Two things the installation found that the checks did not.
A script with three `from()` statements in it produces three results all
called `_result`, and InfluxDB refuses that outright — so the measurements go
into one filter and the rows come back tagged with which one they are.
And the answer a database node hands back holds a *list* of rows, which a
record may not: a record is flat scalars. It was declared one, so every chart
failed on the type check the moment a real answer arrived.
The second one is now caught before anything is pushed: the preflight runs
each sample shape past the port that would receive it, which is what turns
"expected record, got dict" from a runtime surprise into a line of output.
Also records the two engine faults this seeding session surfaced.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The Node-RED installation this replaces is 865 nodes across three tabs, and
roughly a fifth of it is unreachable — the pellet stove's controller, the
scene engine and the awning's logic were all disconnected from the heartbeat
they ran on. What is here is the intent rather than the wiring: nineteen named
flows, 109 nodes, and no heartbeat at all. A sensor value is the event.
The device layer moves with it. `actor/*` and `light/*` were never a device
interface — Node-RED subscribed to its own topics, stamped a DMX channel on
each and encoded one Art-Net universe — so those topics retire with it and the
encoders are five nodes in the `dmx` flow.
Two shared library nodes carry what every actuator needs.
`arbiter` answers the thing this design was missing: a value someone sets on a
screen is not undone by the next evaluation. A manual value wins for a hold,
the house takes over when it expires, and a schedule can force past both — so
"off at two in the morning" still means off. The control binds to the message
the arbiter writes back, so one tile shows what reached the fixture and
setting it is the override.
`motor` is why a stop is now commanded once. A rollershutter has no position
sensor, so time is the only feedback: it says how long to run and a trigger
sends the single STOP that ends it. The reference sent STOP forever.
Everything is seeded stopped, the Art-Net node does not transmit and the heat
pump does not accept commands until house.json says so.
`--dry` checks the whole set without an installation: names nothing provides,
loops, type disagreements, widgets bound to nothing, and every Python node run
once on values of the shape it declared — including whether what it returns
goes anywhere. That last one has already caught a typo that would have
published into silence.
house.json holds this installation's addresses, MAC addresses and DMX map and
is git-ignored, as the Node-RED inventory is.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
stroblmeandClaude Opus 5