Free Facebook Messenger ChatBot created using RedBod and Node-RED

You might have a small business or simply want to automate your way of controlling your home through Facebook Messenger and Node-RED is a great tool to start creating a chatbot as you can automate many things, including sending and receiving emails, creating an interface, and so on which can help you to automate responses to your customers, control your machines at home or workplace and, create specific messages using a database.

Fast deploy a chatbot using ChatGPT and Node-RED for WhatsApp, Messenger, and Telegram

Node-RED RedBot example bot for Facebook Messenger | Messenger Logo: Darius Dan — Flaticon

First, search and install “node-red-contrib-chatbot” from the Node-RED palette. Here you can see more details about loading RedBot and installing Node-RED: “Install the RedBot plugin in the Node-RED”.

Ngrok or port forwarding with SSL certificate

To use Facebook Messenger API, you need a valid non-self-signed certificate to use your link to the Node-RED as a webhook.

You don’t need to do this if you use the IBM Cloud or Heroku, for example, because you probably already have access to Node-RED through https://.

For the sake of simplicity, I will show you how to set up NgrOK on Raspberry Pi as the alternative is to use certbot and port forwarding.

If you already connect to your Node-RED through https://, skip to here.

1. Create an account to ngrok using the sign-up page.

2. Install ngrok using Snapcraft or manually:

Using your console or terminal for the Raspberry Pi.

• Install the Snapcraft and reboot the Raspberry Pi:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install snapd
sudo reboot

• Reconnect and install ngrok:

sudo snap install ngrok

3. Connect your ngrok client to the account:

• Navigate to “Your Authtoken”;
• Copy and paste 🟪 “Command Line” to the Raspberry Pi terminal.