MQTT Android Studio App

Creating a native MQTT App provides a convenient platform for complete customization of any IoT project. Yet the effort to develop a Android Studio App can seem daunting. With a huge learning curve just to accomplish the simplest of tasks.

To my surprise, however, I found it reasonably simple and easy to create a basic app framework upon which to expand into a full-blown tool for MQTT interactions.

For those that just cannot wait, here is the project. You can even install the apk file app-debug.apk on your Android device now.

Keeping things reasonably simple and easy, here is how I did it…

Installing Android Studio

This was as easy as a google search and file download. Use this link to install Android Studio on a PC with Windows 10 operating system.

Install Android Studio

Creating the Project

After installing and opening Android Studio, create a new project (File->New->New Project…

Enter a name for the project and click “Next”. The project location can be anywhere on your hard drive, ending with the folder name matching the project name:

These were the default settings used on the next screen:

Next, Select “Bottom Navigation Activity”.

Use the default activity name:

Click “Finish” to complete the App framework creation.

The demo App will build.

Before we add the code for MQTT, it would be a good idea to build the apk and install the app on your android device to make sure the framework is functional.

Select Build-> Build APK(s) from the menu.

Click on “locate” to open the file manager with the location of the apk. You can transfer this file to your android device to test the app framework. The app should start to the following screen:

Now lets add the MQTT Demo code.

For this exercise, close Android Studio and simply replace the contents of the project folders with the files I have uploaded to Github here. Then we will walk through the code.

Copy <github/MQTTDemo> folder to <your project base directory>/MQTTDemo

The project files is partitioned into 3 main folders:

<your project base directory>/MQTTDemo/app/build
<your project base directory>/MQTTDemo/app/libs
<your project base directory>/MQTTDemo/app/src

The build folder contains the output files from the build, libs contains the paho MQTT libraries, and src has the source code for the project. You can download the paho library files from here.

Now let’s open Android Studio to this project and review the source code:

The MQTT libraries as dependencies of your Android project

Open the build.gradle file. Here you will see the paho libraries added to file dependencies section:

dependencies {

…

compile files(‘libs/org.eclipse.paho.android.service-1.1.1.jar’)

compile files(‘libs/org.eclipse.paho.client.mqttv3-1.1.1.jar’)

}

Permissions and Service additions to the AndroidManifest.xml file

Open the app/AndroidManifest.xml file. Note the following permissions required by the app added to the manifest:

<uses–permission android:name=“android.permission.INTERNET” />

<uses–permission android:name=“android.permission.WAKE_LOCK” />

<uses–permission android:name=“android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE” />

<uses–permission android:name=“android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE” />

The Paho Android Service must also be added within the manifest <application> tag.

&lt;service android:name="org.eclipse.paho.android.service.MqttService" /&gt;
&lt;service
    android:name=".MqttMessageService"
    android:enabled="true"
    android:exported="false"&gt;
&lt;/service&gt;

Customizing the App GUI (activity_main.xml file):

From Android Studio, the app opening GUI is layout is defined in the file app/res/layout/activity_main.xml

A preview of the GUI can be seen by selecting the “Design” tab while the xml code needed to generate the GUI can be edited from the “Text” tab.

While not necessary, inn order to make it easy to follow, the GUI components are listed in the xml file in the top-to-bottom order that they appear on the screen.

LinearLayout…requestFocus

Note that this object has a defined width and height of 0px, making it invisible. This object is used to set initial focus when the App is opened. Without this object, the app sets focus on the first editable field and the edit alphabet pop-up appears, somethings that is clearly undesirable on start-up.

LinearLayout…ScrollView…TextView

This object is the large white space in the layout above. It displays MQTT messages as they are received.

TableLayout

This object is the tabular information on the bottom half of the screen. This table is used to input MQTT connect parameters and to display the connect status.

BottomNavigationView

This object is the icons and text along the bottom of the screen. Upon tapping, these items trigger action by the app.

Bottom Navigation Menu (app/res/menu/navigation.xml file)

This file defines the five navigation items displayed along the bottom row of the screen. Three fields are needed for each item.

id – identifies the item for access in the java code
drawable = defines the item icon
title – defines the text to be displayed under the item icon

The icons can be selected from the Android Studio library or a custom icon can be used. To add an icon to the project, right click on the app->res->drawable folder selecting New->Drawable resource file:

The java code (app/java/<project package name>/MainActivity.java)

The startup and callback code is contained in the MainActivity.java file. A separate file is needed for each app scree. Since this demo app only uses 1 screen, only 1 file is needed.

The App code (class Methods) are contained within the MainActivity class.

This apps simple method simple structure:

onCreate – Executed upon App start-up

<strong>RunScheduledTasks</strong> - Runs scheduled tasks once every second

<strong>OnNavigationItemSelectedListener</strong> - Callback executed when a bottom navigation item is tapped.

<strong>mqttCallback</strong> - Callback executed whenever a subscribed MQTT message is received

How it Works

When the app is started, GUI is rendered and onCreate is executed. Here is the sequence performed in onCreate:

GUI layout is associated with the Apps opening activity
A custom icon is added to the app’s title bar (you can change this, of course)
A vertical scroller is added to the message window
A client connection to the MQTT broker defined by the GUI table is made
The bottom Navigation menu callback is registered.
The text under each Navigation icon is made visible
The callback for MQTT messages is registered
The 1 second scheduled tasks callback is registered

After startup, the 3 app callback are active, waiting for a trigger to initiate execution

1. Scheduled tasks (runs once per second)

This App only requires one scheduled task. The app checks to see if the MQTT client is still connected to the broker. If connected, the display says “Connected” in green text. If the connection is lost, it displays “Disconnected” in red text.

2. Navigation Callback

The callback determines which item was tapped and then performs the applicable action:

Button 1: Connect – If connected to the broker, the connection is closed and then reconnected using the parameters currently displayed in the table. You can change the broker url prior to tapping this button to connect to a different broker, The table also has field for username/password if the broker supports and requires those fields. Using the paho library, two connection types are supported: tcp and ssl. An example of the broker url format for these connections:

tcp://&lt;broker domain&gt;:1883
ssl://&lt;broker domain&gt;:8883

Button 2: Subscribe – If connected to the broker, a subscription to the topic entered in the table is made. But if not connected, a message is displayed indicating a subscription cannot be added unless connected to the broker.

Button 3: Publish – If connected to the broker, the message entered is published to the topic entered in the table. But if not connected, a message is displayed indicating a message cannot be published unless connected to the broker.

Button 4: Clear – Erases the content of the message window.

Button 5: Exit – Exits the App.

3. Subscribed Topic Callback

The code executed when a subscribed message is receive is structured as if/then conditional statements. Once condition is executed for each unique topic executed. This provides a mechanism to execute topic specific code.

But in this demo App, the specified unique topics are not used. In that condition, the default “else” case is executed, which simply echos the published message in the message window.

In Closing

With the App framework presented, a full-featured app can be developed to interface with an MQTT broker to monitor and control your IoT devices. It can also be used as a client to test out MQTT clients connected to a common broker. Once again, the project can be downloaded from Github here.

Hope you find this project useful.

VPS Application 1: MQTT Broker

17th April 2017 by InternetOfHomeThings in All Posts, Internet of Things, MQTT | 4 Comments

Using an MQTT Broker to publish and subscribe to IoT events is a critical aspect of many IoT infrastructures. And hosting your own broker retains complete control in your hands. This writing provides step-by-step instructions for installing the Mosquitto MQTT broker on a VPS running Linux Ubuntu 16.04.

Don’t have a personal Virtual Private Server (VPS)? Check here to find out how to get one.

MQTT Broker Installation Overview

Installing the Mosquitto MQTT broker on your Linux Ubuntu VPS can be broken down into 3 basic steps. And if you wish to also provide secure connections, four additional steps are needed.

Install Mosquitto
Configuring MQTT Passwords
Configuring MQTT Over Websockets
Securing your MQTT Broker
1. Install Certbot
2. Run Cerbot
3. Setting up Certbot Automatic Renewals
4. Configuring MQTT SSL

Installing Mosquitto

A telnet client is needed to install and configure the MQTT broker on your VPS. PuTTY is a widely used telnet client. It can be downloaded here. Make sure you have a telnet client installed and your non-root linux user credentials are handy before continuing.

Then, log in with your non-root user with PuTTY and install Mosquitto with apt-get by entering:

sudo apt-get install mosquitto mosquitto-clients

The MQTT broker service will start automatically after the installation has completed. To test, open a second command-line interface (CLI) using PuTTY. With one of the terminal windows, subscribe to a test topic named “mymqtttesttopic” by entering:

mosquitto_sub -h localhost -t mymqtttesttopic

Then, publish a message from the other terminal:

mosquitto_pub -h localhost -t mymqtttesttopic -m “Sent from my own MQTT Broker”

If the installation is properly working, the subscribe terminal will receive the message:

Configuring MQTT Passwords

First level of security is to configure Mosquitto to use passwords. Mosquitto includes a utility to generate a special password file called mosquitto_passwd. Using this utility, you will be prompted to enter a password for the specified username, and place the results in /etc/mosquitto/passwd. From the terminal, enter:

sudo mosquitto_passwd -c /etc/mosquitto/passwd testuser

Note: Use “password” for the password for this test case when prompted

Now we’ll open up a new configuration file for Mosquitto and tell it to use this password file to require logins for all connections:

sudo nano /etc/mosquitto/conf.d/default.conf

This should open an empty file. Paste in the following:

/etc/mosquitto/conf.d/default.conf

allow_anonymous false
password_file /etc/mosquitto/passwd

allow_anonymous false will disable all non-authenticated connections, and the password_file line tells Mosquitto where to look for user and password information. Save and exit the file.

Now we need to restart Mosquitto and test our changes:

sudo systemctl restart mosquitto

Try to publish a message without a password:

mosquitto_pub -h localhost -t “test” -m “hello world”

The message should be rejected:

Output

Connection Refused: not authorized.
Error: The connection was refused.

Before we try again with the password, switch to your second terminal window again, and subscribe to the ‘test’ topic, using the username and password this time:

mosquitto_sub -h localhost -t test -u “testuser” -P “password”

It should connect and sit, waiting for messages. You can leave this terminal open and connected for the rest of the tutorial, as we’ll periodically send it test messages.

Now publish a message with your other terminal, again using the username and password:

mosquitto_pub -h localhost -t “test” -m “hello world” -u “testuser” -P “password”

The message should be passed from one terminal to the other in the same way as the initial test without passwords. If the message was received, we have successfully added password protection to our Mosquitto MQTT Broker.

Passwords for multiple users

Most likely, your MQTT broker will need to support more than one user. Here is how to create a password file for multiple users:

First create a plain text file, adding a line for each user: <username>:<password>

sudo nano /etc/mosquitto/passwd

For 3 users, the file contents:

username1:password1
username2:password2
username3:password3

Then encrypt the plain text file by entering:

sudo mosquitto_passwd -U /etc/mosquitto/passwd

Configuring MQTT Over Websockets

You will probably want to have your MQTT Broker support Websockets. This makes it possible to communicate with your MQTT broker using JavaScript. Very useful for web applications. Here is how to add it to your Mosquitto configuration.

Open the configuration file to add port listeners:

sudo nano /etc/mosquitto/conf.d/default.conf

Add to the bottom of the file:

listener 1883 localhost

listener 8883

listener 8083
protocol websockets

listener 18083
protocol websockets

Then update the firewall to support these listener ports.

sudo ufw allow 8883
sudo ufw allow 8083
sudo ufw allow 18083

Restart Mosquitto to activate the listener configuration:

sudo systemctl restart mosquitto

Here is the MQTT port allocation:

	Usage
1883	Standard TCP/IP Port
8883	Secure SSL TCP/IP Port
8083	Secure Websockets Port
18083	Insecure Websockets Port

Note that the last listener on port 18083 is not a standard MQTT port. This port is used for insecure (non-encrypted connections). While it is not required, it can sometimes be useful when communicating with tiny IoT devices that cannot support the additional overhead required to connect using the SSL protocol.

Testing MQTT Websockets

The easiest method of verifying the Websockets ports is to use a web browser MQTT client. While there are many such tools available, HiveMQ will be used for this demonstration.

First, open an incognito web browser window to this link.

Note: You must use an incognito window. A normal browser window sends extra information to track your browsing history. This extra http traffic will interfere with the MQTT websocket protocol and cause the connection to fail.

And create a new connection:

Once the connection is made, publish a test message:

Securing your MQTT Broker

There are four steps required to securing the MQTT Broker with SSL/TLS.

Step 1: Install Certbot

We must first install the official client from an Ubuntu PPA, or Personal Package Archive. These are alternative repositories that package more recent or more obscure software. First, add the repository from the VPS terminal.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot

Note: If this command is not found, the following package needs to be installed first:

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common

You’ll need to press ENTER to accept. Afterwards, update the package list to pick up the new repository’s package information.

sudo apt-get update

And finally, install the official Let’s Encrypt client, called certbot.

sudo apt-get install certbot

Now that we have certbot installed, let’s run it to get our certificate.

Step 2: Run Certbot

The Certbot that was just installed needs to answer a cryptographic challenge issued by the Let’s Encrypt API in order to prove we control our domain. It uses ports 80 (HTTP) and/or 443 (HTTPS) to accomplish this. We’ll only use port 80, so let’s allow incoming traffic on that port now:

sudo ufw allow http

Output

Rule added

We can now run Certbot to get our certificate. We’ll use the --standalone option to tell Certbot to handle the HTTP challenge request on its own, and --standalone-supported-challenges http-01 limits the communication to port 80. -d is used to specify the domain you’d like a certificate for, and certonly tells Certbot to just retrieve the certificate without doing any other configuration steps.

sudo certbot certonly –standalone –standalone-supported-challenges http-01 -d mqtt.example.com

When running the command, you will be prompted to enter an email address and agree to the terms of service. After doing so, you should see a message telling you the process was successful and where your certificates are stored.

We’ve got our certificates. Now we need to make sure Certbot renews them automatically when they’re about to expire.

Step 3: Setting up Cerbot Automatic Renewals

Let’s Encrypt’s certificates are only valid for ninety days. This is to encourage users to automate their certificate renewal process. We’ll need to set up a regularly run command to check for expiring certificates and renew them automatically.

To run the renewal check daily, we will use cron, a standard system service for running periodic jobs. We tell cron what to do by opening and editing a file called a crontab.

sudo crontab -e

You’ll be prompted to select a text editor. Choose your favorite, and you’ll be presented with the default crontab which has some help text in it. Paste in the following line at the end of the file, then save and close it.

crontab

. . .
15 3 * * * certbot renew --noninteractive --post-hook "systemctl restart mosquitto"

The 15 3 * * * part of this line means “run the following command at 3:15 am, every day”. The renewcommand for Certbot will check all certificates installed on the system and update any that are set to expire in less than thirty days. --noninteractive tells Certbot not to wait for user input.

--post-hook "systemctl restart mosquitto" will restart Mosquitto to pick up the new certificate, but only if the certificate was renewed. This post-hook feature is what older versions of the Let’s Encrypt client lacked, and why we installed from a PPA instead of the default Ubuntu repository. Without it, we’d have to restart Mosquitto every day, even if no certificates were actually updated. Though your MQTT clients should be configured to reconnect automatically, it’s wise to avoid interrupting them daily for no good reason.

Now that automatic certificate renewal is all set, we’ll get back to configuring Mosquitto to be more secure.

Step 4. Configuring MQTT SSL

To enable SSL encryption, we need to tell Mosquitto where our Let’s Encrypt certificates are stored. Open up the configuration file we previously started:

sudo nano /etc/mosquitto/conf.d/default.conf

Replace the file content with the following:

allow_anonymous false
password_file /etc/mosquitto/passwd
listener 1883 localhost
listener 8883
certfile /etc/letsencrypt/live/<yourVPSdomainname>/cert.pem
cafile /etc/letsencrypt/live/<yourVPSdomainname>/chain.pem
keyfile /etc/letsencrypt/live/<yourVPSdomainname>/privkey.pem
listener 8083
protocol websockets
certfile /etc/letsencrypt/live/<yourVPSdomainname>/cert.pem
cafile /etc/letsencrypt/live/<yourVPSdomainname>/chain.pem
keyfile /etc/letsencrypt/live/<yourVPSdomainname>/privkey.pem
listener 18083
protocol websockets

This file is the same as the last version, except the SSL certificates have been added to the SSL and websocket ports:

certfile /etc/letsencrypt/live/<yourVPSdomainname>/cert.pem
cafile /etc/letsencrypt/live/<yourVPSdomainname>/chain.pem
keyfile /etc/letsencrypt/live/<yourVPSdomainname>/privkey.pem

listener 8883 sets up an encrypted listener on port 8883. This is the standard port for MQTT + SSL, often referred to as MQTTS. The next three lines, certfile, cafile, and keyfile, all point Mosquitto to the appropriate Let’s Encrypt files to set up the encrypted connections.

Save and exit the file, then restart Mosquitto to update the settings:

sudo systemctl restart mosquitto

Now we test again using mosquitto_pub, with a few different options for SSL:

mosquitto_pub -h <your VPS domainname> -t test -m “hello again” -p 8883 –capath /etc/ssl/certs/ -u “user1” -P “password”

Note that we’re using the full hostname instead of localhost. Because our SSL certificate is issued for <yourVPSdomainname>, if we attempt a secure connection to localhost we’ll get an error saying the hostname does not match the certificate hostname (even though they both point to the same Mosquitto server).

--capath /etc/ssl/certs/ enables SSL for mosquitto_pub, and tells it where to look for root certificates. These are typically installed by your operating system, so the path is different for Mac OS, Windows, etc. mosquitto_pub uses the root certificate to verify that the Mosquitto server’s certificate was properly signed by the Let’s Encrypt certificate authority. It’s important to note that mosquitto_pub and mosquitto_sub will not attempt an SSL connection without this option (or the similar --cafile option), even if you’re connecting to the standard secure port of 8883.

If all goes well with the test, we’ll see hello again show up in the other mosquitto_sub terminal.

You can also run additional tests using the HiveMQ MQTT client again to verify the websocket port 8083, which is now configured securely. This time, make sure the “SSL” checkbox is selected when making a connection.

Once this final test has been performed successfully, your MQTT broker is fully set up!

In Closing

With your own secure MQTT broker running on a VPS, you have a powerful platform at your disposal. Using a reliable provider, you no longer need to keep any hardware running 24-7, no longer vulnerable to power interruptions or computer crashes. And there are no constraints on your custom configuration options. That is all taken care of by the VPS provider.

I hope you find this information useful

ESP8266 MQTT Publication & External Subscription

11th November 2015 by InternetOfHomeThings in All Posts, ESP8266 : An IoT System on Chip, Internet of Things | Comments Off

Publishing data produced by ESP8266 sensors to an MQTT broker server is a great option to making your IoT data visible to outside consumers with minimal consumption of precious MCU bandwidth. Simple, easy to implement and very light-weight.

What a great distribution system!

Simply publish your ESP8266 sensor data once, and many subscribers can consume the information, virtually at the same time. Sweet!

MQTT Basics

In case you are new to MQTT, here are a few basics. MQTT is the acronym for message queuing telemetry transport. Now that’s a mouthful! It is essentially a protocol that follows the publish/subscribe model to distribute information from one source to many users.

Here’s a few links for more MQTT information:

I’ve put together an ESP8266 MQTT demo project using an Arduino IDE sketch to publish data for consumption by subscribers using the MQTT protocol. Several options for consuming the data as a subscriber are also presented…

MQTT Broker/Server

For demo purposes, I wanted to use a free broker. After testing a few of the available options, I settled on using the Mosquitto MQTT server. While unsecured, meaning anyone who knows your “topic” can subscribe to the data, it works great for a proving out your design.

server: test.mosquitto.org

port: 1883

Arduino IDE Sketch

There is one library that needs to be added to the Arduino IDE to access the MQTT broker. It’s called “PubSubClient”. Here is how to install it…

Step 1: Open the Arduino IDE

Step 2: From the menu, select Sketch>Include Library>Manage Libraries…

Step 3: Enter “PubSubClient” in the search box.

Step 4: Click on the “Install” button

Now that was easy.

Great!

But there is one more thing to do after installing PubSubClient. I have found that the default maximum packet size (128 bytes) is insufficient. You should at least double it to 256 bytes.

How?

Just open the file “…/Arduino/libraries/pubSubClient/src/PubSubClient.h and change the following line:

From:

#define MQTT_MAX_PACKET_SIZE 128

To:

#define MQTT_MAX_PACKET_SIZE 256

Now lets talk about the sketch to test MQTT with the ESP8266…

The setup() function performs 3 basic tasks:

Setup()

setup serial port
connect to wifi
set MQTT broker/server

And loop() maintains the Wifi and MQTT connections, reads the sensors, and publishes the values to the MQTT broker.

Loop()

Reconnect to WiFi if disconnected
Reconnect to MQTT broker/server if disconnected
Read Sensor(s)
Publish Sensor data

Here is a break-down of the sketch. First, the objects must be identified

#include <ESP8266WiFi.h>
#include <PubSubClient.h>
#define wifi_ssid "Your SSID"
#define wifi_password Your Wifi password"
#define mqtt_server "test.mosquitto.org"
#define mqtt_user "not used in this example"
#define mqtt_password "not used in this example"
#define topic1 "t1"
#define topic2 "t2"
WiFiClient espClient;
PubSubClient client(espClient);

And then the sketch setup…

void setup() {
Serial.begin(115200);
setup_wifi();
client.setServer(mqtt_server, 1883);
}

A typical Wifi connect function:

void setup_wifi() {
delay(10);
// We start by connecting to a WiFi network
Serial.println();
Serial.print("Connecting to ");
Serial.println(wifi_ssid);
WiFi.begin(wifi_ssid, wifi_password);
while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) {
delay(500);
Serial.print(".");
}
Serial.println("");
Serial.println("WiFi connected");
Serial.println("IP address: ");
Serial.println(WiFi.localIP());
}

The loop() simply makes sure a connection to the MQTT is made, reads the sensors, and publishes the results. The publish rate is set at 2 seconds minimum.

void loop() {
if (!client.connected()) {
reconnect();
}
client.loop();
//2 seconds minimum between Read Sensors and Publish
long now = millis();
if (now - lastMsg > 2000) {
lastMsg = now;
//Read Sensors (simulated by increasing the values, range:0-90)
t1 = t1>90 ? 0 : ++t1;
t2 = t2>90 ? 0 : ++t2;
//Publish Values to MQTT broker
pubMQTT(topic1,t1);
pubMQTT(topic2,t2);
}
}

Just copy and paste this complete sketch as a starting template to test your own MQTT publishing with the ESP8266. Remember, you will need to set the WIFI ssid & password in the sketch to your access point values before running.

#include <ESP8266WiFi.h>
#include <PubSubClient.h>
#define wifi_ssid "YOURSSID"
#define wifi_password "YOURPASSWORD"
#define mqtt_server "test.mosquitto.org"
#define mqtt_user "your_username"
#define mqtt_password "your_password"
#define topic1 "t1"
#define topic2 "t2"
WiFiClient espClient;
PubSubClient client(espClient);
void setup() {
Serial.begin(115200);
setup_wifi();
client.setServer(mqtt_server, 1883);
}
void setup_wifi() {
delay(10);
// We start by connecting to a WiFi network
Serial.println();
Serial.print("Connecting to ");
Serial.println(wifi_ssid);
WiFi.begin(wifi_ssid, wifi_password);
while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) {
delay(500);
Serial.print(".");
}
Serial.println("");
Serial.println("WiFi connected");
Serial.println("IP address: ");
Serial.println(WiFi.localIP());
}
void reconnect() {
// Loop until we're reconnected
while (!client.connected()) {
Serial.print("Attempting MQTT connection...");
// Attempt to connect
if (client.connect("TestMQTT")) { //* See //NOTE below
Serial.println("connected");
} else {
Serial.print("failed, rc=");
Serial.print(client.state());
Serial.println(" try again in 5 seconds");
// Wait 5 seconds before retrying
delay(5000);
}
}
}
//NOTE: if a user/password is used for MQTT connection use:
//if(client.connect("TestMQTT", mqtt_user, mqtt_password)) {
void pubMQTT(String topic,float topic_val){
Serial.print("Newest topic " + topic + " value:");
Serial.println(String(topic_val).c_str());
client.publish(topic.c_str(), String(topic_val).c_str(), true);
}
//Variables used in loop()
long lastMsg = 0;
float t1 = 75.5;
float t2 = 50.5;
void loop() {
if (!client.connected()) {
reconnect();
}
client.loop();
//2 seconds minimum between Read Sensors and Publish
long now = millis();
if (now - lastMsg > 2000) {
lastMsg = now;
//Read Sensors (simulate by increasing the values, range:0-90)
t1 = t1>90 ? 0 : ++t1;
t2 = t2>90 ? 0 : ++t2;
//Publish Values to MQTT broker
pubMQTT(topic1,t1);
pubMQTT(topic2,t2);
}
}

Testing Tools

While there are many tools available, here are a few I have found that you can use to verify the ESP8266 is actually publishing the data.

How?

Simply subscribe to the topic and watch the information updates in real-time.

Google Chrome Application

First try using MQTTLens, an off-the-shelf tool to subscribe to the published data. You can get MQTTLens here. Although this app is installed via Google Chrome, it runs as standalone application. At this time, Chrome apps are supported using Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems.

This app provides basic functionality for testing MQTT publish/subscribe messages.

Once the app has been installed and started, a few configuration steps are needed to connect to our MQTT broker and subscribe to the ESP8266 published topics.

Just click on the configuration icon and fill in the information as shown below:

Once you are connected to the broker, the only thing left to do is subscribe to the data feed. For this example, two topics are published by the ESP8266; t1 and t2. Enter one of these and click on the subscribe button to monitor the data as it is published.

Notice you can change the number of messages displayed using the “-+” icons.

Web Page using JavaScript

MQTTLens is a great tool to get a quick look at your MQTT published data. But when you move from merely testing the data feed to developing a custom application, full control to manipulate and display the information is essential.
Fortunately, this is a simple task using only JavaScript and html.
I’ve developed the following html code to subscribe to the ESP8266 published data. This may be useful as a template on your own website. Simply open a file with this code in a web browser to test. Name this file as you please, using “.html” as the file name extension. In this example, I have named the file “mqtt_subscribe.html”.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>MQTT JavaScript Client Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<div><strong>Published ESP8266 topics via MQTT:</strong></div><br>
<div id="t1"></div>
<div id="t2"></div>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://test.mosquitto.org/mosquitto.js"></script>
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script>
// Create a client instance
client = new Mosquitto();
// Connect to MQTT broker
var url = "ws://test.mosquitto.org:8080/mqtt";
client.connect(url);
// Callback executed upon connection
client.onconnect = function(rc){
var topic = 't1';
client.subscribe('t1', 0);
client.subscribe('t2', 0);
};
//Callback executed upon disconnection
client.ondisconnect = function(rc){
client.connect(url);
};
//Callback executed upon receipt of MQTT message
client.onmessage = function(topic, payload, qos){
if(topic=="t1") {
$("#t1").html("Topic: t1 Value: " + payload);
}
if(topic=="t2") {
$("#t2").html("Topic: t2 Value: " + payload);
}
};
</script>
</body>
</html>

Just to keep things clean and simple, no css styling is included in this example. Here is a snapshot of the browser windows when this file is viewed:

Android

While I have not yet explored the development of a custom Android App to interface with an MQTT broker, it is certainly possible. What immediately comes to mind, in the spirit of App portable, would be to develop an Android Cordova App. This would allow you to reuse the above html code, without modification.
Here is my step-by-step guide to get started.
But if you are looking for an off-the-shelf MQTT test application, I recommend using MyMQTT . This is a free App available in Google Play Store. Once installed, there are only a few steps needed to subscribe to the ESP8266 example MQTT feed.
The App will startup with the following screen:

First set the app to connect with the broker we are using for this example. Click on “Settings” and enter the broker information as shown:

Then subscribe to the ESP8266 published topics (t1 and t2):

The dashboard will then display the topic data as it is published:

Iphone/iPad

MQTTInspector is the most popular App to test MQTT feeds from an iOS device. At $1.99, is not free, yet certainly low-cost. As a Windows, Android and Linux user, I cannot provide any additional information regarding this tool. It appears to be similar to other MQTT client test tools, and can be found on iTunes here.

In Conclusion

Here you have it. A simple guide to publishing topics from an ESP8266 device to an MQTT broker. All you need is a simple Arduino IDE sketch.

Once published, this data feed can be consumed cross-platform, on any device that supports MQTT. From this article, this includes but is certainly not limited to Windows, Mac and iOS. There are also Linux packages available to support MQTT clients.

As always, I hope you find this information useful…

Archives for MQTT

MQTT Android Studio App

Installing Android Studio

Creating the Project

The MQTT libraries as dependencies of your Android project

Customizing the App GUI (activity_main.xml file):

Bottom Navigation Menu (app/res/menu/navigation.xml file)

The java code (app/java/<project package name>/MainActivity.java)

How it Works

In Closing

Share This:

VPS Application 1: MQTT Broker

MQTT Broker Installation Overview

Installing Mosquitto

Configuring MQTT Passwords

Passwords for multiple users

Configuring MQTT Over Websockets

Testing MQTT Websockets

Securing your MQTT Broker

In Closing

Share This:

ESP8266 MQTT Publication & External Subscription

MQTT Basics

MQTT Broker/Server

Arduino IDE Sketch

Testing Tools

Android

Iphone/iPad

In Conclusion

Share This:

Looking for something?

List All Post

Post Categories

Archived Posts

Recent Comments

Let’s keep in touch!

Follow Us

Archives for MQTT

MQTT Android Studio App

Installing Android Studio

Creating the Project

The MQTT libraries as dependencies of your Android project

Customizing the App GUI (activity_main.xml file):

Bottom Navigation Menu (app/res/menu/navigation.xml file)

The java code (app/java/<project package name>/MainActivity.java)

How it Works

In Closing

Share This:

VPS Application 1: MQTT Broker

MQTT Broker Installation Overview

Installing Mosquitto

Configuring MQTT Passwords

Passwords for multiple users

Configuring MQTT Over Websockets

Testing MQTT Websockets

Securing your MQTT Broker

In Closing

Share This:

ESP8266 MQTT Publication & External Subscription

MQTT Basics

MQTT Broker/Server

Arduino IDE Sketch

Testing Tools

Android

Iphone/iPad

In Conclusion

Share This:

Looking for something?

List All Post

Post Categories

Archived Posts

Website Tag Cloud

Recent Comments

Let’s keep in touch!

Follow Us