Accessing Node-Red Flows

Accessing and using Node-Red may be needed to complete many possible tasks to customize eRVin for your RV. Tasks such as configuring Virtual Smart Home Alexa Account integration (eRVinOS v0.6x and above), or customizing the lighting buttons to match the configuration of your specific RV, or updating a particular “flow” with a new version. Don’t worry, it’s a graphical point and click environment and easy to work with.

This post describes how to connect to the Node-Red “palette”.

What is Node-Red?

Node-Red is a graphical, drag and drop, point and click programming environment that uses “nodes” that are “wired” together to do things that create a “flow” of information. The vast majority of eRVin runs in Node-Red.

How to Connect to Node-Red:

It’s easy. From a Mac or PC (something with a relatively large screen) on the same network as your eRVin system, open your favorite browser and connect to Node-Red by simply typing:

http://coachproxyos:1880     or    http://192.168.xxx.xxx:1880

(Substitute your actual eRVin IP address for 192.168.xxx.xxx)

This will connect you to the Node-Red application running on your eRVin system, the main part of the screen is known as the Palette. It will look something like this:

Pretty colorful, eh? A quick overview:

  • The left most panel contains a list of all the different types of Nodes, if you mouse over them a brief description will pop up. If you want to use one of these nodes, you simply click and drag and drop it onto the Palette.
  • The main large section is the Pallete and contains the “flows”. This one has several flows within it. Notice the tabs at the top, those are other palettes containing other flows and in this case the tabs are primarily used to organize them by function. The gray lines between nodes are “wires” that tell the information where to go (or flow to) next. Generally the information flows from left to right. You will notice in this screenshot squarish gray boxes with an arrow – these are “virtual wires” that connect to another node somewhere and are used primarily to keep down the clutter. In this case they go to a node in the Alexa tab.
  • The far right panel contains tabs for Info, Help, Debug, Configuration, Context Data and Dashboard. More about all this in future posts.

That’s it! Now go back to the post that sent you here and carry on!

 

 

7 Comments to Accessing Node-Red Flows

  1. Scott Anderson says:

    Is NR 3.1 supported, and is there a plan to support a replacement for Dashboard 1? Like Dashboard 2, or one of the alternatives?

    In a related question, is there any thought of bringing all of the external scripts into NR?

    Thanks!

    Amazing work here!

    • Rob says:

      Current eRVin versions are running Node-Red 3.0.2, I haven’t tried going to 3.1 yet. There may be issues with the version of node.js needing an upgrade as well. See my response to Randy Lust. At some point it will probably be necessary to go to a newer PiOS. I would like to get to bookworm 64K.

      You can build your own dashboards if you get familiar with Node-Red, but I think I see what you are getting at. Not something I was thinking about but good idea.

      Yes, I would definitely like to get all the scripts fully within node-red. Socketcan will provide this capability and I have done some work with it. However, it’s hard to beat the functionality of rvc2mqtt, especially the Python version. I wonder though if node-red were doing all that work if it would affect its performance.

  2. Rob Whte says:

    Rob, how long should it take for Node Red to do a Deploy?

  3. Rob Whte says:

    Hello Rob, I have a 2017 Aspire and installed the Erwin way back. Trying to upgrade to the latest version but after installing the new software, can’t connect using http://coachproxyos:1880 or by using the ip address. I can connect through the VNC Viewer. Also deleted and reloaded datapicity but when I try the wormhole, takes an error and won’t connect. What am I missing?
    Thanks

    • Rob says:

      Rob, not sure, what version of eRVin did you update to? If you can connect with VNC that points to Dataplicity as being the issue. There have been times when dataplicity goes down for a few hours. I just checked and mine worked ok just now (23:15 EDT April 06). Try again and let me know.

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