What would be the best way to control something incrementally up and down like volume or dimming from home assistant? New to home assistant and stumbled upon node red and the block style programming which I am use to.
That depends what you want to control.
In a lot of cases (Light, Volume) HomeAssistant already has an Increment Service Call. So just use that.
Example:
If that is not available, or you want to have special increment steps (i.e.: Increment by 7) then you can use a function node to take care of the logic.
Example:
