Blog
Technical articles on IIoT: Node-RED, industrial protocols (OPC-UA, Modbus, S7, EtherNet/IP), messaging, and edge computing.
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Securing OT Networks — The Purdue Model, OPC-UA Encryption & Segmentation
A practical OT security primer for IIoT developers — the Purdue model, network segmentation, securing OPC-UA and MQTT, and the realities of patching a 20-year-old PLC.
Modbus in Node-RED — The 47-Year-Old Protocol Everyone Still Uses
A practical guide to reading and writing Modbus TCP and RTU devices from Node-RED — register maps, data type decoding, byte ordering, and the gotchas that waste afternoons.
Talking to Allen-Bradley PLCs from Node-RED — EtherNet/IP & CIP Explained
A practical guide to reading and writing Allen-Bradley ControlLogix, CompactLogix, and legacy SLC/PLC-5 tags from Node-RED over EtherNet/IP and CIP.
Apache Kafka on the Shop Floor — Event Streaming for Manufacturing
When does Apache Kafka make sense in a factory, how it compares to NATS and MQTT, and how to wire it into Node-RED with a Schema Registry for real data contracts.
Lessons Learned: Publishing 7 npm Packages for Industrial IoT
What I learned building and maintaining open-source Node-RED packages — from first commit to thousands of downloads.
From Process Engineer to IIoT Developer — My Career Switch
How my Industrial Engineering background became my biggest advantage in IIoT software development.
CI/CD for Node-RED Flows — Automated Testing and Deployment
How to version control, test, and automatically deploy Node-RED flows — treating flows as code.
CAN Bus Reverse Engineering with Node-RED and Raspberry Pi
How to sniff, decode, and integrate CAN bus data from industrial machines using a Raspberry Pi and Node-RED.
Siemens S7 + OPC-UA + Node-RED — From PLC to Dashboard in 30 Minutes
Step-by-step tutorial: reading data from a Siemens S7-1500 PLC via OPC-UA and displaying it on a Node-RED dashboard.
Docker vs K3s on the Shop Floor — Edge Deployment Strategies
When to use plain Docker and when to deploy K3s for industrial edge computing — with practical deployment examples.
REST vs OPC-UA vs GraphQL for Manufacturing Data
Choosing the right API paradigm for industrial data access — practical comparison with manufacturing examples.
Node-RED vs Kepware vs Ignition — IIoT Platforms Compared
An honest comparison of three popular IIoT platforms — open-source flexibility vs enterprise features vs SCADA power.
Building a NATS-based Edge-to-Cloud Pipeline for Industrial IoT
Architecture guide for connecting factory floor sensors to cloud analytics using NATS leaf nodes, JetStream, and key-value stores.
Running ML Models at the Edge with ONNX and Node-RED
How to deploy trained ML models directly on edge devices using ONNX, TensorFlow Lite, and Google Coral — no cloud required.
Predictive Maintenance with Node-RED — From Vibration Sensor to Health Score
Building a complete predictive maintenance pipeline in Node-RED — signal processing, anomaly detection, and health scoring.
MQTT vs Sparkplug B vs NATS vs OPC-UA — Which Protocol for Industrial IoT?
A practical comparison of four industrial messaging protocols — when to use which, with architecture examples and code snippets.
i3x — The Open Manufacturing API That Breaks Data Silos
How the i3x open manufacturing standard by CESMII provides vendor-agnostic access to industrial data — with practical Node-RED examples.