Node Red UI

[Youssuf Bahr]

Hi,

I am currently creating a basic LoRa network prototype using an AEP conduit, and would like to have a graphical interface such as a dashboard to interact with the network. I’ve seen some Node Red libraries on the web which have a dashboard GUI that seem perfect for what I need, so I’m trying to figure out how to import them into my Node Red program.

If anyone knows how to do this, it would be great if you could let me know.

Thanks.

[Jeff Hatch]

Youssuf,

Be aware that the AEP Conduit runs an old version of Node-js (0.10.40) and an older version of Node-RED (0.11.1). My point is that some of these dashboard GUIs require a newer version of Node-RED and most likely Node-js. Make sure to verify that the dependencies can be met up front if you can.

Jeff

[Youssuf Bahr]

Hi Jeff,

I’ve looked up the version of Node Red on my conduit, and it says Version 0.0.0 – although that is not a problem since any old GUI would probably be fine for my purposes. I don’t know how to import any libraries or ‘nodes’ into the Node-RED platform, all the methods seem to use a command interface, which I can’t seem to find.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by Youssuf Bahr.

[Jeff Hatch]

Youssuf,

Let’s start with which version of AEP Conduit you are running, and verify which version of Node-RED you have.

To figure out what the AEP version it is, you can log in to the Web UI and at the top of the page there should be a Firmware version.

To find out what version of Node-RED you are running you will either have to connect to the Conduit with SSH or access it through one of the debug console ports. Then in the /var/log/app directory there is a file called node-red.log. In that file Node-RED prints out what version it is when it starts up.

Jeff

[Youssuf Bahr]

Jeff,

The AEP version is the latest 1.3.3 -which I flashed onto the conduit. As for the Node-RED it is version 0.11.1 and the Node-js is v0.10.40 (like you said).
I managed to connect to the conduit through the debug console port and am communicating through TeraTerm.

Thanks for your help so far,

Youssuf

[Jeff Hatch]

Youssuf,

The npm utility is used to install nodes and node modules, and is run an the command line prompt (use either SSH or the debug console). If nodes have dependencies that are not present on the Conduit and that need to be compiled on the Conduit that will be a problem. If the dependencies don’t need to be built, then the nodes should work.

Jeff

[Youssuf Bahr]

Thanks once again for the help. Is there any GUI which you know will work on the conduit? It doesn’t matter how basic it looks, as long as there are some input/output nodes then it should be fine.

I’m building this as a demonstration, so that someone could look at a browser and see that the network is running.

[Jeff Hatch]

The only UI that I can guarantee will work is the IDE/GUI that you can point your browser at on port 1880 on the AEP Conduit.

[Lawrence Griffiths]

Youssuf all I’ve been able to hand build my own UI with a mix of HTMLx/Jquery mobile & highcharts as demo. The current Node-RED dashboard won’t run on Conduit AEP also it’s a real memory hog as all charting data is held in Node-REd. So even if Conduit had correct nodejs/NR version it would still struggle to run on AEP.

The way we do this now is to use http://fred.sensetecnic.com/ which hosted node-red there is a free tier and paid is only $10 per month. We use both MQTT and REST to push & pull data from FRED where we build demo UIs using NR Dashboard. FRED supports SQLite DB too.

Lawrence

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