How do to show actuators on a node-red dashboard if their number is unknown?

Jasper · 10 February 2020 11:27

Hello again,

I am currently developing a monitoring and control system for the environmental conditions of habitats in enclosed spaces, such as a terrarium or a greenhouse.

Each habitat has a temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure sensor and an undetermined number of ON / OFF actuators.

How would you show those actuators on a Node-Red Dashboard? When the number of actuators can vary depending on the user, add new actuators or eliminate those already linked to the habitat.

Thank you in advance!

Paul-Reed · 10 February 2020 11:38

You may pick up some help from this thread - Project terarrium/vivarium

dynamicdave · 10 February 2020 12:53

Here's the direct link to @corbosman fantastic creation.

https://www.dendroboard.com/forum/members-frogs-vivariums/314714-high-tech-raspberry-pi-tablet-controlled-terrarium.html

Jasper · 10 February 2020 13:34

Thank you for your fast answer. I knew those project, but they have a determinate actuator number, as far as I could see.

As a possible solution to having an undetermined number of actuators, two alternatives occur to me. The first option is to include the controls associated with each of the actuators in an ui-list node, or use a uibuilder node on which to render those controls .

dceejay · 10 February 2020 22:52

The node-red-dashboard is meant for simple visualisations in an easy to build form. So it is limited is some respects - and auto scaling numbers of widgets is one of those. You may need to use something like the node-red-contrib-uibuilder project where you can bring your own framework and have much greater flexibility as to how toadd controls - but you do have to code them yourself.

IoTPlay · 11 February 2020 05:57

Or an html table that has amnt of rows dependent on amt actuators?

kuema · 11 February 2020 06:01

Yes, I was about to suggest using a template node with some Angular and Material widgets.

Christian-Me · 11 February 2020 07:25

Hi,

if you don`t have to show the actuators all once you may consider to group them and select your group (in your case habitat) to set / show the actuators.

or

or

The type and number of ui-widgets is fixed per group! But as you see in the light device example not suitable widgets like color for dimmers are disabled if the fixture type does not support it.

Al is based on a couple of reusable subflows. The dropdown / name / add and delete widgets are always the same. No database is needed.

The light fixture flow could look like this. If this could be a solution for you I can share the flow (it is working fine but there may be still some bugs and it the documentations is not done. The first three "lines" handle the group controls dropdown, add and delete. Below are the individual widgets for the group all connected to one subflow storing the data and forwarding it to the hardware flow(s).