← Wiki

Ingredient

Node-RED

Also known as: Node-RED flow programming

Browser-based flow-programming environment — visual programming language where you wire together input nodes, processing nodes, and output nodes by drawing connections in a web UI. Built on Node.js; runs on a Raspberry Pi, on any Linux server, or in a Docker container. The right ingredient when an integration project needs to be visible, modifiable by non-coders, and rapidly iterable: dashboard prototyping, sensor-to-database pipelines, MQTT routing, time-of-day automations, alerting on conditions. Ships with thousands of community node packages — every common protocol (MQTT, HTTP, Modbus, MySQL, InfluxDB) and every common service (Slack, Discord, Twilio, Telegram, Mastodon) has a node. Apache 2.0.

Inputs / outputs

  • Runs on: Node.js — Linux, macOS, Windows; [[raspberry-pi|Raspberry Pi]] standard
  • UI: browser-based flow editor at http://localhost:1880/
  • Persistence: flows are JSON; version-control friendly
  • Dashboard: node-red-dashboard package adds drag-and-drop UI widgets

Solves / unlocks

  • Sensor-to-dashboard pipelines without writing webserver code
  • Multi-protocol bridges (MQTT → Modbus, HTTP → MQTT, etc.)
  • Time-of-day automations (cron node + downstream actions)
  • Conditional alerting (sensor reading → threshold check → SMS/email/Discord)
  • Rapid-prototype dashboards for stakeholders
  • API mocking and integration testing

Constraints

  • Single-process — one Node-RED instance per server; not a horizontally-scalable bus.
  • JSON flows get sprawl — large flows become unmanageable; use subflows aggressively.
  • Memory leaks in some community nodes — restart-on-schedule for production.
  • Not for low-latency control — UI overhead and Node.js scheduling make it unsuitable for tight control loops.

Source

See also

Auto-generated from this entry’s typed relations: frontmatter, grouped by relation type so the editorial signal isn’t flattened.

  • Member of: [[ingredient]]
  • Combines with: [[raspberry-pi]] · [[mqtt]] · [[home-assistant]] · [[modbus-rs485]] · [[esp32]]

What links here, and how

Inbound connections from across the wiki, grouped by lens and by relationship. These appear automatically — every entity page declares what it links to, and that data populates here on the targets.

Practical

combines with

  • ESP32 ESP32 publishes MQTT, Node-RED routes and visualizes
  • Home Assistant Node-RED + HA via the websocket node = HA's automations on steroids
  • Modbus / RS-485 Node-RED Modbus nodes integrate industrial equipment into IoT flows
  • MQTT Node-RED's MQTT in/out nodes are first-class; visual MQTT routing
  • Raspberry Pi Node-RED runs as a service on the Pi; visual orchestration of farm IoT

contains

6 inbound links · 6 outbound