Internet of Things is cool! Here is how to get started. By @HansB001

I will explain how to get Node-RED ready to get you started building apps.

First let me explain what Node-RED is,

According to IBM:

Node-RED provides a browser-based flow editor that makes it easy to wire together devices, APIs, and online services using the wide range of nodes in the palette. Flows can be then deployed to the Node.js runtime with a single click.

Sounds like fun, right?

There are a few options to get started. I start with the easiest option.

First Option

In this case you don’t need to install anything, just an internet connection and a browser you prefer will do.

Get a free account for Bluemix: www.bluemix.net Bluemix is a cloud platform (PaaS) based on IBM’s Open Cloud Architecture and Cloud Foundry

When you have access to Bluemix, go to the catalog. Then you will see a lot of nicely colored building blocks.

You only need one: Node-RED Starter.

Click on it, give it an unique name,(on the right side) and click on create.

Wait a few seconds and…. Voila! Your Node-RED instance is running,

When your application is deployed, you see the URL in the top left of your screen, click on it and see you application running.

Now you can create flows! 🙂

You can customize your Node-RED instance in several ways: you can replace the landing page with your own, even adding new nodes to the palette, if you know a little bit about node.js.

There are some very nice sample flows and nodes available in Github.

Second Option

The second option to get started with Node-RED is a little bit more work. You are going to install Node-RED.

I want to describe how to install it on a device, in this case a raspberry Pi.

You will start with installing node,js, that is prety easy.

In a terminal use these commands:

wget http://node-arm.herokuapp.com/node_latest_armhf.deb

sudo dpkg -i node_latest_armhf.deb

Then install Node-RED, first you need to download the latest release. Download the latest release from the link on http://nodered.org. Then extract the file. The zip-file contains a folder called node-red-x.x.x (x.x.x is the version number).

Run the following command from this folder, :

$ npm install –production

Here you go, you installed Node-RED!

To run Node-RED, do the following from this folder:

Run: $ node red.js

You can then access Node-RED at http://localhost:1880.

For more information and samples go here:

Sources:

www.bluemix.net

http://nodered.org/