There are two ways to get started with Node-RED on a Raspberry Pi.
You can then start using the editor.
As of the November 2015 version of Raspbian Jessie, Node-RED comes preinstalled on the SD card image that can be downloaded from RaspberryPi.org. This uses an old version of node.js and it is recommended to upgrade to the latest using the bash command below.
If you have the minimal version of Jessie, or other Debian based install, that doesn’t have Node-RED already installed, you can install or upgrade using the Node-RED upgrade script
bash <(curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/node-red/raspbian-deb-package/master/resources/update-nodejs-and-nodered)
Note: If you have upgraded to node.js 4.x or 6.x then you cannot use apt-get to upgrade the pre-installed version of Node-RED.
As of Node-RED version 0.14.x the upgrade script is pre-installed and will do a full upgrade to the latest nodejs LTS and latest release version of Node-RED.
The script runs many commands as sudo and does delete existing nodejs and the core Node-RED directories.
If you have installed any extra nodes or npm globally (ie anything NOT installed in the ~/.node-red directory)
then please ensure you back them up first - usually from /usr/lib/node_modules.
To upgrade, run the following command as your normal user (typically pi):
update-nodejs-and-nodered
Note - If the serialport nodes do not appear when you restart, please re-run the update command. If the update command does not run or is not found then use the bash command from above.
Caveat emptor. The script has only been tested on installs with a small variety
of the possible extra nodes. The script also tries to rebuild any nodes with native
plugins that you have installed in the ~/.node-red directory. This may fail, and
you may need to manually rebuild or re-install some of the nodes you previous had
installed. To rebuild:
cd ~/.node-red
npm rebuild
To see the list of nodes you had installed:
cd ~/.node-red
npm ls --depth=0
To start Node-RED, you can either:
Menu -> Programming -> Node-RED.node-red-start in a new terminal window.Note: closing the window (or ctrl-c) does not stop Node-RED running. It will continue running in the background.
To stop Node-RED, run the command node-red-stop.
If you want Node-RED to run when the Pi boots up you can use
sudo systemctl enable nodered.service
To add additional nodes you must first install the npm tool, as it is not included
in the default installation. This is not necessary if you have upgraded to node.js 4.x or 6.x.
The following commands install npm and then upgrade
it to the latest 2.x version.
sudo apt-get install npm
sudo npm install -g npm@2.x
hash -r
cd ~/.node-red
npm install node-red-{example node name}
Note: npm version 4 is the latest version, but is currently not recommended for use.
You will then need to restart Node-RED. You can then start using the editor.
The pre-install uses the default node.js within Debian Jessie, which is version 0.10.29. If manually installing we recommend using a more recent versions of node.js such as v6.x
The simplest way to install Node.js and other dependencies is
sudo apt-get install build-essential python-rpi.gpio
bash <(curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/node-red/raspbian-deb-package/master/resources/update-nodejs-and-nodered)
Note: Debian/Raspbian Wheezy is now beyond “End of Life”, and is no longer support, and this documentation is now aimed at Jessie as a minimum.
For alternative install options, see the main installation instructions.
If you plan to access the GPIO pins with Node-RED, you should verify which version of the Python RPi.GPIO libraries are installed.
Node-RED includes a Raspberry Pi specific script nrgpio for interacting with
the hardware GPIO pins. If you have installed as a global npm module, this script should be located at:
/usr/lib/node_modules/node-red/nodes/core/hardware/nrgpio ver
or
/usr/local/lib/node_modules/node-red/nodes/core/hardware/nrgpio ver
You must have at least 0.5.11 for the Pi2 or 0.5.8 for the original Pi. If you do not then the following commands will install the latest available:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install python-rpi.gpio
If you want to run as a user other than pi (or root), you will need either to add that user to the sudoers list - or maybe just access to python - for example by adding the following to sudoers using visudo.
NodeREDusername ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/python
Due to the constrained memory available on the Raspberry Pi, it is necessary to
run Node-RED with the node-red-pi command. This allows an additional argument
to be provided that sets at what point Node.js will begin to free up unused memory.
When starting with the node-red-pi script, the max-old-space-size option should
be specified:
node-red-pi --max-old-space-size=256
If you decide to run Node-RED using the node command directly, this option must appear between node and red.js.
node --max-old-space-size=256 red.js
This option limits the space it can use to 256MB before cleaning up. If you are
running nothing else on your Pi you can afford to increase that figure to 256
and possibly even higher. The command free -h will give you some clues as to
how much memory is currently available.
Note: The pre-installed version of Node-RED on Raspbian that uses the node-red-start
command also sets it to 256MB by default. If you do want to change that, the
file you need to edit (as sudo) is /lib/systemd/system/nodered.service. See
below for how to add this to a manually installed version.
The preferred way to autostart Node-RED on Pi is to use the built in systemd
capability. The pre-installed version does this by using a nodered.service
file and start and stop scripts. You may install these by running the following
commands
sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/node-red/raspbian-deb-package/master/resources/nodered.service -O /lib/systemd/system/nodered.service
sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/node-red/raspbian-deb-package/master/resources/node-red-start -O /usr/bin/node-red-start
sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/node-red/raspbian-deb-package/master/resources/node-red-stop -O /usr/bin/node-red-stop
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/node-red-st*
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
Info: These commands are run as root (sudo) - They download the three required files to their correct locations, make the two scripts executable and then reload the systemd daemon.
Node-RED can then be started and stopped by using the commands node-red-start
and node-red-stop
To then enable Node-RED to run automatically at every boot and upon crashes
sudo systemctl enable nodered.service
It can be disabled by
sudo systemctl disable nodered.service
Systemd uses the /var/log/system.log for logging. To filter the log use
sudo journalctl -f -u nodered -o cat
If you need to use a proxy for http requests - you need to set the HTTP_PROXY environment variable.
When using systemd this must be done within the service configuration. To edit this use sudo to edit the file /lib/systemd/system/nodered.service and add another Environment= line, for example:
Nice=5
Environment="NODE_OPTIONS=--max-old-space-size=128"
Environment="HTTP_PROXY=my-proxy-server-address"
Save the file, and then run:
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
to reload the configuration. Stop and restart Node-RED.
Once Node-RED is running - point a browser to the machine where Node-RED is running. One way to find the IP address of the Pi is to use the command
hostname -I
Then browse to http://{the-ip-address-returned}:1880/
sudo apt-get install firefox-esr
More recent build include Chromium - which also works fine but can be rather slow on a Pi1 or Zero.
You can then start creating your first flow.
To install extra nodes make sure you are in your user-directory, by default this is ~/.node-red.
cd ~/.node-red
There are some extra hardware specific nodes (e.g. for the Pibrella, PiFace and LEDBorg plug on modules, Neopixel leds, temperature sensors, etc) available via the flows library. For example the Pibrella node can be installed as follows
cd ~/.node-red
npm install node-red-node-pibrella
You then need to stop and restart Node-RED to load the new nodes, and then refresh the flow editor page in the browser.
node-red-stop
node-red-start
You can also install and remove extra nodes via the Editor UI, Menu - Manage Palette.
There are several ways of interacting with a Raspberry Pi using Node-RED.
These use a python nrgpio command as part of the core install.
This provides a way of controlling the GPIO pins via nodes in the Node-RED palette.
To run a “blink” flow that toggles an LED on Pin 11 of the GPIO header, you will need to connect up an LED as described here.
Then copy the following flow and paste it into the Import Nodes dialog (Import From - Clipboard in the dropdown menu, or Ctrl-I). After clicking okay, click in the workspace to place the new nodes.
[{"id":"ae05f870.3bfc2","type":"function","name":"Toggle 0/1 on input","func":"\ncontext.state = context.state || 0;\n\n(context.state == 0) ? context.state = 1 : context.state = 0;\nmsg.payload = context.state;\n\nreturn msg;","outputs":1,"x":348.1666488647461,"y":146.16667652130127,"wires":[["1b0b73e9.14712c","b90e5005.a7c3b8"]]},{"id":"1b0b73e9.14712c","type":"debug","name":"","active":true,"x":587.1666488647461,"y":206.1666774749756,"wires":[]},{"id":"7aa75c69.fd5894","type":"inject","name":"tick every 1 sec","topic":"","payload":"","repeat":"1","crontab":"","once":false,"x":147.1666488647461,"y":146.1666774749756,"wires":[["ae05f870.3bfc2"]]},{"id":"b90e5005.a7c3b8","type":"rpi-gpio out","name":"","pin":"7","x":585.0000114440918,"y":146.00001049041748,"wires":[]}]
Click the deploy button and the flow should start running. The LED should start toggling on and off once a second.
This section is for advanced users only. In general most users will not need to do this.
This version of working with the Raspberry Pi uses a node.js wrapper to the WiringPi libraries previously installed, and so gives all functions you write access to the Pi capabilities at all times, so you can do more complex things, at the expense of having to write code within a function rather than dragging and wiring nodes.
After installing Node-RED, follow these instructions to get Wiring Pi installed.
Firstly the wiring-pi npm module needs to be installed into the same directory as your
settings.js file.
cd ~/.node-red
npm install wiring-pi
This does not add any specific nodes to Node-RED. Instead the Wiring-Pi module can be made available for use in Function nodes.
To do this, edit your settings.js file to add the wiring-pi module to the Function
global context section:
functionGlobalContext: {
wpi: require('wiring-pi')
}
The module is then available to any functions you write as context.global.wpi.
To run a “blink” flow that uses the WiringPi pin 0 - Pin 11 on the GPIO header, you will need to connect up an LED as described here.
Then copy the following flow and paste it into the Import Nodes dialog (Import From - Clipboard in the dropdown menu, or Ctrl-I). After clicking okay, click in the workspace to place the new nodes.
[{"id":"860e0da9.98757","type":"function","name":"Toggle LED on input","func":"\n// select wpi pin 0 = pin 11 on header (for v2)\nvar pin = 0;\n\n// initialise the wpi to use the global context\nvar wpi = context.global.wpi;\n\n// use the default WiringPi pin number scheme...\nwpi.setup();\n\n// initialise the state of the pin if not already set\n// anything in context. persists from one call to the function to the next\ncontext.state = context.state || wpi.LOW;\n\n// set the mode to output (just in case)\nwpi.pinMode(pin, wpi.modes.OUTPUT);\n\n// toggle the stored state of the pin\n(context.state == wpi.LOW) ? context.state = wpi.HIGH : context.state = wpi.LOW;\n\n// output the state to the pin\nwpi.digitalWrite(pin, context.state);\n\n// we don't \"need\" to return anything here but may help for debug\nreturn msg;","outputs":1,"x":333.16666412353516,"y":79.16666793823242,"wires":[["574f5131.36d0f8"]]},{"id":"14446ead.5aa501","type":"inject","name":"tick","topic":"","payload":"","repeat":"1","once":false,"x":113.16666412353516,"y":59.16666793823242,"wires":[["860e0da9.98757"]]},{"id":"574f5131.36d0f8","type":"debug","name":"","active":true,"x":553.1666641235352,"y":99.16666793823242,"wires":[]}]
Click the Deploy button and the flow should start running. The LED should start
toggling on and off once a second.