Getting Started With RedConnect
This video is a walkthrough on how to use RedConnect a managed hosted Node-RED environment. We will create an account, explore the admin panel and create our first RedConnect app. Lets get started.
For any questions please contact me @stephenkeep on twitter or email us at admin@redconnect.io.
Next Lesson
In the next lesson we will explore the editor in more detail “How To Use Node-RED”
Transcript
Hi my name is Stephen Keep, today we are going to take a look at RedConnect. We are going to take a tour of the panel which is where you can create your first RedConnect app. Then we are going to create our first hello world example, so let’s get started.
So if you haven’t got an account already head on over to https://login.redconnect.io. On here you will see a register link, click on the link fill out your email address and password. Once registration is complete you can head on back to login. Enter the credentials you just created and you’ll be redirected to the admin panel.
The panel is where you manage all of your apps, first thing we are going to want to do is create a new app to begin with lets click on that create new app button. The next thing we need to do is give our app a name, so for this example we just call this helloworld.
Now the app appears in our list you may notice it says that its not running, when an app is first installed it takes about a minute to load. While that’s happening let’s take a look at this app in more detail. Along the top you can see there are few tabs versions, team management and server logs we’ll explore these tabs in other tutorials but for now let’s launch the app and start our hello world example. To do that just click on the Launch button and a new tab will open up with the RedConnect app inside.
On the left hand side you will see the add-on catalog, this is where all the different nodes live and these are essentially the Lego bricks that can be combined together to create what we call flows. We will go into these in more detail later on but to begin lets create our Hello World example. We are going to need a HTTP in node this node acts like a REST API. Once you have created it and added it to your sheet, it will create an endpoint that you can call. So the first thing you need to do is to double-click it, this shows the configuration page for the node. So we’re going to create an endpoint called hello and then we can just give it useful name so we know what this node does, so it’s just GET hello.
Click ok the next thing we’re gonna need is called a function node, a function allows us to write JavaScript to manipulate data as it goes along a flow. First we’re going to want to do is drag that onto the screen and then connect the two dots together to create a flow. Double-clicking the function node opens up its configuration sheet and here we’re going to want to create something on the message object called a payload, this payload is passed around between nodes and allows us to send data from node to node. First lets give it a name “responds to hell0”. Then we just type msg.payload and then lets just give it the String “hello world”. Once that is done lets press ok. There’s one more node that we’re going to need and that’s the HTTP response node. This will send a message back to whoever requested it. Once we have connected them up you can see in the info panel on the right hand side is giving you some details about what actually can be sent to this node, one of those is payload so anything we pass to payload will get sent back to the original request. Clicking deploy, deploies this flow to our server. then all we need to do is access the URL helloworld.reconnectapp.io/hello. Hitting that and we get our hello world
This really does only show the tip of the iceberg of what’s possible with RedConnect so join us in the next video where we discuss add-ons and we start to create a more advanced flow.
