How Is Node-RED Used in Industrial Automation?

In my previous article, I introduced you to Node-RED. In that article, I explained that Node-RED is a graphical programming language that is used to connect hardware devices, APIs, and cloud services.

If you missed that article, you can find it here.

Because of its ability to connect hardware devices with cloud services, Node-RED has become the tool of choice for IIoT applications.

If you want to learn how to build IIoT applications with Node-RED, you can check out our course Node-RED with WAGO PLCs.

In today’s article, I want to explore Node-RED use cases. By the end of this article, you will know who is using Node-RED, what they are using it for, and where they are using it.

Let’s get started.

Community Survey

In 2023, Node-RED ran a community survey. The goal of the survey was to gain a better understanding of who is using Node-RED, how they are using Node-RED, and to collect general feedback from the Node-RED community.

A total of 780 individuals completed the survey. This dataset gives a good representation of the general Node-RED community.

Let’s look at the results of the survey to understand who is using Node-RED and how they are using it.

Community Survey Results

Usage capacity

The first question in the survey asked people what capacity they use Node-RED in.

Just over 40% of people use Node-RED in a professional capacity. The remainder use Node-RED for personal and educational use.

It may seem surprising that more people use Node-RED for personal than professional use, but Node-RED is very popular for home automation since it makes it easy to connect various smart devices together.

Professional roles

The follow-up question asked people who use Node-RED in a professional capacity what their role at work was.

It's not surprising to see that the majority of Node-RED users work in technical roles like software developers, industrial engineers, and system architects.

However, it is important to note that non-technical roles like team leaders and project managers use Node-RED as well. This is mostly because it is a graphical programming tool that is easy to learn for non-technical people.

Industry use

The survey also revealed that Node-RED is mainly used in the tech industry with 48% of professionals who use Node-RED working in technology.

The second largest industry in the survey is manufacturing at 40%.

When comparing the 2023 survey with the previous survey in 2019, we see that the proportion of people using Node-RED in the manufacturing industry is increasing. This indicates that Node-RED is gaining acceptance for industrial applications.

Application areas

Next, the survey asked people what they use Node-RED for.

The primary use of Node-RED is home automation, with 70% of respondents stating that they have created home automation applications with Node-RED.

Moving past home automation, we can see that Node-RED is being applied for industrial automation applications too like hosted dashboards, building control, processing data, PLC devices, and Edge Device Logic, where data is collected from a local device like a PLC, transformed in some way, and forwarded to a cloud provider.

Deployment environments

When asked where people run Node-RED, the number of people who reported using Node-RED on an industrial PC or PLC is small but growing when compared to the results of the previous survey.

This growth may be driven by PLC manufacturers integrating IT technology into their products. For example, WAGO’s CC100 PLC is a Linux-based PLC that you can install Node-RED on.

Messaging technologies

When we look at messaging technologies used with Node-RED, we can see the influence that the manufacturing industry is having.

Although MQTT remains the most popular messaging technology that is used with Node-RED, common industrial communication protocols like Modbus and OPC UA are becoming increasingly popular.

These communication protocols may be used to collect data from a PLC in a Node-RED application.

Conclusion

In this article, we reviewed the results of the 2023 Node-RED community survey.

From the results of the survey, we saw that Node-RED is being used in a professional context, and the number of manufacturing professionals using Node-RED is increasing.

We also saw that the main professional applications of Node-RED are to create dashboards, process data, and provide edge device functionality.

Finally, we saw some side effects of increasing Node-RED adoption in the manufacturing industry including an increase in the number of people using Node-RED on a PLC or industrial PC and an increase in the popularity of industrial communication protocols like Modbus and OPC UA.

Node-RED is becoming a very important technology for building IIoT applications. If you want to learn more about how to build IIoT applications with Node-RED, then check out our course Node-RED with WAGO PLCs.

This course was developed in partnership with WAGO. At the end of the course, you'll receive a certificate from WAGO.

In that course, you will learn how to install Node-RED on a WAGO CC100 PLC, how to control a PLC’s IO from a Node-RED application, how to exchange data with a CODESYS application, and how to build a web-based visualization for a PLC using Node-RED.

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