I have purchased a Raspberry Pi 5 starter kit and a fully developed production home automation running on Windows 10.
The Raspberry Pi will only be used for running the production flows. I have no prior experience of Raspberry Pi and am hoping to avhieve what I want with minimal knowledge.
Apart from 3 .csv files that store data and are used in startup and recover situations it should be a basic set up.
Can anyone point to good information that may help me achieve my aim. Thank you
My recommendations:
- Use the official Raspberry Pi OS (its debian based)
- Use the official Node-RED installer script
I've always done Node-RED dev and test on Windows and run my live service initially on various Pi's but more recently on a Debian laptop running headless as a server.
If the Pi is a clean system, Dave's installer script is an easy way to get started - though in my personal opinion, it discourages you from learning what is actually happening and why.
When developing on Windows, you should make sure that any editing tools you use output LINUX-style line endings instead of Windows line endings for text outputs.
On the Pi, it is recommended NOT to run a desktop in order to save resources and prevent slow-downs. Though if you are using a Pi 5 with plenty of memory (I'd suggest >4GB), it may be OK. Personally, my Debian laptop has 8GB of RAM and I still don't run a desktop on it - other than having a Docker image that runs a lightweight remote desktop for the very occasional times I need a Linux desktop.
Other than that, the experience is very similar since Node-RED runs on node.js which is cross-platform.
