I’ve recently been having fun with the Prince’s Trust, running a workshop for the Get into Tech programme, playing around with Arduinos and smart phones and stuff. My boss suggested for the next iteration, we look at maybe getting a light to tweet its state. this sounds like excellent fun, and i recalled watching a youtube video where Rodric Yates gets something similar running in five minutes… awesome.
so… i thought i’d install node-RED on my work desktop, and see if we could do something similar.
issue 1 – the standard install (once you have node.js installed, that is) uses npm, the node.js package manager. we’re behind a corporate firewall that requires authentication. to get npm to work through a proxy, find the .npmrc file somewhere in your profile folder:
open it up with notepad and add the line:
proxy=http://username:password@proxyaddress:port
eg
proxy = http://nickparlow:P4$$w0rd!@my.default.proxy.local:8080
yeah. that’s my password. i am sooooo 1337. (do the cool kids still say that?)
you may also struggle with https, even after you’ve added a line like:
https-proxy = http://nickparlow:P4$$w0rd!@my.default.proxy.local:8080
and:
strict-ssl = false
in which case, give up and use:
registry = http://registry.npmjs.org
which bypasses ssl altogether.
success!
