FORGOT YOUR DETAILS?

Getting Started with MQTT

Register NowAPI Docs

Getting started with IOStash MQTT API

A brief overview of the IOStash MQTT API and its core functionality. You'll learn how to push data via the MQTT API with this guide.

Introduction

This section discusses the MQTT data interface of IOStash. Like the RESTful API, MQTT API can be used to push data and can also listen for data changes in realtime like the realtime API. Please go through the platform overview in the API docs or the Getting Started with REST guide to know more about the platform if you haven't already. IOStash uses JSON for data exchange across all interfaces.

In this guide, we will use the MQTT API instead of the RESTful API to push data to IOStash, from the device we created in the Getting Started Guide. Refer to that guide to learn how to create a device and add data points to it.

IOStash MQTT Basics

If you are not familiar with the MQTT protocol, we suggest going through this wiki article.

For MQTT connection, host url api.iostash-239ca9.ingress-alpha.easywp.com and port 1883 is to be used. IOStash MQTT API requires authentication for publishing and subscribing topics. Pass x-access-token as the username and the device secret which is created during device creation as the password. Set client id to the deviceID. While listening to data updates, set a unique name as client ID or else messages will be delivered with QoS 0 instead of QoS 1.

Publishing Data

To write data to IOStash from your device, data is to be converted into a JSON string and published to the topic:

/x-access-token/deviceID

For example, to save data to temperature & humidity data points we defined for the device we created, publish data as

{"temperature": VALUE, "humidity": VALUE}

to the device's MQTT topic. IOStash will persist the data and the connected realtime clients will receive the update. Also, if the topic x-access-token/deviceID/system is subscribed, status of data write will be published.

Subscribing for Updates

To subscribe for updates from a device, simply subscribe to the device's topic: /x-access-token/deviceID. Make sure that you have access to the device or IOStash will ignore the subscribe request.

Hardware & Code

 

Lets write some code to put everything we've discussed so far into practice. This tutorial uses Arduino for ESP8266. We're extremely interested in this chip because of its availability and built in connectivity. The following code is for sensing temperature and humidity using a DHT11 sensor and Adafruit Huzzah Breakout board.

Adafruit Huzzah and DHT11

/** * 

IOStash Simple Weather Station with MQTT EXAMPLE * * 
Created on: 14.04.2016 

* */ 

#include <ESP8266WiFi.h>
#include <PubSubClient.h>
#include <DHT.h>

#define DHTTYPE DHT11
#define DHTPIN  2
#define SLEEP_DELAY_IN_SECONDS  30

unsigned long previousMillis = 0;
const long interval = 2000; 
const char* ssid = "YOUR WIFI SSID HERE";
const char* password = "YOUR WIFI PASSWORD HERE";
float humidity, temp_f;
const char* mqtt_server = "api.iostash-239ca9.ingress-alpha.easywp.com";
const char* mqtt_username = "YOUR_X-ACCESS-TOKEN_HERE";
const char* mqtt_password = "YOUR DEVICE SECRET HERE";
const char* mqtt_topic = "/your_x-access-token_here/deviceID_here/";

WiFiClient espClient;
PubSubClient client(espClient);
DHT dht(DHTPIN, DHTTYPE, 11);

String dataString;
char charBuf[100];
void setup() {
  // setup serial port
  Serial.begin(115200);

  // setup WiFi
  setup_wifi();
  client.setServer(mqtt_server, 1883);
  client.setCallback(callback);

}

void setup_wifi() {
  delay(10);
  Serial.println();
  Serial.print("Connecting to ");
  Serial.println(ssid);

  WiFi.begin(ssid, 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 callback(char* topic, byte* payload, unsigned int length) {
  Serial.print("Message arrived [");
  Serial.print(topic);
  Serial.print("] ");
  for (int i = 0; i < length; i++) {
    Serial.print((char)payload[i]);
  }
  Serial.println();
}

void reconnect() {
    WiFi.begin(ssid, password);

  while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) {
    delay(500);
    Serial.print(".");
  }
  while (!client.connected()) {
    Serial.print("Attempting MQTT connection...");
    if (client.connect("ESP8266_Client", mqtt_username, mqtt_password)) {
      Serial.println("connected");
    } else {
      Serial.print("failed, rc=");
      Serial.print(client.state());
      Serial.println(" try again in 5 seconds");
      delay(5000);
    }
  }
}

void getTemperature() {
  unsigned long currentMillis = millis();
  if(currentMillis - previousMillis >= interval) {
    previousMillis = currentMillis;   
    humidity = dht.readHumidity();    
    temp_f = dht.readTemperature(false);
    if (isnan(humidity) || isnan(temp_f)) {
      Serial.println("Failed to read from DHT sensor!");
      return;
    }
  }
}

void loop() {
  if (!client.connected()) {
    reconnect();
  }
  client.loop();
  getTemperature();
  dataString = String("{"temperature":") + temp_f + String(","humidity":") + humidity + String("}");
  dataString.toCharArray(charBuf, 150);
  Serial.println(charBuf);
  client.publish(mqtt_topic, charBuf );
  Serial.println( "Closing MQTT connection...");
  client.disconnect();
  Serial.println( "Closing WiFi connection...");
  WiFi.disconnect();
  Serial.println( "Sleeping for a minute");
  delay(60000);
}

This setup will write temperature and humidity values to IOStash every minute. An example of this particular setup is https://app.iostash-239ca9.ingress-alpha.easywp.com/feeds/5734997f8680bc62de000006/.

Go through the MQTT API docs to learn more about IOStash MQTT API and the available topics.

TOP