The next monthly UPARC meeting is at 10:00 AM on Saturday April 3rd, 2021. This is an online Zoom meeting. Besides our usual reports on various club activities, we have a technical presentation on Node-RED presented by Tom NY4I.
Node-RED is an open-source technology created by IBM to help automate the Internet of Things (IoT). But since IoT is just controlling various pieces of hardware, Node-RED lends itself quite well to controlling ham radio gear. By creating graphical “flows”, nodes are linked together to talk to radios, amplifiers, rotor controllers, weather stations, web-based power switches, relays, etc. Most people install this on a Raspberry Pi but it can also run on Windows. Mac, Linux, etc. Through a set of shared flows, you can be up and running to talk to the devices in your shack and create a “single, glass cockpit” view of your serial or network connected devices.
Rounding out Node-RED for the ham radio community is a great support group on groups.io where many people create and share flows and provide as much help as needed to get you going. This can also be done with as much or as little programming effort as you want. Since nodes are linked in a graphical editor (all on your web browser), it is not your typical programming environment. Node-RED truly needs to be seen to appreciate its power.
Tom will introduce you to Node-RED, explain what it does along with a demonstration. He will also give you what you need to get started installing your own environment.
We hope you can attend. More information on the meeting is available here.
