What do people automate at home? I genuinely have never thought to have the need to buy a home assistant but apparently lots of people in this thread do

I automate heating and lighting, essentially. Haven't had the time to hack into the AC (although I already know how to do it).

Re: Node-RED: Low-code programming for event-driven applications

#70

Post by RussianCow »

recursive wrote: post #63
deepspace wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lights are the most obvious use case. Done right, you may almost never have to touch a light switch again. In my house, the central lights turn themselves on when it becomes too dark (except after bedtime), and off when it becomes too bright. Lights turn on automatically when someone enters a room (when it is dark) and turn off when they leave. When the last person leaves the house, all lights go out, except when I a…

I wish I could figure out how to de-automate my bathroom light. It tends to wrongly notice that I've left the room leaving my in total darkness. My workaround is to leave the light on in the adjacent closet, which, for some reason has no such amenity. I doubt a lifetime of saved button pushes would ever make up for the inconvenience of troubleshooting this not-quite-smart-enough light system. But other people have di…

This is the thing that’s kept me from pursuing home automation: the advantage of automating lighting (or anything else) is completely negated the moment something goes wrong, because you’ll spend more time debugging than you ever did flicking the light switches in the first place.
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