Programming the IoT
This is the second tutorial in a series on using the Binance cryptocurrency node we have developed. Take a look at the first tutorial if you haven’t already done so as it introduces you to the basics of the Binance node. This tutorial develops a simple dashboard showing bid and ask prices for symbol BTCUSDT and will look a little like this: Continue reading “Dashboards and graphs for cryptocurrency data using Node-RED: tutorial”
Node-RED is a perfect tool for rapid development of cryptocurrency applications. There are a wide range of uses, starting with simple access to exchange data (eg prices, trends) right up to developing your own blockchain! Continue reading “Cryptocurrencies and Node-RED”
In this brief tutorial, we’ll introduce the STS Binance node set and some of its capabilities. A follow-on tutorial will show how to develop a dashboard using the nodes and a final tutorial will discuss some possibilities using the trading API that the nodes offer.
For those of you who aren’t familiar, Binance is one of the largest crypto trading platform (perhaps largest by volume), and importantly has a comprehensive and sophisticated API. The resident cryptocurrency expert, Ted, over at Sense Tecnic Systems (STS) recently decided to jump in and develop a new Node for accessing and using the Binance cryptocurrency platform.
Like all these tutorials and lectures, we use the FRED cloud Node-RED service to develop our flows as Of course you can run Node-RED on your own machine. If you plan to use your own Node-RED installation, then you can download the Binance node from NPM download . If you are using FRED it’s already pre-loaded and can be activated by using the add/remove nodes button under tools on the management panel. See left image below. This will add the Binance node set, see right image below.
A couple of caveats:
Before we discuss the details of the Binance node, let’s take a look at a simple flow that accesses market data. For this demo we’ll use the Binance getPrice node. In FRED, on a new blank canvas, drag and drop three nodes, an inject node, a Binance getPrice node and a debug node as shown below.
The Binance getPrice node takes a simple ticker pair as input and returns the current price for that ticker. For this example, we’ll use the Bitcoin to Tether USD ticker pair, which is BTCUSDT. We’ll use the inject node to send that to the getPrice node, so double click on the inject node, set the payload to an empty string, and set it’s topic to BTCUSDT as shown below.
The getPrice node looks for a ticker pair on the incoming message topic and uses that to make an API call to the Binance platform, which returns the current price. Our simple flow then passes that to a debug node, which will show the results in the debug pane on the right side of Node-RED window.
Go ahead and wire up your flow as described, deploy it and then click on the inject node and you’ll see the current price in the debug pane as shown below.
Pretty simple eh! – play around with different ticker pairs to look at your favourite currencies.
The Binance node set covers two main areas of functionality – accessing market data and account related functionality. The market info nodes all access public APIs on the Binance platform and don’t require an account. The account related nodes access balance and trading features and will require you to setup an account with Binance and to provide an API key. We’ll cover that in a later tutorial, for now we’ll stick with the nodes that use the public API.
Let’s continue our simple example shown above but extend it to get all market info. For that we’ll need the getAllPrices node which, as you’d expect, returns all the prices that Binance handles. It’s a long list and is returned as an object. However, we can display it in the debug pane, so let’s modify our original flow and replace the getPrice node with a getAllPrices node as shown below. Note that the inject node doesn’t need to set the topic – although its ignored if you do.
As you can see, you’ll get back a json object – which if you click on to expand lists all the ticker pairs that Binance trades.
As a final example, let’s return to the BTCUSDT ticker pair and get the full book info for it using the getBookTicker node. Using the first flow that injects BTCUSDT as a message topic, replace the getPrices node with a getBookTicker node as shown below.
As you can see, the object returned in the message payload for BTCUSDT includes bid price and quantity as well as ask price and quantity.
You can make a simple substitution of the getDayStats node for the getBookTicker node in the flow above to get a full set of day statistics for BTCUSDT. This is quite comprehensive and covers opening prices, previous day close, low and high prices for the day as well as trading volumes etc.
The last node in the set of market access nodes is the getCandlesticks node which gets Kline/candlestick data for a symbol. This requires some knowledge of setting up UI elements and dashboards in Node-RED so we’ll cover that in our next tutorial.
Have fun!
About Sense Tecnic: Sense Tecnic Systems Inc have been building IoT applications and services since 2010. We provide these lectures and FRED, cloud hosted Node-RED as a service to the community. We also offer a commercial version to our customers, as well as professional services. Learn more.
Update: For a fuller discussion of Smart City technologies, including standards, read Smart City Technology Trends
Last year I was asked to write an article on Smart City standards for the IEEE standards magazine. This blog post was the basis for that article, but also acts as an evolving document as I update it as standards activities evolve.
The amount of activity in Smart City standardization is truly overwhelming – this is partly due to the breadth and scope of Smart City activities – from water pipes to people – and partly because it is early in the process and the standards bodies are still trying to understand how best to contribute.
After spending several days drowning in standards, I decided to step back and try and find a way of categorizing the different standards. I came across a useful framework from the UK’s standards body, the British Standards Institute (BSI), which is part of an excellent (and free) report they’ve written on Smart Cities (PD 8100 Smart city overview)
The Framework categorizes standards into 3 main levels, Strategic, Process and Technical
As the BSI state: “Strategic-level standards are of most relevance to city leadership and process-level standards to people in management posts. However, even technical specifications are relevant to people in management posts as they need to know which standards they need to refer to when procuring technical products and services.”
Once we have a usable framework, the process of trying to fit standards into the levels can begin. The BSI folks have made a useful start – highlighting a number of ongoing international activities that they, as the UK’s standards body, collaborate on – and placing them in the framework.
The main international bodies are:
Placing major worldwide standards activities in BSI framework (Copyright BSI 2015)
It’s still a fairly daunting set of activities, but at least we now have a sense of where the major international standards groups are focused and we can begin to take a look at some of the more important activities. In the next section, I highlight a few activities that I’ve come across that I think are important and seem to have significant momentum. If you are looking for a more comprehensive list, then in the final section, I’ve listed up all the activities I’ve come across.
Note, most actual standards documents are expensive – unless you are a member of the standards body – so a casual browse isn’t an option. I’ve linked to official documents and summaries below and if I’ve come across a publicly accessible overview, I’ve added that – if you know of better public information, let me know.
It’s also worth taking a look at the full set of BSI standards for Smart Cities. Although these are national standards, the UK seems to have developed a comprehensive set of Smart City activities quite early and they appear to be feeding in to ongoing international organizations.
A somewhat more nascent effort by the US National Institute of Standards (NIST) can be found here – this seems to be more of a ‘call to action’ than actual NIST endorsed standards, but worth taking a look at if you are USA based.
Don’t read any further if you are already feeling overwhelmed – but for those who care (or just like this stuff) here’s a more comprehensive list of standards I’ve come across – returning to the BSI framework:
Placing major worldwide standards activities in BSI framework (Copyright BSI 2015)
While not directly related to Smart Cities, the following technical standards will play a part because they focus on constituent parts of the smart city:
You may be interested in my article on Technology Trends affecting Smart Cities which includes a discussion of Smart City Standards.
This blog has been turned into an article for the IEEE standards online Magazine, read it here