Pete
what I just did is start with clean Raspbian Stretch install (I used minimal to test)
- set up ssh, change hostname, password, set overclock as required.
- run
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade
- reboot
- run our bash install/upgrade script from the docs
That gets me node 8.11.4 and npm 5.6.0 and Node-RED with serialport.
Then
cd ~/.node-red && npm i node-red-node-arduino
-
node-red-stop && node-red-star
t
And then I have both serial and arduino nodes.