[Announce] node-red-contrib-neuralnet-builder

Hi There,

I had this idea of modelling/building Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) in Node-RED. Unfortunately the idea didn't disperse into the fogs of forgetfulness and I ended up building a bunch of nodes for doing this. I thought it would great to give non-IT people an inside into the technology that underlies the AI revolution. So I created something where ANNs can be designed, trained and tested - it's purely for the visuals and not for the correctness.

Obviously this isn't up-to-date with the latest in AI development however to provides a way to create very simple layered ANNs that give people a feeling for how todays LLMs came to be. Definitely something for educational purposes only.

The package isn't up on npm since their had/have a signup and signin issue plus I don't think many people would be interested in this. I also make no guarantee that this is relevant nor that the terminology is correct.

I learnt a lot about how Node-RED works under the hood, especially the server<-->frontend communication and in the end, that was the most useful learning doing this project. That and creating my own nodes.

Repo: GitHub - gorenje/node-red-contrib-neuralnet-builder: Artificial Neural Network simulator for Node-RED.

Example of what can be created:

(ANNs can be trained and executed, this is just Node-RED as drawing application!)

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Hi @gregorius,

I won't be able to give you useful feedback, because unfortunately I have no knowledge at all about neural networks. But when I first saw you screenshot, I thought immediately: I have seen so many drawings of neural networks passing by in the past, and I have never thought about using Node-RED for that.

You should definately get the Node-RED creativity award 2023 for this one...

Good luck with your project!!
Bart

BTW if you ever got something running that is understandble for noobs, don't forget to share it here. Very curious to see it in action...

Very cool! Totally gonna try this one!

Thank you :slight_smile:

I just found this post on HN - Neural Networks: Zero to Hero | Hacker News - it's about a course on understanding Neural Networks - Neural Networks: Zero To Hero - for those interested in better understanding ANNs, it seems to be good (haven't looked at it myself yet).

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If you want to try it, I've just published it as a node - node-red-contrib-neuralnet-builder (node) - Node-RED

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I can recommend this series (a bit older) but I remember I really enjoyed it (as general introduction):

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