Makers Blog

: Martin PLCnext Team; Makers Blog; 17 December 2018; Hits: 2492

How to start Node-RED automatically when the PLC starts

=== UPDATE ====

The recommended way to install node.js and npm on a PLCnext Control is now through the PLCnext Store.

It appears that the procedure described below may not work after installing node from the PLCnext Store. In this case, an alternative to pm2 may be needed to automatically start node-red. You can raise general issues related to pm2 on their Github page.

The original article remains below.

Procedure

npm install -g pm2
pm2 start node-red
pm2 save
pm2 startup

Restart the PLC and check that Node-RED has started automatically.

Thank you to PLCnext Community member David Petter for these instructions.

More information on starting Node-RED using pm2 can be found here: https://nodered.org/docs/getting-started/running

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: Martin Boers; Makers Blog; 12 December 2018; Hits: 3821

Automation Maker #003: Node-RED as OPC UA client

More information on the IIoT OPC UA node package:

Github fork of the toolbox package - including documentation
Tutorial videos from the author

Command to install the IIoT OPC UA node package:

npm install -g node-red-contrib-iiot-opcua

Thank you to PLCnext Community members David Petter and Stefan Brinkmann, and to Klaus Landsdorf from Bianco Royal, for their valuable contributions.

Note: We show the engineering part in this video using a beta version of the upcoming PLCnext Engineer software by Phoenix Contact that will be available soon and for free. Until then, the procedure should work using the current PC Worx Engineer version as well. If you encounter any problems, please let us know.

The flow used in this example is represented by the following JSON (press "Read more" to see it). It can be imported straight into the editor by pasting the JSON into the Import dialog (Ctrl-I or via the dropdown menu).

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: Martin Boers; Makers Blog; 26 November 2018; Hits: 3312

Automation Maker #002 - Install Node-RED on a PLC

=== UPDATE ====

The recommended way to install node.js and npm is now through the PLCnext Store.

After installing node.js from the Store, log in to the PLC as "admin" and proceed with node-red installation using npm.

Useful links:

Sample flow on the Node-RED website

Commands to install Node-RED:

ipkg install node (install node.js from the PLCnext Store)

npm install -g node-red

Note: The errors seen during Node-RED installation relate to the optional bcrypt package.
To avoid these errors, install gcc, make, and python 2, before installing Node-RED:

ipkg install gcc

ipkg install make

ipkg install python27

npm install -g node-red --python=python2 --unsafe-perm

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: Martin Boers; Makers Blog; 21 November 2018; Hits: 2916

Automation Maker #001 - Where's the package manager?

Useful links:

Optware-ng project on Github

Commands to install and use ipkg:

wget -O - http://ipkg.nslu2-linux.org/optware-ng/bootstrap/buildroot-armeabihf-bootstrap.sh | sh

export PATH=$PATH:/opt/bin:/opt/sbin

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: PLCnext Team; Makers Blog; 27 August 2018; Hits: 6198

How to use the .Net Core on a PLCnext Control

If you're a C# programmer working with a PLCnext Control then you might want to use the **Microsoft^® .NET Core** runtime. Here's how to install it on an AXC F 2152 control.

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: Oliver PLCnext Team; Makers Blog; 09 August 2018; Hits: 3458

Crosscompile Guide: Mosquitto

Mosquitto is an open source project to implement an MQTT client to your system. The MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport) protocol is made for machine-to-machine (M2M) connectivity, basing on an extremely lightweight messaging using a publish/subscribe model. This makes it suitable for Internet of Things messaging such as with low power sensors or embedded computers.

The Mosquitto project also provides a C library for implementing MQTT clients, and the very popular mosquitto_pub and mosquitto_sub command line MQTT clients.

Let's see how to crosscompile it for PLCnext Controls.

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: Oliver PLCnext Team; Makers Blog; 09 August 2018; Hits: 5984

Crosscompile Guide: cURL Library for FTP / SMTP

libcurl - the multiprotocol file transfer library

libcurl is a free and easy-to-use client-side URL transfer library, supporting DICT, FILE, FTP, FTPS, Gopher, HTTP, HTTPS, IMAP, IMAPS, LDAP, LDAPS, POP3, POP3S, RTMP, RTSP, SCP, SFTP, SMTP, SMTPS, Telnet and TFTP.

libcurl supports SSL certificates, HTTP POST, HTTP PUT, FTP uploading, HTTP form based upload, proxies, cookies, user + password authentication (Basic, Digest, NTLM, Negotiate, Kerberos), file transfer resume, http proxy tunneling and more!

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: Oliver PLCnext Team; Makers Blog; 09 August 2018; Hits: 2332

Crosscompile Guide: Libwebsockets API

The Libwebsockets API ("LWS") covers a lot of interesting features for people making embedded servers or clients:

HTTP(S) serving and client operation
HTTP/2 support for serving
WS(S) serving and client operation
HTTP(S) apis for file transfer and upload
HTTP 1 + 2 POST form handling (including multipart / file upload)
cookie-based sessions
account management (including registration, email verification, lost pw etc)
strong SSL / TLS PFS support (A+ on SSLlabs test)
ssh server integration
serving gzipped files directly from inside zip files, without conversion
support for linux, bsd, windows etc... and very small non-linux targets like ESP32

Here's how to crosscompile it - first the easy way, and then for advanced users:

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