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Node-RED replay service

Demo · Virtual bioreactor

🔴 Node-RED replay service

A low-code data replay layer that streams IndPenSim batches into STAMM as if they were arriving from a live 100,000 L penicillin fermentation — so you can exercise the full stack without a physical reactor.

⚡ View on GitHub

What it does​

Node-RED is a flow-based, low-code development tool commonly used in IoT and industrial automation. It lets you wire up data sources, processing nodes, and outputs in a visual editor — ideal for rapidly building streaming pipelines without writing boilerplate.

In the STAMM demo, Node-RED is the data replay service: instead of connecting to a physical bioreactor, it replays historical IndPenSim trajectories and publishes them as time-series data. From the database, orchestrator, and dashboard's perspective, the virtual data stream is indistinguishable from a real reactor publishing online sensor data.

📂
Loads batch CSVs

Pre-recorded fed-batch trajectories — batch2.csv, batch15.csv, batch60.csv, etc.

🔄
Parses to observations

Each row becomes a standardized observation — variable, value, units, and contextual tags.

🛢️
Streams to InfluxDB

Unified schema: device_obs with tags device_id · project_name · batch_id · source.

The Node-RED dashboard​

Node-RED dashboard selecting an IndPenSim batch and starting the real-time data replay into InfluxDB
GIF · Selecting a batch and starting the real-time replay

The Node-RED dashboard exposes an operator-friendly UI that lets you:

📂 Select a batch filebatch2.csv, batch15.csv, batch91.csv…
🏷️ Choose a project namepenicillin, pichia, ecoli
🔧 Choose a device IDR1–R4
▶️ Start / stop the replayStreams every 20 s by default
↩️ Reset row counterReset internal counter and timestamps
📜 Bootstrap metadataPopulate stamm_metadata with labels and units

Every few seconds (by default, every 20 s), the data replay service sends the next row of the selected batch, preserving the original dynamic profiles and relative timing. This makes it possible to test the whole STAMM stack — time-series storage, soft sensors, and dashboards — without physical access to a 100 m³ bioreactor.

Deploy with Docker​

The Node-RED data replay service is distributed as a Docker-based stack that can run on its own or alongside a full STAMM deployment.

Step 01

📦 Requirements

Docker and Docker Compose installed, plus a running InfluxDB 2.7 instance with buckets stamm_raw and stamm_metadata.

Step 02

⚙️ Configure the env

Copy .env.example to .env in the simulator repo and fill in the values below.

# Node-RED
NODERED_PORT=1880

# InfluxDB
INFLUX_BASE_URL=http://influxdb:8086
INFLUX_ORG=stamm
INFLUX_BUCKET_RAW=stamm_raw
INFLUX_BUCKET_META=stamm_metadata
INFLUX_TOKEN=YOUR_INFLUXDB_TOKEN_HERE

# Default tags for the data replay
DEFAULT_PROJECT_NAME=penicillin
DEFAULT_DEVICE_ID=R1
DEFAULT_BATCH_FILE=batch2.csv
STREAM_INTERVAL_SECONDS=20