Node-RED — Dashboards and Data Flows
How ControlForge runs Node-RED as a managed subprocess for building operator dashboards and connecting to external systems.
This video was recorded while the product was called GOPLC. The on-screen branding differs from the current name; the runtime is the same one.
ControlForge manages Node-RED as an integrated subprocess, pairing PLC control logic with visual data-flow programming. These two demos show the integration in action.
Demo 1: Basic Integration
Demo 2: Advanced Dashboards
How It Works
The runtime handles Node-RED’s entire lifecycle:
- Auto-install — Node-RED and Dashboard 2.0 are installed on first run
- Managed process — started, stopped, and monitored as a subprocess
- Reverse proxy — reachable through the ControlForge web interface
- Custom PLC nodes — purpose-built nodes for reading and writing PLC variables
- AI flow generation — a natural language description can generate a complete flow
Why Node-RED
Node-RED provides what Structured Text does not: visual data-flow programming, quick dashboards, and hundreds of community nodes for databases, APIs, MQTT, and cloud services. Managing it as a subprocess gives you both without maintaining two separate systems.