1. Introduction

Node-RED is a visual streaming programming tool built on Node.js. It allows developers to connect different functional modules into complete data processing flows by dragging and dropping nodes, enabling rapid orchestration of device communication, data processing, and business logic.

As a derivative application of Node.js, Node-RED perfectly inherits the event-driven, non-blocking I/O architectural advantages of Node.js. This makes it perform excellently in handling high-concurrency connections and real-time data streams, while also running stably on resource-constrained edge devices, such as embedded hardware platforms like Raspberry Pi.

2. Advantages

Node-RED lowers the development threshold. Node-RED's low-code/no-code development model completely changes the traditional programming paradigm. Developers do not need to write complex program code from scratch; instead, they can combine and connect pre-built node modules through a graphical interface. This visual development method greatly shortens the learning curve.

Furthermore, Node-RED has powerful protocol adaptation capabilities. It supports almost all mainstream IoT protocols and industry standard protocols, such as MQTT, HTTP, TCP/IP, Modbus, etc. Node-RED, with its rich node ecosystem, easily enables data interoperability between different systems. Integrating Node-RED into products allows users to implement extended functions without complex programming.

Node-RED has a wide range of applications, covering industrial production, smart homes, data analytics, and many other fields. In Industrial IoT scenarios, Node-RED is often used to build data acquisition and analysis platforms. It can collect operational data from various sensors and devices distributed at the front end, process it in real time, and push it to the cloud for analysis.

3. Applications in Products

Our Ebyte E870-LXXXLG12-O series LoRaWAN open-source gateway integrates Node-RED programming tools and a ChirpStack server. We have also created a LoRaWAN node module within Node-RED, which allows for simple graphical programming to transmit data from LoRaWAN terminal devices to the ChirpStack server first, and then forward the data to the server using other protocols such as TCP/IP, HTTP, and MQTT via the Node-RED node module, uploading the data to the cloud.