Remote-RED

Getting Started for Partners

This guide is aimed at new partners and walks you through the first steps: from your partner account in the partner portal to setting up your first Remote-RED instances.

1. What is the Remote-RED Partner Program?

With the partner program you can embed Remote-RED (remote access, push notifications and geofencing for Node-RED) into your own products and projects, without having to develop an app yourself.

The key difference to normal usage: instances you create with your partner credentials (CustomerHash and CustomerKey) are tied to your partner account and billed through you. Your end customers do not need any in-app purchases and pay us nothing. All features you booked are directly available to them.

Billing is retrospective (post-paid), based on the actual number of instances used, monthly or yearly as you prefer. Tiered prices apply, getting cheaper as your instance count grows. Payment is handled via credit card or SEPA direct debit through Stripe, and you receive invoices as e-invoices in ZUGFeRD format.

In addition, there are two optional extensions:

  • Dedicated server: Your instances run on a separate Remote-RED server operated exclusively for you.
  • App with your own branding: Your own variant of the Remote-RED app with your colors, your logo and your texts.

Both extensions are charged as an initial setup fee plus a monthly or yearly maintenance fee. You can find the current prices for these and for the instances at portal.remote-red.com/price.

The program is intended for:

  • IoT project developers who want to ship their Node-RED projects with an app providing remote access and push notifications
  • Smart home installers who build customer systems and want to provide Remote-RED to their customers
  • Manufacturers and platforms looking for a white-label solution with their own branding

You can find more information on the partner page.

2. The Partner Portal

You can reach the partner portal at portal.remote-red.com. It is self-service: you manage registration, quota, payment method and invoices yourself.

Registering and Signing In

  1. Register on the public registration page. There you can see the prices, choose the features you need (remote access, notifications, geofencing) and enter your company details. The program is aimed at business customers.
  2. Confirm your email address (double opt-in). Your account is then immediately active with a starter quota.
  3. Signing in is passwordless: you enter your email address and receive a link to log in.
  4. Optionally you can use 2FA via authenticator apps, which we recommend.

The Most Important Sections

  • Dashboard: Overview of your current usage and your instance quota. Here you can also raise the quota yourself as you grow.
  • Account: Here you find your CustomerHash and your CustomerKey. You need these two values to assign instances to your partner account (see chapters 3 and 4).
  • Instances: List of all instances of your account, including the optional customer reference. You can deactivate instances you no longer need here yourself.
  • Features: Switch remote access, notifications and geofencing on and off yourself. What counts for billing is the state at invoicing time.
  • Prices: Your tiered prices per feature and instance. All prices are net yearly prices plus VAT; with monthly billing, 1/12 applies.
  • Payment: Add a payment method with Stripe (credit card or SEPA direct debit).
  • Invoices: All invoices as PDF, additionally sent automatically by email.
  1. Enable 2FA via an authenticator app
  2. Add a payment method
  3. Copy your CustomerHash and CustomerKey from the Account section
  4. Create your first instance (see below)

3. Setting Up Instances via the Node-RED Nodes

You install the Remote-RED nodes in Node-RED via the palette; the package is called node-red-contrib-remote.

This is how you create an instance assigned to your partner account:

  1. Drag a Remote Access node into a flow and create a config node for it.
  2. Enable the checkbox “I’m a participant of the Remote-RED Partner Program”. The partner section opens.
  3. Enter your CustomerHash and your CustomerKey.
  4. Optional: Enter a customer reference, for example a serial number or end customer number (up to 100 characters). It is used to identify the instance in the partner portal and cannot be changed afterwards.
  5. Choose the server region (us, de or sg) and complete the registration of the instance as usual via the registration button.

Important: The CustomerKey is only used once during registration and is not stored in Node-RED. The assignment to your partner account happens when the instance is created and cannot be changed afterwards.

After that, everything works like a normal instance: scan the QR code with the app, done. The only difference is that the instance runs on your partner account and your booked features are available without in-app purchases.

4. Setting Up Instances via the CLI

For automated setup, for example in the production of IoT devices, there is the Remote-RED CLI. It creates the Remote Access node together with its config node directly via the Node-RED admin API and activates the instance against the Remote-RED servers.

Requirements: node-red-contrib-remote is installed in the target Node-RED and the HTTP admin API of Node-RED is reachable.

Installation:

npm i -g node-red-contrib-remote-cli

Create an instance assigned to your partner account:

node-red-contrib-remote-cli configure \
  --flowname RemoteAccess \
  --name RemoteAccess \
  --region de \
  --customerhash <YOUR_CUSTOMERHASH> \
  --customerkey <YOUR_CUSTOMERKEY> \
  --customerreference SN-12345

Notes:

  • --customerreference is optional and works like in the node: up to 100 characters, cannot be changed afterwards, used to identify the instance in the partner portal.
  • --region accepts us, de and sg. Alternatively you can specify a server directly with --server.
  • With --url you set the base URL of Node-RED (default: http://localhost:1880).
  • With --jsonoutput true the CLI outputs all data as JSON, handy for scripts in production processes.
  • The CLI generates a QR code and a deep link to connect the app. For existing instances, the registerapp command creates additional app install QR codes.

You get the full help with node-red-contrib-remote-cli --help and node-red-contrib-remote-cli configure --help.

5. Outlook: The Remote-RED Agent

Besides Node-RED and Home Assistant, a third way to use Remote-RED is currently in the making: the Remote-RED Agent, a single binary (remotered) for Linux systems such as servers, NAS devices, Raspberry Pis or IoT devices. It can do two things:

  • Remote access to any local web UI (for example Grafana, Cockpit or OctoPrint) through the Remote-RED apps, using the same technology as with Node-RED.
  • Push notifications from scripts: remotered notify --title "Backup" --body "Done" sends a message to your phone, ideal for cron jobs and monitoring.

The partner program is supported just like in the nodes and the CLI: agent instances can be assigned to your account via CustomerHash and CustomerKey and run through the normal instance billing. The agent is still in development.

Questions?

If you have questions, you can reach us by email at info@remote-red.com.