The fog and confusion of Node-red and a Nubie

KR5OG Paul K

Well, my world is slowing down and I am finding I am having more time to use my Flex 6600m radio. The more I use it the more I am loving it, more than ever. About a year ago I added a 2x8 Antenna Genius and a Rotor Genius. All making a much better station. My problem is that I am really starting to fill up the computer screen with apps, and widgets, not to mention the SmartSDR and Ham Radio Deluxe and a digital program if that is what you are doing. With the M model I can eliminate SmartSDR and run the controls on the radio face and free up some room on the monitor. With all that said I think Node-Red could be my answer.

I have started again with my Raspberry Pi 4b and the most recent version of the Rspi OS and Node-Red v 3.0.1 along with some of the flows that many FlexRadio operators have posted on various web sites. These flows are very well put together and I have had good luck getting them to work on my setup after a few people answered a few earlier questions.

The biggest issue I have now is how to shut everything down and not lose the information. Yesterday I had Davide's FlexRadio flow running very well along with the 2x8 AG flow working, dashboards looked nice, and I decided it was time to move the RP to its more permanent home. I went to the terminal window I had running and found the RP was showing an error on the web address for the Antenna Genius. and was repeating fast enough that I could not get the Node-red stop command input to the system. out of despair I opened an additional terminal and got everything shut down, I relocated the RP hooked it all up and after the RP booted, I restarted Node-Red and went back to my radio bench to run node-Red from there, Node-Red came up and I changed the address for the AG, deployed the flow and clicked to display the Dashboard. the only thing that was displayed was the Mic output, everything else was awol.

What is the proper way to shutdown Node-Red and the RP os? Also, I need to know if I have everything installed properly on the Raspberry Pi, should it be run globally or local ? mine is Local. I am not sure about headless vs with header? I think mine is installed Leaderless.

I would really like to hear from some of you that have become very familiar with Node-Red, I welcome input and comments from all.

Thank you

Paul de KR5OG Troy, TX

Alan

Paul

I have shut down and restarted my Raspberry Pi in all different ways, and none have responded as you describe.

Most often, I just remove the power.

For restarting, did you add the command to the RP to load Node - Red on boot up, or are you manually starting Node-Red via the terminal? Perhaps this is the problem?

From the Nodered.org website:

Autostart on boot

If you want Node-RED to run when the Pi is turned on, or re-booted, you can enable the service to autostart by running the command:

sudo systemctl enable nodered.service

Alan. WA9WUD

KR5OG Paul K

Thanks for the reply Alan.

I have not used the auto run statement but I will do that, I have been just starting it from a terminal window on the Pi output to a monitor. Maybe that is my problem, having a terminal open and running NR and closing the terminal.

I will run that script and see if I can access NR from my operating location’s PC.

mid there a difference in loading the PI OS as a service rather than the default installation script?

I will let you know, thank you

Paul, KR5OG

KR5OG Paul K

Alan, after following your suggestion, I have reinstalled everything on a newly formatted SD card and imported the flows and defined the needed information and stopped and started the system several times. This is wonderful, it is now like the Eveready Bunny, it just keeps going and going. Do you think it was the problem of running terminal program that was causing my issue?

Paul

David Decoons, wo2x

Hi Paul

late to the reply. On the Node Red site in the WiKi section there is a guide I wrote on installing the Pi OS and Node Red. You can use the 32 or 64 bit version with the Pi 4b. If you follow it step by step it includes the command to have Node Red auto start.

Once you complete that, there is a ReadMe in the WiKi that guides you through installing addition nodes needed by several of the flows. Follow that guide.

Then import your flows.

73 Dave wo2x

KR5OG Paul K

Dave, thank you,

I will check out the wiki this morning, I did run the auto start script that Alan listed and it works very well.

Paul