Examples: Basic Usage

Your first flow: count three events within a fixed 30-second window, watch every output, then meet stop, reset, and query. Ten minutes, no prior knowledge assumed.

Import it

Import → Examples → node-red-contrib-timer-threshold → basic-usage, then Deploy. (The examples menu appears once the package is installed; the same file also lives in the repository's examples/ folder if you prefer Import → Clipboard.)

What you get

Four inject buttons wired into one Timer Threshold node (3 in 30s (fixed) — Count Limit 3, Window 30 Seconds, Fixed mode, Status Reporting Every Second), and one debug node on each output. The debug names tell you what to watch for.

Walkthrough

1. Trigger it. Click Sensor event three times, briskly. In the debug sidebar:

• Clicks 1 and 2 each produce a counted event on output 3 — note msg.count climbing, and the status label under the node: Counting: 1/3 | Window: 00:00:28 counting down.
• Click 3 produces the Trigger on output 1 and a duplicate on output 3 — the node never waits for the window's remaining time. Its payload is exceeded, cloned from the click that completed the count, and its envelope already shows the settled state (count: 0, timerState: "idle"). The label flashes Triggered, then returns to Ready.

2. Let a window expire. Click Sensor event twice, then wait out the 30 seconds. Output 3 emits windowexpired (source: "internal") — the whole count reset at once, which is fixed mode's signature. See Window Modes.

3. Stop vs. reset. Click Sensor event once, then Stop: output 3 shows a genuine stopped and the label returns to Ready. Do the same with Reset: same effect here — reset on output 3. While counting the two are interchangeable; they only differ during a cooldown, which this flow doesn't configure (see Examples: Cooldown and Input Messages).

Now click Stop again while idle: output 3 shows stopped with ignored: true — there was nothing to stop, and the node tells you so instead of staying silent. That pattern — the attempted event, tagged — is how every no-op surfaces. See Events.

4. Query. Click Sensor event once, then Query: output 2 delivers the full snapshot — count: 1, countLimit: 3, timerState: "counting", windowRemaining ticking down. The query changed nothing; click Sensor event twice more and the Trigger still fires on schedule.

Things to try

• Change Window Mode to Sliding in the edit dialog, redeploy, and repeat step 2 — then read Examples: Sliding Window for what just changed.
• Wire output 1 into a real action (a notification node): because the Trigger clones the completing message, whatever payload/topic your real sensor sends arrives at the action intact.