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Getting Started

Node-RED: Examples | Tutorials

Node-RED is an automation engine where you can visually design and monitor automation workflows.

Compared to Home Assistant

Home Assistant includes its own automation engine called Automations. This is where most users start automating. After years of use, I eventually migrated all my automations to Node-RED. When compared to Home Assistant automations, Node-RED provides the following benefits:

  • Visually create, update, and monitor your automations - the power of dragging and dropping, wiring up connections, and watching your flows move from node to node is remarkable
  • Easily create, organize, and debug complex logic and flows - this was nearly impossible to do with Home Assistant
  • Leverage existing functionality, download more (in an app-store like way), or even expand through custom javascripting
  • No more YAML

This might be controversial to say but automating with Home Assistant Automations is like trying to develop software with Windows Notepad, trying to create presentations in MS Paint, or trying to use Bing as your default search engine (what's with all the Microsoft references?): its great for simple things but not so much for everything else. And if these tools are all you know, they will seem great and other tools will just seem difficult and unnecessary. But when you eventually give the alternative a chance (a real chance), you'll be kicking yourself that you didn't do it sooner.

Installing Node-RED

  1. Visit your Home Assistant website (ex. http://homeassistant.local:8123)
  2. Click Supervisor | Add-on Store
  3. Search for and install the Node-RED add-on
  4. Under config, provide a credential_secret and set ssl to false
  5. Click show in sidebar and then Start