What is Node-RED?

Node-RED is a low-code programming environment that allows developers to connect a wide variety of endpoints, such as industrial PLCs, APIs, databases, enterprise applications and online services. Users of Node-RED visually drag ‘nodes’ from a palette that represent the end points and then connect them together into flows to accomplish the desired task. Node-RED applications are accessible via a web browser.

Node-RED is popular among IoT and individuals creating DIY home automation systems. However, increasingly Node-RED is being used in professional use cases in a variety of industries. Apart from software engineers, Node Red’s graphical approach to unlocking and effectively using data has empowered industrial engineers or non developers to apply their domain knowledge easily and accelerate projects.

FlowFuse Cloud is a hosted Node-RED service that developers can use to access Node-RED online. This makes it much quicker to get started using Node-RED since you don't need to install it locally.

Node-RED can be used for a wide variety of use cases, including:

• The manufacturing industry uses Node-RED for collecting data from different pieces of factory equipment.
• Creating dashboards that visualize data and allow for event triggers to occur based on the data.
• Developing chatbot platforms that can collect interactions of a wide variety of social media platforms.
• Extract, transform and integrate data from many different sources in the enterprise.
• Lots of hobbyists use Node-RED for home automation.
• Integrating data with machine learning models

Node-RED is an open source project hosted at the OpenJS Foundation. It is made available under the Apache Software License so individuals can use Node-RED free of charge. Participation in the open source project is encouraged to help support the Node-RED community.

Node-RED is a visual programming environment that allows you to do a lot without writing a single line of code. An important benefit of Node-RED is that it also allows for developers to write JavaScript and use the NodeJS API to extend the functionality of a node or flow.

FlowFuse Cloud offers the easiest way to get started with Node-RED. After signing into FlowFuse Cloud users have immediate access to a Node-RED instance. For those who prefer to install Node-RED themselves, there are many tutorials that help people to get started with Node-RED. A recommended starting point is the Getting Started found on nodered.org. Other tutorials from the community include Steve’s Node-RED Guide and Raspberry Pi Getting Started with Node-RED.

Node-RED is accessed via port 1880. You can access the Node-RED editor running locally at http://localhost:1880 or on another computer at http://domain name:1880.

There are three aspects of Node-RED that need to be secured.

1. Node-RED is a web application so you need to enable HTTPS access to the Node-RED runtime. The default Node-RED settings include a commented out section that can be used for local certificates.
2. The Node-RED editor and administration require authentication to access it. Node-RED supports username/password and OAuth/OpenID authentication. The adminAuth property in the setting file is used to specify the authentication credentials.
3. Securing the HTTP Node can be done using basic authentication. This can be set using the httpNodeAuth property in the settings file.

You can also follow our guide on how to secure Node-RED.