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Node-RED: Setup ​

Introduction ​

Node-RED is an low-code platform for writing automation tasks. It can communicate with Brewblox APIs using MQTT and REST.

This tutorial show how to add a Node-RED service to an existing Brewblox system. It assumes a basic familiarity with YAML and Docker Compose.

Create the local data directory ​

We want the flows created by Node-RED to be persistent. To do this, we'll mount a node-red directory as volume.

In the Brewblox directory, run:

sh
mkdir -p ./node-red
sudo chown -R 1000:1000 ./node-red

Add the service ​

Edit your docker-compose.yml file, and add the following service:

yaml
  node-red:
    image: nodered/node-red:latest-minimal
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
    - type: bind
      source: ./node-red
      target: /data
    - type: bind
      source: /etc/localtime
      target: /etc/localtime
      read_only: true

Fix service routing ​

Brewblox services share the same http and https ports. To distinguish between them, the traefik proxy looks at the URL path prefix. This prefix should match the service name. Here, want the path to the editor UI to be prefixed with /node-red.
To do this, we'll edit the automatically generated configuration.

First, start the service to generate the default configuration files:

sh
brewblox-ctl up

Then, edit the configuration file to set the /node-red prefix for the web UI:

sh
sudo sed -i 's#//httpAdminRoot:.*#httpAdminRoot: "/node-red",#g' ./node-red/settings.js
sudo chown 1000:1000 ./node-red/settings.js

Restart the service to apply the setting:

sh
brewblox-ctl restart node-red

Now, when you visit {BREWBLOX_ADDRESS}/node-red in your browser, it will load the Node-RED web UI.