Load webpage on trigger

General
1

Hi,

I'm building a web page that will show information about an article that is being handled in an industrial application. My thought is to catch when a new article is scanned at the station, and send an URL to a browser.

The scanner is connected to a PLC, I have the node red s7 packet and confirmed that i can pick up data from DB's in the PLC. When New_Scan != Old_Scan I want to send the article number in an URL to the browser, say 192.168.0.100/SiteName/ArticleInfo?ArticleNumber=xxxxxxx. This info will be on a screen at the station with no input method.

I'm new to Node-Red and not quite sure how to make the connection between the node red server and the browser though.. Is this possible to do in any way? I'm thinking I'll run the server and browser on a RPi stuck to the station screen, since it will only be the one client.

Appreciate any help.

Best regards,
Daniel

2

Node-RED is based on two http(s) servers using ExpressJS under the skin so it can happily serve up web pages and act as a web end-point.

You have several options depending on your detailed needs. The first would be the pair of nodes http-in and http-out. These work together. http-in is configured with a URL pattern and listens for a browser connecting to that pattern. The connection instigates a message which you can process and ends up at the http-out node which sends the output back to the browser.

Then you have Dashboard which gives you a fancy single-page web interface with a limited structure (based on tabs, groups and cards). Great for displaying a dashboard to a user and getting limited actions. It also provides a data link between Node-RED and your dashboard.

Then you have things like uibuilder which gives you a full web endpoint where you write your own front-end code (html, js, css, etc) and the node takes care of serving it along with serving any front-end libraries you might want such as VueJS (which it provides for you by default). It also provides a data link between Node-RED and your front-end (browser) code.

The choice is yours depending on what you want to do and your skill level.