Time to cook: 30min
Difficulty: +++++
Node-Red is a powerful and user-friendly way to add automation to your connected home. The installation of Node-Red is available on the openHabian image as an add-on software component. So this recipe can be seen as an add-on on top of the Smart HUB recipe.
Node-RED is a programming tool for wiring together hardware devices, APIs and online services in new and interesting ways. It provides a browser-based editor that makes it easy to wire together flows using the wide range of nodes in the palette that can be deployed to its runtime in a single-click.
Ingredients
A Raspberry Pi with OpenHabian installed
Prerequisites
Nihil
Tools
Nihil
The Building Plan
Installing Node-RED
login to your Raspberry-Pi with openHABian installed using an SSH connection
start the openHabian config by entering the following command:
sudo openhabian-config
Select Optional Components (20)
Select Node-Red (25)
The installation of Node-Red is started. Respond to the installation options. After a few minutes, the installation will be completed.
Node-Red will be accessible from your openHABian landing page.
Alternative, you can start and stop Node-Red from the command prompt:
Stopping & starting node-red
node-red-stop
node-red-start
Securing Node-Red
The Node-Red environment has great dashboard nodes to visualize sensor data and control your devices from an intuitive UI. If you are going to expose the Node-Red environment to the outside, to allow remote control, it is important to secure your environment.
A first step in securing your Node-Red environment is to set a password for accessing the Node- Red administration and the UI interface.
Install the command line administration tool
login to your Raspberry-Pi with openHABian installed using an SSH connection
enter the following commands
cd /home/openhabian
sudo npm install -g node-red-admin
create a pwd file:
node-red-admin hash-pw
This will result in a hash password. Use this to configure the settings.js file in the folder /home/openhabian/.node-red to setup the authentication
Configure the settings.js file in /home/openhabian/.node-red
// Securing Node-RED
// -----------------
// To password protect the Node-RED editor and admin API, the following
// propertycan be used. See http://nodered.org/docs/security.html for details.
adminAuth: {
type: "credentials",
users: [{
username: "admin",
password: "enter your passwd hash file here",
permissions: "*"
}]
},
What's next?
The connected house cookbook includes a number of recipes which make use of the powerful Node-Red environment. You might want to test one out.
}
}