node-red-contrib-makehaus

NodeRED Nodes which add support for the MakePro X "MakeHaus" modular building block system for professional control surfaces. For more information on the product visit the MakePro X Website

With these nodes, professional grade user tactile interfaces now become available for NodeRED - when mouse or touch are not intuitive or fast enough!

Our NodeRED Nodes contains nodes to to access the following MakePro tiles/widgets from NodeRED:

• RGB Buttons
• touch-sensitive Encoders
• touch-sensitive motorized Faders

This release replaces the previous "Tiles Hub" based nodes and they replace the previous JVM-based "Tiles Hub" completely. MakePro Devices can now connect directly to NodeRED (via USB) and do not require running a Tiles Hub any more. Also, these Nodes do not require MakePro's Glue to be running.

To interface MakePro's Glue software with NodeRED, please refer to node-red-contrib-glue.

In case you are migrating from a previous Tiles Hub based system, then there is a one-time update of firmware required for your tiles. Please contact us by sending an email to community at makeproaudio.com to receive instructions on the firmware update.

Installation Instructions

Because the MakeHaus Nodes communicate directly with the Hardware via USB, for some platforms the installation is a little bit more complex than installing other nodes. Here are instructions for the most popular platforms. If your platform is not listed here, it should work right out of the box.

Raspberry Pi OS Lite (32 bit)

1. Get access to the terminal either via SSH or by connecting a keyboard and mose as well as a monitor.
2. You need to install some packages: sudo apt install -y libudev-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev
3. Install the nodes via the NodeRED UI (menu -> palettes -> install)

If your installation fails with an error like

prebuild-install: Permission denied
npm ERR! sh: 1: cmake-js: Permission denied

make sure that you're not running NodeRED as root! Instead, use the pi user or a dedicated NodeRED user.

Diet Pi

1. Get access to the terminal either via SSH or by connecting a keyboard and mose as well as a monitor.
2. You need to install some packages: sudo apt install -y libusb-1.0-0 libusb-1.0-0-dev libudev-dev build-essential git pkg-config
3. To grant NodeRED access to the usb serial ports, add the user to the dialout group using sudo usermod -a -G dialout nodered
4. Reboot: sudo reboot
5. Install the nodes via the NodeRED UI (menu -> palettes -> install)

If it doesn't work, try the following:

1. Make sure you're logged in as the dietpi user: su dietpi
2. Run cd /mnt/dietpi_userdata/node-red
3. Run npm i @makepro-x/makehaus-lib @elgato-stream-deck/core node-hid --build-from-source
4. Install the nodes via the NodeRED UI (menu -> palettes -> install)

Logging

In order to see more detailed logging, you need to set the environment variable DEBUG to mpx:*&makehaus:*.

DietPi

As NodeRED runs as a service on the DietPi image, you need modify /etc/systemd/system/node-red.service.

1. Add Environment="DEBUG=mpx:*,makehaus:*" after [Service]. The file should now look like this:

[Unit]
Description=Node-RED (DietPi)

[Service]
User=nodered
Environment="DEBUG=mpx:*,makehaus:*"
ExecStart=/mnt/dietpi_userdata/node-red/node_modules/.bin/node-red -u /mnt/dietpi_userdata/node-red

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

2. Reload the daemon: sudo systemctl daemon-reload
3. Restart the service: sudo systemctl restart node-red
4. View the logs: sudo journalctl -f -u node-red

Changelog

The Changelog can be found here.