Changelog

The FlowFuse Device Agent allows you to manage your Node-RED instances wherever you want them to run. It connects back to the platform over a secure https connection.

For some enterprise customers, that has posed a challenge as they protect their network with an HTTP proxy that all traffic has to be directed to.

With the 2.5.0 release of the Device Agent, we now support running the Device Agent behind a proxy - letting it run in even more locations.

Support comes using the industry standard set of http_proxy environment variables - familiar to anyone running services behind a proxy.

Full details are available in our http proxy documentation.

We have now added the ability to select a snapshot and compare it to other snapshots making it easier to understand what is in the current snapshot and what has changed in relation to the 2nd snapshot.

Both snapshots are overlayed and you can step through the differences or use the new slider to visualise the differences.

Enterprise teams on FlowFuse Cloud can now configure their own subdomain to point at their Node-RED application.

Within FlowFuse Cloud, Node-RED instances are reached by their provided url: <name>.flowfuse.cloud.

With this new option, it is possible to add a custom hostname for the instance that works alongside the provided url.

For example, if you have built a dashboard you can now configure your instance to make that available via dashboard.example.com or any other subdomain you own.

We only support subdomains at this time, but adding support for top-level domains is on the roadmap.

Read more on how to setup custom hostnames.

Snapshots are a point-in-time backup of Node-RED that can be used to easily revert back to previous version, or to push out to other instances and devices as part of our Pipelines feature.

Following on from the recent work around snapshots to permit Instance Snapshot Downloads and Snapshot Uploads, we have now added the ability to download application device snapshots.

This means you can download a snapshot from any device or instance and upload it to any device or instance on any FlowFuse instance.

Also, to improve access to these actions, we have also updated the application and device snapshot table items menu to present all relevant snapshot actions.

#  Application Snapshots

#  Instance Snapshots

#  Device Snapshots

Snapshots are a point-in-time backup of Node-RED that can be used to easily revert back to previous version, or to push out to other instances and devices as part of our Pipelines feature.

As promised we have now provided a way for you to upload your locally downloaded snapshots.

This means you can now easily take a snapshot and move it between FlowFuse platforms or, if you prefer, automate it via the APIs it is built on.

We hope you like this nifty little feature.

Stay tuned as we expect the final peices in the overall Snapshot Improvements to be delivered in the coming days.

Snapshots are a point-in-time backup of Node-RED that can be used to easily revert back to previous version, or to push out to other instances and devices as part of our Pipelines feature.

We have lots planned to improve the overall workflow with snapshots, and have a couple updates to share that are available today.

#  Viewing snapshot contents

Following the work done to enable viewing flows in the Team Library, we've added the same capability to snapshots.

Each snapshot now has a 'View Snapshot' option that will display the flows without having to open up the full Node-RED editor.

#  Downloading snapshots

We've also added the ability to download snapshots locally - allowing you to take your own offline backups of your flows.

The 'Download Snapshot' option is currently available on Instance Snapshots, but we'll be rolling it out to all snapshot types in the near future. We are also working on an Import feature that will let you upload a snapshot back into the platform.

We have added the ability to manage the Node-RED version running on application-assigned Devices within FlowFuse.

Ordinarily, a device will get its Node-RED version from the snapshot deployed to it. However, for an Application-assigned device, you may not yet have a snapshot to deploy.

The new option, available under Device/Settings/Editor lets you pick what version of Node-RED the device should use - overriding what is in the active snapshot.

For devices running v2.4.1 or later of the Device Agent, Node-RED will get updated when the setting is saved. For older versions of the Device Agent, it will require a new snapshot to be deployed to trigger the update.

When running Node-RED within FlowFuse, the platform actively monitors the instances to make sure they are running smoothly and automatically restarts them if it detects a problem. It does this by regularly polling Node-RED to make sure it is still responsive.

This provides protection for the case where a user's flows accidentally creates a tight loop in its code and locks up the runtime.

We have to do this with care; it is entirely possible that a user's flows are intentionally doing some hard work that causes our health check to temporarily fail. For that reason, we only restart Node-RED if it fails a number of health-check polls in a row.

But even with that in place, there are still edge cases where a user's flows need to do some really hard work that can exceed what the default health-check polling is configured to handle.

We have now added the ability to customize how often we check the instance health. By default this is done every 7.5 seconds, but can now be extended via the instance settings.

This will require the instance to be updated to the latest stack to enable the option.

The Library feature allows you to save and share common functionality and flows across your team on FlowFuse. We've just added the ability to preview any flows saved here, making it easier to understand what they do and explore your collections of flows before importing them into your workspace.

This new feature will better help you maintain and manage your team's shared flows, and give better visibility on flows that your fellow Team members are building.

Back in October 2023, we introduced Blueprints to help you get started with your new Node-RED applications. We've now made them accessible directly from the Library sidebar, where you can explore the available Blueprints and use them to kick-start your new flows.

With a new release of Node-RED Dashboard 2.0 we have plenty of new fixes and improvements being added to the project. In this post, we'll deep dive into community contributions, PWA support, new Vuetify components, and the rest of the great work published in this latest release.

Running any service on the internet requires constant vigilence on security issues. One feature we've had in place for some time on FlowFuse Cloud is rate-limiting on our API. This limits how often someone can repeatedly call the API within a certain time frame.

We want to make sure we deter any misbehaviour, without getting in the way of genuine access.

For example, it would be entirely legitimate for a customer to use our API and automate some tasks via script. These API calls would arrive faster than if they were manually clicking around the FlowFuse UI, but that doesn't mean they should be restricted.

We also look to areas of the API that could be misused - for example, anything that can trigger an email to be sent, such as the "I forgot my password" API.

Tuning the rate-limiting is a continual process, and in that spirit we've recently made the rate limiting on certain routes to be much tougher and improved the feedback in the UI just in case a legitimate user accidentally hits it.

The tougher limits act as a better deterent, which in turn makes the platform more secure.

Device Groups make it really simple to deploy a snapshot across multiple devices using our Pipelines feature. When the pipeline stage is triggered, you can watch as the snapshot is rolled out across all of target devices.

We've updated the Device Group view to include more information about what snapshot is currently deployed to the group, and the deployment status of individual devices in the group.

We have supported the ability to configure your Node-RED instances with custom node catalogues for some time now. This feature allows you to access alternative NPM registries to use nodes that have not been made publicly available.

We have now extended this to work with your Node-RED devices, giving them the same ability to access private node catalogues, and deploy them across your fleet of devices.

We're updating our pricing model for the Enterprise and Teams tiers on FlowFuse Cloud, with changes taking effect immediately. All information is available on our pricing page.

The new pricing scheme is as follows:

• Starter Tier: Remains unchanged
• Teams Tier: Availability limited to Small $25 and Medium $50 Instances
• Enterprise Tier: Availability limited to Medium $50 and Large $250 Instances

We are also pleased to offer volume discounts. For more details, please contact us.

#  Important Note for Existing Teams

Teams that are currently subscribed to any tier and are using Instances will continue to be billed according to the previous pricing structure. Customers who have separate contracts with us will not be affected by these changes.

With our latest release of Node-RED Dashboard 2.0, we've made some big improvements to the onboarding experience.

We're seeing over 2,000 people download Dashboard 2.0 per week, and are seeing a great buzz in the community of brand new Node-RED users, experienced Node-RED users that haven't explored a UI solution previously and existing users migrating from Dashboard 1.0.

So, with that in mind, we wanted to offer a new "Getting Started" guide that will help you get up and running with building custom user interfaces and data visualizations in Node-RED.

We've introduced new configuration options to enhance the control of your HTTP requests and debugging process. These updates allow you to configure limits on the sizes of incoming HTTP messages and how many characters of a message are included in debug messages in the editor sidebar.

This feature is available to all our Teams and Enterprise Tier customers. You can access these new configuration options in the Instance Settings under the "Editor" menu.

We're excited to announce the introduction of the Instance Protection Mode, an enhancement in our efforts to provide a secure and controlled environment for managing production instances on FlowFuse. This feature empowers Team Owners with the exclusive ability to restrict modifications to production instances, ensuring that any changes are made with careful oversight and authorization.

A key aspect of Instance Protection Mode is the exclusive control it grants Owners over the execution of DevOps pipelines targeting protected instances. This means: Only Owners can initiate and execute pipelines.

The Instance Protection option can be found under the Instance settings view for all our Teams and Enterprise Tier customers.

Bearer Token Authentication for Node-RED Instances, allows FlowFuse users to securely access their Node-RED HTTP endpoints, ensuring enhanced security and ease of implementation. Now, you can confidently manage your HTTP endpoints with the assurance that your connections are protected using FlowFuse's robust authentication mechanism.

$ curl -H "Authorization: Bearer ffhttp_FKc_S4qlTBV1H411hmhneHcSJ6F_FGNQLPYbnoD3-B0" https://healthy-rook-4329.flowforge.cloud/test
HelloWorld
$

This feature is available for our Teams and Enterprise Tier customers. You can find the configuration under the Security tab in your instance settings.