A countdown timer node for Node-RED with a purpose-built four-output event model. Every command — successful, redundant, or blocked — is observable as a structured event, so flows can react to exactly what happened without guesswork.
Derived from stoptimer-varidelay-plus.
Most timer nodes tell you when the timer fires. This one tells you everything: when it started, restarted, stopped, expired, paused, resumed, was locked, was blocked, or had its time adjusted — each as a tagged event with a consistent message envelope describing the timer's full state at that moment.
| # | Output | Fires on |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Start | A true stopped/expired → running transition. Nothing else. |
| 2 | Stop | A genuine stop command or natural expiry. Nothing else. |
| 3 | Query | An incoming query message, or a Heartbeat tick. |
| 4 | Events | Every event, including copies of Start/Stop and every ignored/blocked command. |
Outputs 1 and 2 never carry a blocked or redundant message — anything that
didn't truly happen appears only on output 4, tagged msg.ignored: true.
- Variable delay — override duration per message via
msg.delay/msg.units - Control commands —
stop,pause,resume,query,lock,unlock,disable,enable,adjusttime,settime,setduration(all case-insensitive) - Event envelope — every output message carries
timerEvent,timerState,remainingTime,elapsedTime,timerDuration,ignored,source, and more - Ignored-message threshold actions — automatically stop, pause, restart, add time, or emit a warning when enough messages are ignored during a run
- Heartbeat — periodic status snapshots on the Query output for monitoring long-running timers
- Cooldown — refuse new starts for a fixed period after a natural expiry
- Persistence — resume running, paused, or cooling-down timers across deploys and Node-RED restarts
From your Node-RED user directory (typically ~/.node-red):
npm install node-red-contrib-timer-eventsOr via the Node-RED palette manager. The node appears in the function category as Timer with Events.
Full documentation — configuration reference, event taxonomy, command details, persistence behavior, example flows, and troubleshooting — lives in the project wiki. The node's built-in help panel in the Node-RED editor also covers everyday usage.
Licensed under the Apache License 2.0.
Modifications copyright (C) 2025 mchristegh. Derived from stoptimer-varidelay-plus — modifications copyright (C) 2020 hamsando; original copyright jbardi.
If you found this project useful, coffee is always appreciated
