playfultechnology/node-redscape

Broken links between flows

Opened this issue · 5 comments

The way I imported flows left a lot of broken links between flows (call-in/call-out connections). Documenting them somewhere, or documenting a way to import the whole kitten-cabootle intact would be really nice.

On the other hand, having to partially reverse engineer what's already here is a great kick start to being able to add my own customizations. :/

Hi, thanks for the message.

Yeah, I don't really know how to cater for that. I started off just by providing the wiki with specific standalone "recipes" that demonstrated functionality in isolation, but then folks asked me for information about how they would connect those individual recipes together.

So then I moved away from the wiki and provided the example code in the repository instead as a kind of showcase demo of all sorts of functionality - timers, video displays, DMX lighting, clue delivery, etc. - but the problem then is that it introduces dependencies and elements that not eveyrone wants to use.

So.... 🤷 I don't know!

Ah, so that's how the layout of your repo happened. 😄

NodeRed is a wonderful tool, but I've written a solid page of notes about design decisions they made that are awkward or contrary to good programming design (I'm a programmer by trade). Maybe someday I'll take up the task of implementing some changes in NodeRed that will make it easier to provide content like yours.

I the meantime, in a few months I'll be using your work as a starting point for re-engineering the flow of my own escape room electronics. If I think of any ways to improve the linking situation I'll suggest them and probably make some pull requests.

Oops, wrong button didn't mean to close the issue. Still needs work, but I don't have time to work on it now. I'm hip deep in making cabinets and other furniture and things for my escape room.

"... and then moved away from the wiki" .. So is there any desire for feedback on the wiki (and/or) trying to keep it up to date/accurate? I just spent several evenings chasing down trying to get the basic demos working on a raspberry pi. (longer story below) Do you want feedback/pull-requests/bug reports for WIKI updates?

By all means, I'm happy to accept PRs or just suggestions for any aspects of the repo.
If I'm honest, it's basically just an illustration/template of what Node-RED is capable of within an escape room context, and a place for me to document my own flows from which I've created various real control systems. It's not intended to be a simple "off-the-shelf" solution - I would always envisage it needing to be customised for any particular install, and I don't want to devote a lot of time to supporting every possible use case - I'm much more interested in demonstrating its capabilities.