Though a lot of good polyfills do exist. But probably would need people with older browsers to be involved with the project and actively contribute some work-arounds. Not top priority I'm afraid though I'm sure.
1 Like
Supporting old stuff is nice, and made much easier if the old stuff actually supported what standards were in place and active at the time. But supporting stuff that is no longer being sold just doesn't make sense
To be fair, it makes a little more sense for Node-RED than in some other circumstances. Due to the fact that many of us would love to reuse old kit for home automation displays and controllers.
But all these ongoing changes to HTML, CSS and JavaScript are very wearing as it takes years sometimes for browsers to catch up and then some devices can't access things properly.
At least with Android, you may well be able to root the device and put an updated ROM onto it and so potentially extend its life. On the other hand, Apple devices do, at least these days, have a decent lifespan mostly.
Realistically, you need a device from 2016 or later though with a browser that supports ES6 (AKA ECMA2015). For iOS, that means a device that has iOS 12+. Not sure about Android.
Sadly, those old Windows CE devices no longer cut it! 
2 Likes
A post was split to a new topic: Information about a dashboard site
A post was split to a new topic: Updating old kit
Lets try and keep on-topic guys 
Are there any new findings regarding this? Did the core team make any decisions?
Not aware of any decisions.
I'm still, very slowly trying to close the gap from a uibuilder perspective but I don't have the time myself (and probably not the skills) to dedicate to creating something that could replace what Dashboard does. However, @meeki007 has begun to do some thinking about the possibility of some components and a visual designer integration. I've been updating some documentation that should help articulate the core purpose and aims of uibuilder in order to help if people are wanting to contribute.
While Dave does an excellent job of maintaining and extending Dashboard, he has a day-job too and I don't believe he has the time to do anything really major. Of course there may well be things happening in the background that I'm not aware of.
I guess a bigger question on that is where are Nick and Dave's heads at on this.
Obviously as has been stated they will continue to maintain/support the current Dashboard but are limited by the underlying framework.
Are they thinking that the longer term solution is for a 3rd party dashboard (community or otherwise) and just let the current one die a natural death as NR evolves going forward - or are they working a secret gee whiz thing in the background with the new company ?
Would there be any value/way to get a list of the major companies that use NR in their products and approach them to fund a developer for 6/12 month period to take UIbuilder (or something else) and turn that into Dashboard 2.0 ??
Craig
1 Like
An interesting approach for sure.
I see dashboard as an important gateway into node-red for many non-programmers who want something to show their boss. Especially in the realm of HMI/SCADA alternatives.
I can't answer other points at this time but I do hope it gets traction.
1 Like
Sounds good to me, although I think it will take more than 6/12 months and needs to be maintained of course 
I will discuss this with our partner who's shipping controllers with Node-RED since 2019. As for our team, we are totally willing to invest time and money into NR (which includes a "new fancy dashboard").
4 Likes
Searching github for SCADA, i came across FUXA, which is a quite sophisticated and fullblown SCADA interface designer with interactivity (see their editor on the left bottom), open source and build on nodejs/angular, it supports OPC UA, Modbus, BACnet, Ethernet/IP (Allen Bradley) SiemensS7, MQTT out of the box.
For node-red and its' future it might be interesting for collaboration ? Not so much for simpler dashboards, but keeping the enterprises in mind.
2 Likes
I've been keeping an eye on fuxa for quite some time (though I haven't played with it for a year or so). Compared to other SCADA I've used (cimplicity, ifix, review etc) it is somewhat lacking but it is promising.
1 Like
There are others out there and I know that @meeki007 has been looking at this from a uibuilder perspective recently and we've had some chats.
Actually, I don't think that uibuilder itself needs the development and I've always said that I'm happy to discuss specific requirements if things need adding.
What is needed is some agreement on standardised data exchange, some additional front-end components that use those standards and a simple UI designer that can be called from/integrated with uibuilder that would allow people with no web coding skills put together their UI.
I actually think that 6-12m of 1 or 2 people would be enough to create something usable. The creation and agreement on the data schema's is the hard part. Assuming the code is reasonably written and documented, support shouldn't be that hard. Certainly support for uibuilder isn't and that is certainly a complex beast these days.
1 Like
Actually i did not mean UIBuilder needed the development - more the others bits you have listed - but also some esy to use Dashboard (ala the current one) that is somehow layered on top of UiBuilder.
So beginners get the drag and drop and all the widgets we are used to - plus an easy way for all the amateur developers to easily port their contrib-nodes and as the skill level evolves they can move into raw Uibuilder mode.
Not sure where the ongoing support ends up once a product is delivered but that is the same for all ongoing NR development
Craig
Yes, the best I've seen for that so far is a full-fledged UI layout tool. A few of these are floating around for various frameworks like VueJS and REACT. I've had a look at a couple of the VueJS ones as I believe VueJS is currently probably the best balance between simplicity, flexibility, future standards and good support. But they are all quite complex and I've not been able to get my head around how they could be integrated to uibuilder. Needs a greater brain than mine I'm sure!
I'm also playing with the idea of having a 2nd alternative where a UI is defined in a declarative way using YAML or JSON. Again, there are a number of libraries that do something similar.
Either way, it is likely that we would also need the standardised components to go along with the layout tool. As I see them, these may be no more than a simple wrapper around existing components that make them easy to use with Node-RED/uibuilder by defining standard I/O data both for content and configuration (so that configurations can be sent from Node-RED as needed).
Yes, that's exactly what I have in mind. I just lack the time - and doubtless many of the skills - to create this stuff 
That is correct but something that can be looked at. If we can build something that people want to use and find useful, we can sort out ongoing ownership and support as was done with Dashboard itself.
For myself, I'm certainly prepared to talk about ownership of the uibuilder repo for example. While I want to retain ownership for now, if it was considered important to change ownership I would certainly be open. Most certainly, I am keenly aware that I won't be able to manage it forever and if it remains useful to the community, I will make sure that it has a suitable home.
Also, apologies for focusing on uibuilder - I don't want to imply that uibuilder is the future for a Node-RED dashboard. The core devs and the community decide what the future holds. I just want to continue to make uibuilder and any associated tools meet whatever needs it can for the community.
2 Likes
When we were in two largest sensor and IOT conferences in the industry (Sensors Converge 2021 and IOT World in 2021), we saw lots of Node-RED based dashboards. Lots of them are customized with additional nice features.
Of course we are using Node-RED for our wireless gateway with edge computing ability. They control our industrial leading ultra-low power wireless vibration sensors.
The vibration analysis software on the gateway is based on Node-RED dashboard.
We also got customer requests to use Node-RED for customized development. So Node-RED will have a big year of 2022.
It would be great to have a new dashboard with much desired features such as flexible scaling and faster response speed for live charts.
3 Likes
Yes - but as a commercial business using NR would you be willing to put some money towards the costs of a developer for 6 months to deliver the next version ?
No need to apologise - this is obviously where your focus and passion is and you obviously actively participate on here all the time.
To me the combination of UIBuilder with some of the other tools that you mention would seem to be the Nirvana solution - whereas something like unified-red (node) - Node-RED - seems to be a great stepping stone (for someone like me that has little idea of the complexities behind it all)
The Unified-red guys seem to have done a good job of migrating to some of the newer components - would it be viable to take something like this in the shorter term whilst you continue on with the great work you are doing on Uibuilder - with it ultimately being the end goal ?
Craig
I'm curious what these components look like but I haven't found any screenshots or the like. Being a fork of the standard dashboard does it have the same appearance?
Yes we have been paying a Node-RED programmer since last year. We are adding more data acquisition modes and features for ultra-low power wireless vibration sensors to make them friendly for vibration analysts. We developed the unique true real-time wireless vibration monitoring sensor SVT200-V, which is ultra compact with long lasting battery life. The live chart display from Node-RED dashboard paired with time-series database is ideal for such applications.
I think there will be stronger demands for Node-RED programmer this year.
2 Likes
