Thanks, that's good to know. Most of my Lutron stuff is on a RadioRA 2 system. The node red palette throws some telnet errors for both Caséta and RadioRA 2, they are non-fatal for Caséta, but fatal for RadioRA 2. I posted the issue on Github, but sushilks didn't have any suggestions that worked. I didn't get any substantive response from the Telnet node component either.
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Has anyone tried both node-red-contrib-cast and node-red-contrib-castv2. Any benefit of one over the other?
I started with -cast
It was... poor. So I switched to -cast2 and for me, it was night and day better. BUT, I'm only using it for playing tiny MP3's. Door open, door closed sounds.
I might be stuck with Cast. I don't understand the formatting for the inbound messages into the CastV2 node. I didn't even have luck with it working when I cut & pasted the examples. I'm sure I am missing something elementary. This is why I avoid function nodes at all costs. The only ones I have are in flows that I have imported.
I'm only using Cast right now for TTS and it plays one tiny MP3 when I am almost home and another when my wife is almost home. That's fine; i just wanted to see if I was missing anything with Castv2.
I have this to play a MP3 into the -cast2 node:
The -cast2 node is 'empty' in the sense there's no IP (blank) with the default port 8009.
There's no specific reason to delete msg.payload, but Debug is busy enough without upstream values to confuse me. 
[{"id":"5ac1e828.634148","type":"tab","label":"Flow 1","disabled":false,"info":""},{"id":"b336eae8.c86ba","type":"change","z":"5ac1e828.634148","name":"Open Sound selected","rules":[{"t":"delete","p":"payload","pt":"msg"},{"t":"set","p":"host","pt":"msg","to":"192.168.7.162","tot":"str"},{"t":"set","p":"payload.media.url","pt":"msg","to":"Free Sound Clips | SoundBible.com":[]}]
First time pasting a Flow into Discourse, hope it's functional.
I'm just about to get started with MQTT, so your comments about Aedes interest me. What would be the downsides to using Aedes instead of Mosquitto? I mainly want to be able to open up integrations with other platforms, eg. Home Assistant
Having Aedes installed on my NR server and Mosquitto on an RPi - I would say the benefits are like @aaiyar hints at - Aedes is on the NR server so more accessible - don't need a separate service, easy to install, lightweight and controllable via NR interface. It just works as expected..
Downsides are it uses resources on your NR server and may pose somewhat of a security risk if it were to get compromised (it may be sandboxed though dunno). While it conforms to the MQTT spec there may be other features that Mosquitto has as a more full featured app.
I use Mosquitto on a PI to publish my personal weather station reports using weewx. Currently I am also using it for OwnTracks presence messages as well. I have been using Aedes for testing things.
My thoughts are if your MQTT broker will be exposed to the internet then use a separate server. If keeping it local for device messaging etc and you have the server resources available then use Aedes.
They both work so it's just a matter of how you want your things setup.
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Here are some more cool "intermediate" nodes:
node-red-contrib-statistics
And I know @aaiyar mentioned the random node which is fun but thought I'd also add this random events generator node...
node-red-contrib-random-event-generator
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I updated the first post to have everything suggested up to post# 49
Thanks to everyone for contributing 
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Group 4: Intermediate to Advanced
- node-red-contrib-unsafe-function (use in place of Function node, much faster.)
You should remove that from the "advanced" group, as it's literally dragging this node in instead of the stock function node. There is absolutely nothing special/advanced/different about it that any person using the UI of Node-RED sees, it's all under the hood.
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I also use
- node-red-contrib-influxdb
It's not running in a sandbox, which is where the 'unsafe' word comes from.
If you're writing the JS code, then I think using the unsafe version for speed is acceptable, but if you're importing Flows, I wouldn't want to sidestep the protection.
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If one is importing flows, then that imported flow will just use the stock/sandboxed function node and it's not "sidestepping" anything unless the user goes in there manually replaces them
Something like OwnTracks on the other hand, which you have in "Group 3 useful in HE", is a very complicated setup full of pitfalls, data exposure risk, for sure at least an "advanced" thing. And it isn't not too useful in a HE environment because it has absolutely nothing to do with HE.
I like the idea of something for new NR users to reference, but there is no context to any of it. My 2 cents is putting the palettes in groups based on functionality instead of making the decision for someone they "need" this or should use that, which is impossible without knowing what the person is actually trying to do..
Your list's suggestions grouped by purpose
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I updated the first post to replace my ordered list to: "By Purpose", as suggested by @morningz
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I think I would swap pushover for email in the first category.. Pushover is specifically great for HE. Email is just generally useful. Also suggest adding dashboard to group 1 and "node-red-contrib-time-range-switch" as well maybe. Bigtimer is very useful too but I think it belongs where it is.
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Maybe this isn't a common choice, but it provides a method to use Alexa to trigger sequences. And works well.
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When used with Network UPS Tools (NUT) it makes for a nice way to monitor your UPS and create a controlled shutdown routine. @guyeeba also has great device driver set for use with RM - I've gone for redundancy doing both.
Useful guide for setting up NUT on a Pi.
Just note that the nut node set requires nut to be installed on the base OS.
So if you are running node-red in a docker container, you can't easily use that set of nodes (as you can't easily install nut on the base OS).
I was unaware of the option. Very cool.
Any good chrome cast suggestions?
