While researching LabVIEW earlier, I came across several forum threads from people asking if there's a cheaper alternative. I haven't come across any answers for a direct free open source competitor, but a few people did mention that LabVIEW's data flow style of programming had some superficial similarities to Node-RED. With the caveat they are very different software packages targeting different audiences.

Still, it sounded interesting to look into. This was reinforced when I saw Node-RED in a different context. An enthusiastic overview on Hackaday, with a focus on home automation processing data distributed via MQTT. My current project is focused on a single machine and not distributed across many network nodes, so I'm not going to worry about MQTT for the time being, but the promise of an easy way to consume, process, and visualize data is quite alluring. I'll use my newly assembled load cell as a data source and learn how to integrate it with Node-RED.

But before that can happen, I need to install Node-RED and run through the beginner tutorials. There are many options but the easiest way for me is to install Node-RED is a community-contributed plugin for FreeNAS. This gives me an one-click procedure to install Node-RED into a FreeBSD Jail on my FreeNAS home server. And if I decide I didn't like it, it is also a one-click cleanup.

The simplicity of setup, unfortunately, also means a lack of choice in basic configuration. For example, I have no idea how to properly secure a Node-RED instance installed in this manner.

But that's not important right now, because the one-click plugin install has fulfilled the purpose of having Node-RED up and running for me to try beginner tutorials elaborately named "Create your first flow" and "Create your second flow". Though partway through tutorials I got distracted by the National Weather Service web API.