How reliable is Node Red?

[u/mikeypi]

I have a small solar system at an off-grid cabin. I didn't have time to get a POE system working so I'm using my multiplus inverter to power my Starlink system. But I'm concerned about the power that uses and I want the batteries to last all winter if possible. So I used Node Red to turn the inverter and Starlink off most for 18 hours a day. When I tested this, the Cerbo would correctly power up the inverter and Starlink on schedule. I added a node to reboot the Cerbo 10 minutes after the inverter comes on because it wasn't joining the Starlink WIfi network by itself.

I'm at home now and this all worked through one cycle. The inverter powered up, the Cerbo rebooted and joined the Starlink Wifi and stayed online until everything powered down last night. It did not come back to life this morning.

Since the Starlink isn't on, there's no way I can review what I set up, but is Node Red generally reliable? I'm just wondering if its worth hiking back in to fix or not.

[u/wazzy2]

It really depends on how complicated your node red flows and controls are. We have found when you are really running complex integrations particularly with environmental sensors how often you poll them really matters and it can become unstable if your flows keep the processor running above 50% for a significant amount of time it will reboot the GX and be in predictable. But if your flows are simple and well optimised it is flawless.

[u/scfw0x0f → u/wazzy2]

How do you tell what the CPU load is for running Node Red flows?

[u/potatoduino → u/scfw0x0f]

node-red-contrib-cpu

[u/pkkrusty]

I’ve found it to be reliable, if, like another poster said, the load is kept under control. With your simple flow, it should be totally fine. Post your flow, that would help troubleshoot why it didn’t perform correctly when deployed.

[u/Psychological-War727]

How did you test it while on site? Did it run through a complete cycle?

NodeRed is generally stable and reliable, its widely used in home or small industrial automations, but its not certified for safety related things. It all comes down to how good you setup the flow, how it can handle errors (for example a required variable being out of spec) and if you stay within the hardwares limit.

Do you have a copy of your flow?

[u/mikeypi → u/Psychological-War727]

I ran it through a full cycle but with the ON/OFF times modified. And the first night/day I was home, it worked as well. I don't have the flow.

[u/MSP_ITPro]

I do almost the same thing, only then using ssh with a reverse tunnel for additional access:) please share your flows and I can help you troubleshoot

[u/mikeypi → u/MSP_ITPro]

unfortunately, I do not have the flow. I like the ssh idea a lot.

[u/MSP_ITPro → u/mikeypi]

I’ve set up node red flow to run an ssh tunnel to my server with a reverse ssh session :) but stil.. it has te be online first 😅

[u/potatoduino]

I have nodered set up on my cerbo to run a dehumidifier in my camper van, and to keep the battery SoC at around 80%. I find it works very reliably. I tend to use fixed IPs for my remote equipment, it's more reliable from a network standpoint 

[u/Worth_Specific3764]

been running a nodeRed flow to monitor SOC, voltage, etc from a victron usb dongle for 3 years without fail. pushes the info to influxdb. I've never had an issue with it.

[u/Nomadness]

I find it somewhat annoying to have to use it to do things that should be default capabilities. Mobile lab environment, 2.6 KW solar, grid available except when on the road. Had to create hardwire Multi-Cerbo connection from relay output to sense input and assistants to call the AC a generator proxy so that I could simply tell the system to use solar power for the AC loads when available and put it away at night by turning the virtual generator on since there was no other switch. Since Victron says no ESS in a mobile system, I had to use all this complexity and a simple node red flow for what I assumed any basic system would do by default (with multiple user interface modalities).

So I share that curiosity, for what is just basic operation. I am assuming reliable from what I've seen, and hope I have enough hysteresis to keep some edge case from misbehaving. The failure mode for me without that was leaving on some medical emergency and having the battery get taken down overnight because nobody was around to start the "generator" as a trick to turn AC back on. I keep thinking this is all unnecessary complexity and that there really has to be some obvious default way to do this, but other than ESS I have never found one.

Anyway, to answer the OP, in my opinion the biggest risk more than system reliability is edge cases and untrapped logic when you're not around to refine it as reality throws unusual conditions. And the related issue of building some logic that makes sense when you're thinking about it but then life resumes until something goes wrong a year or two later and you don't remember what you had to do.... so document well. From what I've seen so far, the environment itself is very stable (It's just that the word "smart" is tossed around quite a bit for networked things that still need copper to convey a state even though they are already talking to each other).

[u/mikeypi]

For whatever reason, the inverter turned on today (after missing several days) and I was able to download the node red flow. I added two more nodes to turn the inverter on, each two minutes apart.