Node-RED is a visual tool for wiring the Internet of Things. It is easy to connect devices, data and API’s (services). It can also be used for other types of applications to quickly assemble flows of services.
Node-RED provides a browser-based flow editor that makes it easy to wire together flows using the wide range of nodes in the palette. Flows can be then deployed to the runtime in a single-click. While Node-Red is based on Node.js, JavaScript functions can be created within the editor using a rich text editor. A built-in library allows you to save useful functions, templates or flows for re-use.
Node-RED is included in the Node-RED starter application in IBM Cloud but you can also deploy it as a stand alone Node.js application. Node-RED can not only be used for IoT applications, but it is a generic event-processing engine. For example, you can use it to listen to events from http, websockets, tcp, Twitter and more and store this data in databases without having to program much if at all. You can also use it for example to implement simple REST APIs. You can find many other sample flows on the Node-RED website.
This app in this lab will be created and run on your IBM Cloud Account.
• As a first step, IBM Cloud Node-RED environment will be created and setup. This will then host your Node-RED flows.
• We will then create Multiple Flows to work with different Watson API's
Before setting up your environment, and in order to create the services needed for the workshop, you'll need an IBM Cloud account.
- Sign up for an account here
- Verify your account by clicking on the link in the email sent to you
Once you have created your IBM cloud account, follow the below instructions to setup your node-RED environment.