Node-red won't open, can't connect etc. Suspect nodes

General
1

I've had a problem where the browser was giving various errors, not connecting etc. and I think it's down to this little combination:

[{"id":"cb6f5ca6c9e19168","type":"inject","z":"1dd0a75c02dce780","name":"","props":[{"p":"payload"},{"p":"topic","vt":"str"}],"repeat":"","crontab":"","once":false,"onceDelay":0.1,"topic":"","payload":"Working","payloadType":"str","x":99.36648559570312,"y":314.97018813476564,"wires":[["9d7006725c3bd89c"]]},{"id":"9d7006725c3bd89c","type":"bouygues-sms","z":"1dd0a75c02dce780","to":"0033782747656","name":"","x":299.0994567871094,"y":316.0909118652344,"wires":[["ef1c54e65416cabe"]]},{"id":"ef1c54e65416cabe","type":"debug","z":"1dd0a75c02dce780","name":"debug 415","active":true,"tosidebar":true,"console":false,"tostatus":true,"complete":"payload","targetType":"msg","statusVal":"payload","statusType":"auto","x":516.3692779541016,"y":313.7912025390625,"wires":[]}]

When I inject twice, it immediately throws a server connection error. But is this even possible ?

2

The node node-red-contrib-bouygues-sms (node) - Node-RED has not been updated in 8 years. You could try asking via an issue on the node's github page, but it may well have been abandoned.

3

Ah, that's probably it then.

Any suggestions for a node that will send me a text ?

4

I haven't, but a forum search may prove fruitful.

5

telegram is well supported.

node-red-contrib-telegrambot (node) - Node-RED is the best package for this.

6

Thanks, will give that a try. I did have the sms thing working and then I changed phone operator so lost use of their sms node.

7

I use Twilio to send SMS. It is a "paid" service but if you are not sending a lot of messages, it is not very expensive. There are some hurdles in getting signed up for it (I can't find the thread but the process is described in that thread).

8

I will take a look at that although I was looking for a free service. It's only a couple of messages now and again.

9

It played up a lot this afternoon and I couldn't get the editor to open at all. Finally, I restarted in safe mode, deleted all problem nodes and uninstalled from palette. All seems good now.

10

Telegram is about the easiest thing to use. There are a great set of nodes and it is pretty reliable. It does really need you to install the app on mobile devices though. Lots of us use it for general notifications and some of us also use it for secure inputs/controls as well.

11

I'll give it a go.

12

By the way, this little episode has made me look for a way to have a regular backup but it seems more complicated than expected. Any quick, off-the-top-of-your-head recommendations ?

13

I've posted some scripts before as have others. Node-red is just a node.js app so is pretty easy to back up using rsync or similar linuxy tools.

Simply back up your userDir folder minus the node_modules folder (which is easily reproduced).

14

I don't know enough to know whether installing rsync is possible/advisable on this Venus machine. There is nothing "built-in" that could do a basic backup ?

15

You can write a simple node red flow inside of your flows that collects the important files, zips them (optional) and sends them wherever you need to back them up

16

For a brute force method, you only need to copy the userDir folder. As Steve suggests, you can do this from within Node-RED itself since Node-RED is built on node.js.

Do check if rsync is already installed though, it may be.

You could also do the copy over SCP since you already have SSH connectivity. It will take a long time but you only need to do it after you've changed something.

17

I don't think Rsync is installed but there is an MQTT broker; is there any way to back up using that ?

18

Weeellll, in theory, it may be possible. Not sure how fragile it would be though. You would need a flow to walk through all of the critical files, read them into memory then write them to MQTT. There are size considerations (MQTT max buffer size) and you would be limited to UTF text only (probably not an issue). You would also be duplicating those files into memory at least twice, once in Node-RED and once in the broker. Not sure how long that would stay in memory. If you made sure that a listener was always connected so you didn't need retained messages in the broker, then you could likely re-use a single topic which would help reduce the memory overheads. But then you might also need to consider timing issues.

So might be do-able in a pinch but I certainly wouldn't consider it "production ready". :smiley: