Blog

Learn what instrument calibration is, how it differs from verification and adjustment, what a calibration record should contain, how intervals are set, and how manufacturers can manage calibration status more effectively.

FlowFuse 2.33 takes you from setting up plant floor hardware directly to visualizing its data, with a FlowFuse-certified Modbus connection, a home for every dashboard, and firmer control over platform access through scoped Personal Access Tokens, SSO-driven application roles, and an MCP audit trail.

Learn what an Ishikawa (fishbone) diagram is, the 6Ms, and how to use it for root cause analysis in manufacturing, with a worked example, how it compares to the 5 Whys and Pareto analysis, a template, and common mistakes.

Learn how to build digital work instructions with FlowFuse. Create personalized operator apps with work orders, guided steps, defect reporting, and traceability.

Learn how to prevent clock drift on distributed edge devices using NTP, local time servers, and FlowFuse to ensure accurate timestamps and reliable IIoT data.

Build a FlowFuse dashboard that tracks production defects, ranks them with a Pareto chart, surfaces root causes, and totals your cost of poor quality, filtered live by line, shift, and date

Software-defined manufacturing (SDM) is changing how factories improve operations. Learn what SDM means, why traditional manufacturing software falls short, and how FlowFuse helps manufacturers build and manage industrial applications that evolve without large-scale modernization projects.

Learn how to build a machine downtime tracking application in FlowFuse that captures stop and start events over MQTT, calculates downtime duration automatically, lets operators log a reason from a dashboard, and displays live KPI cards.

Manufacturing has always managed change on the factory floor with discipline. Learn how GitOps and FlowFuse DevOps Pipelines bring that same rigor to industrial software deployments.

Learn how to connect FlowFuse to a Siemens S7 PLC, build an operator dashboard to control a motor and stack light, and automatically track device runtime using the Hourglass node.

FlowFuse 2.32 certifies the Redis node, extends DevOps Git pipelines to any HTTPS server, and adds Insights mode on remote instances, plus dark mode, Device Agent 4, and a Plan Mode for the Expert.

Node-RED Con 2026 takes place on November 3, 2026. FlowFuse is proud to sponsor this free online conference. The Call for Papers is open until July 31, submit your talk.

Learn how to turn industrial application ideas into clear architectures using a structured four-step framework based on FlowFuse building blocks.

Learn how to connect OPC UA and InfluxDB in FlowFuse to log industrial equipment data as timestamped history, so you can spot trends, prove compliance, and catch failures before they happen.

Learn how to use the FlowFuse RTSP Video Feed node to pull frames from a camera stream, display them on a dashboard, and feed them to local AI models, without sending video off-site.

Troubleshoot PLC communication latency by identifying common causes such as poll rates, timeout settings, connection limits, and protocol selection.

Build an event-driven workflow in FlowFuse that detects machine stops instantly, auto-escalates to supervisor and maintenance, and logs accurate timestamped downtime records, no spreadsheet required.

A practical guide to choosing between plain MQTT and Sparkplug B for industrial IoT: where MQTT's flexibility turns into a topic-namespace mess, what Sparkplug B's structure, binary payloads, and birth/death certificates fix, the QoS 0 trade-off nobody mentions, and why most large deployments end up running both.