NodeRed Dashboard and controlling TriState (Maplin) 433MHz Switches

The last post managed to get the Maplin RSL366T switches under the control of NodeRed. However, I don't want to be clicking things on and off through the laptop, by clicking an "inject" node... How much more useful it would be to have, for example, a web page that showed the state of the switches and allowed them to be toggled ON and OFF.

The NodeRed add-ons suggested in tech.scargill.org include the NodeRed Dashboard nodes. Let's take a look...

Dashboard Input Fields

Dashboard Output Fields

There are two sets of widgets in the Dashboard selection - input and output, shown in the nearby screenshots. What did I need? Since this was a learning experience, I decided a On and Off button for each of the 3 switches, and a field to report the current status of the switch.

In a new Flow Tab, I added

  • 6 buttons
  • 3 text fields
  • linking two buttons to 
    • each text field
    • a Link node that links to the TriState Control widget on another tab

Simple Dashboard Input (Buttons) and Output (Text) Flow
Here's the resulting Flow Tab contents. The buttons are just like HTML buttons, so they have properties associated with them i.e. code, channel and state - pretty handy for the TriState Control input! Then I pointed my browser at the NodeRed server, with the URI /ui, and bingo...

NodeRed Dashboard Example
Now I can switch the switches on and off from anywhere in the house. Excellent! In fact, so excellent the 3.5 year old twins were screaming with delight every time I switched the light in the back room on or off remotely, standing around waiting for it to change... sad but fun!



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