ubidots-nodered 2.0.2
NodeRED node to post data on Ubidots using MQTT.
Node-RED Ubidots Node
This Node-RED node is used to interact with the Ubidots service. It publishes and suscribes to one or multiple variables. It also provides the ability to subscribe to up to 10 Ubidots custom topics.
Ubidots is a platform to help you power your IoT and Cloud applications.
Requirements
Requires a node-red version of >1.0.
Installation
The ubidots-nodered node for Node-RED is available as an npm package. We recommend you to read Node-RED documentation, if you have any doubts installing nodes in the platform.
Usage
There are two different nodes: One for subscribing (reading) information from Ubidots and another one for publishing (sending) information to Ubidots.
Ubidots In
This node (Subscriber) is used to suscribe to one or more (up to 10) Ubidots Variable(s) or custom topics. It will listen to new values and pass it to further nodes in the msg.payload.
The node uses the MQTT library to establish the connection and suscribe to the variable or topic.
Double click on the node to configure all the required fields.
Account type: Defaults to “Ubidots”, which is valid for both Industrial and STEM account type. If you have a STEM account, choose “Ubidots for Education”
Name: The Label of the node in the Node-Red workspace. If empty, defaults to: "Ubidots in". This library uses an MQTT implementation, hence, it's neccesary to name this MQTT client. We recommend you to choose a non-easy-to-copy name, to prevent cases where the name crashes between different clients in the broker.
Token: The Token necessary to authenticate the connection to your Ubidots account. To obtain your token, login on ubidots.com, under "My Profile" click on "API Credentials". (Tutorial)
Device label: The label of the Device to which the node subscribes. Please keep in mind that this field is neglected in case custom topics are used.
TLS: By default, all data is sent encrypted via TLS. Uncheck if data should be sent unencrypted.
Use Custom Topics: Allows to specify up to 10 custom topics to which the node subscribes to. The topic starts after
/v1.6/devices/.
A topic has to be in the following format: Device_Label/Variable_Label. Optionally /lv can be added to subscribe to the Last Value only. Topics support wildcard characters: "+" for single level and "#" for multi level.
Variable label: The name of the Variable the node subscribes to.
Last Value: By default, the node subscribes to the Last Value of the variable. Uncheck to subscribe to the complete data point object.
Add Variable/Add Topic: Adds an additional variable/topic (up to 10).
When using custom topics, the output is a JSON object with the topic as key and the Last Value/data point object as value, e.g.: {"device_label/variable": {"value": 100, "timestamp": 1583523586668, "context": { "key1": "value1", "key2": "value2"}, "created_at": 1583523586732}
When using the variable name (with the device label), the output is a JSON object with the variable name as key and the Last Value/data point object as value, e.g.: {"variable": {"value": 100, "timestamp": 1583523586668, "context": { "key1": "value1", "key2": "value2"}, "created_at": 1583523586732}
Refer to the Ubidots Documentation for more information about the functionality of the MQTT broker.
If you get the error: TypeError: send is not a function, please run npm update node-red and reload Node-Red. You probably run a 0.x node-red version. This library requires >1.0.
Ubidots Out
This node is used to publish to an Ubidots Variable. It will receive a value from a previous node and publish it to your variable on Ubidots.
These are the properties you should configure, by double clicking the node:
Account type: Defaults to “Ubidots”, which is valid for both Industrial and STEM account type. If you have a STEM account, choose “Ubidots for Education”
Name: Label of node in Node-Red workspace. If empty, defaults to: "Ubidots out". This library uses an MQTT implementation, hence, it's neccesary to name this MQTT client. We recommend you to choose a non-easy-to-copy name, to prevent cases where the name crashes between different clients in the broker.
Token: The Token necessary to authenticate the connection to your account. To obtain your token, login on ubidots.com, under "My Profile" click on "API Credentials". Tutorial
Device label or msg.payload.ubidotsDeviceLabel: The label of the Device to which the data will be published. If no Device exists with this label on Ubidots, it will be automatically created. Can be sent dynamically in the message JSON object with the key:
ubidotsDeviceLabel. If no Device label is sent in the message, it defaults back to the value from the Device Label field. Keep in mind that the Device Label is required.TLS: By default all data is sent encrypted via TLS. Uncheck if data should be sent unencrypted.
msg.payload: The payload will contain all the values that are sent to the Device. It's structured to use the key of the object as the variable label and the value of the key as the value to send to Ubidots, e.g.
{"variable-label": 42}
The message can contain the following properties:
msg.payload.ubidotsDeviceLabel(optional) - The label of the Device to which the packet will be published. If no Device Label is sent, it takes the Device Label from the Device Label field in the node settings.msg.payload(optional) - The values to be published on the given Device. Each key is the label of the variable.
Example of a simple value JSON message:{"variable": 100}.
Example of a JSON message providing context data: {"variable": {"value": 200, "context": {"key1": "value1","key2": "value2"}}}.
Example of JSON message with multiple variables: {"variable_1": {"value": 100, "context": {"key1": "value1", "key2": "value2"}}, "variable_2": {"value": 200, "context": { "key1": "value1", "key2": "value2"}}}.
Refer to the Ubidots Documentation for more information about the functionality of the MQTT broker.
Authentication
The authentication is made by using the Token field in your nodes. You can read more about authenticating with Ubidots and MQTT in our documentation.
Development
If you want to modify this extension, you just have to run npm install or yarn install to fetch and install the dependencies.
To install the development version and use it on your Node-RED instance, you can execute npm link on this folder and then execute
npm link ubidots-nodered in your ~/.nodered folder.
More information in the section: Testing your node in Node-RED.
License
This software is provided under the MIT license. See LICENSE for applicable terms.
