[Implemented] pimatic-mqtt would be nice

---

Hello, this is my first thread. Don’t be nervous … shaking hands

ok, i have to say i love pimatic and work at this time on a support for mySensors and RFM12B modules to include my homenetwork in pimatic. But this is offtopic.

My Feature request, what is happend with MQTT? I.e. my System has a DIY Raspberry Gateway and publish all sensor data to a local moquitto server in this format:

item/sensors/315/Power = 2978

The Topic include the Nodenumber/NamedValue and his Value (in mV). Local on my Raspberry exists a sensor config that now, nodes between 300 and 350 are Plants Humidity Sensors.

For me it’s extremle simple to say, “Ok Pimatic, i have a Device u can read him from mqtt server x with port y and the value are a Battery Power sensor.”

Thats all, if this possible?

Welcome to Pimatic Frank

well i don’t know much about MQTT but have a look here :
http://forum.pimatic.org/topic/339/creating-device-attributes-on-the-fly

you could help @skarcha to develop the plugin.
I guess all helping hands are welcome

Yeah! I’m working on it. I have a simple version that works as you expect, but a friend and I, are trying to create devices with initial unknown attributes, so you could subscribe the device to a topic as: “item/sensors/+/Power” and every new device added to the network would have its Power value in Pimatic automaticaly.

I hope you understand what I mean. Excuse my English…

@skarcha said:

Yeah! I’m working on it. I have a simple version that works as you expect,

Cool, yes i can help to test your Plugin. Please send me the sources and i do my best For me it’s a simple version enough, i want to add my devices manual in the config.

I hope you understand what I mean. Excuse my English…

Me too, i life in Germany and my english is … enough

@skarcha how is your mqtt plugin progressing?

I’m busy migrating from OpenHab to pimatic, but I really miss mqtt support. I have a few scripts that reads device values and publishes them to mqtt for OpenHab to consume. For example an arduino that reads my alarm system status and a USB interface to an OWL energy monitor. The reason I chose to use mqtt was that OpenHab could consume it easily and I could also use the mqtt feed for more than one subscriber (also using it to log the data to Graphite/InfluxDB).

I guess I could convert those scripts to pimatic plugins, but if I can get pimatic to just consume the mqtt feed that would give me a quick way to switch . I don’t need anything fancy, just the ability to create a device manually and list the mqtt topics that make up it’s attributes, nothing dynamic.

I was about to start hacking around with this, but saw you are also working on a plugin.

Well, i experiment a while with the shell plugin and found (maybe) a small solution. Here the flow, i subscribe all my topics from local or external mqtt server and save data to a logfile:

• Start mqtt subscribe:
  mosquitto_sub -h localhost -p 1883 -v -t '/sensors/#' > mqtt.log

• Log content:

  /Sensors/311/Power 2984
  /Sensors/311/0 204
  /Sensors/311/1 55
  /Sensors/415/Power 2734
  /Sensors/415/0 0
  /Sensors/415/1 14

• Shell plugin start every x seconds and display last line with match to my Sensor id and Value
  tail -100 mqtt.log | grep -i '/311/Power' | cut -d ' ' -f2

Then i can add a Device:

{
  "id": "power-311",
  "name": "Battery 311",
  "class": "ShellSensor",
  "attributeName": "power",
  "attributeType": "number",
  "attributeUnit": "mV",
  "command": "tail -100 mqtt.log | grep -i '/311/Power' | cut -d ' ' -f2"
}

And voila, mqtt runs
It’s only a tip for friends they can’t wait for the MQTT Plugin.

Thank you @xpix, that’s a great idea.

I also hacked together a very quick mqtt plugin, here
http://forum.pimatic.org/topic/377/new-plugin-mqtt-simple

Hey guys, I would suggest to share your knowledge and work together at one mqtt plugin that can be merged to pimatic. Do some brainstorming about the most important features.
Imho it does not make any sense to have diverse plugins for the same kind of task.

For direct communication you can use the group chat at Gitter (see link down below at the bottom of the page)

Hi @leader21. I wouldn’t consider my plugin an ‘official’ plugin, which is why I called it mqtt-simple, so that the official one can just be called ‘mqtt’ once it’s done.

Right now I don’t even know if I will use mqtt in the long term. I just needed it right now to migrate from OpenHab, but I will probably rewrite my python scripts that publish to mqtt as pimatic plugins, which removes the need for mqtt.

I know @skarcha is busy, and I didn’t want to put pressure on him. I just needed something simple to get my system going and thought that others could also benefit from it. Apologies if I stepped on some toes. I’m certainly willing to assist where I can to get a proper mqtt plugin for pimatic.

@amiller
no need to apologize, all’s good! appreciate your work!
just wanted to point out, not to invent the wheel twice at the same time

@amiller said:

Thank you @xpix, that’s a great idea.

I also hacked together a very quick mqtt plugin, here
http://forum.pimatic.org/topic/377/new-plugin-mqtt-simple

Hello from Gran Canaria Its my vacation and i read the good news from ur simple programm, first i like it! I want to help you to test ur simple plugin. When im back, then urs are the first to install in pimatic. Great work!

@leader21
IMHO i think we up the amiller mqtt-simple plugin to an official Plugin, cuz the plugin works as designed for month’s on my pimatic. It’s stable and very easy to configure. I know @skarcha works on a mqtt plugin, but we have never heard from the last 3 month’s.

Just my 2 cents

Don’t have any mqtt devices but if you have tested it and it’s stable why not.
Will get in contact with @amiller. The plugin needs to be uploaded at npm. Then @sweetpi can add it to the plugin list.

@Frank-Herrmann I think we should ask @amiller first if he is happy to publish a npm package for this. Please also note there two open issues (one bug issue at least) and a PR which have been left without a response for weeks.

Suggestion: If we don’t get a response from @amiller till end of August or he is not able to support this further we find a new maintainer for package to take over.

@mwittig said:

Suggestion: If we don’t get a response from @amiller till end of August or he is not able to support this further we find a new maintainer for package to take over.

Sure, i don’t get an answer from @amiller (The Pullrequest come from me) the last 4 weeks. But the plugin are high value and do his work

still trying to get in touch with @amiller.
will keep you informed!

Hi there, my apologies. I don’t know why I didn’t get the notification on the pull request, probably some subscription setting that’s not configured correctly. I just received an email from Christopher alerting me to it.

I’ve been a bit distracted lately trying to keep up with my 2 year old son, but I’m still interested in Pimatic and would like to continue working on it. I’ll accept the pull request and get it uploaded to NPM. I might have to ask for some assistance in doing that though. I’ve not uploaded anything there yet.

great!! nice to hear from you! well yes, family is always keeping you busy, especially kids
regarding the npm thing i guess one of our @Developer can help for sure!

I accepted the pull request uploaded the package to npm, here: https://www.npmjs.com/package/pimatic-mqtt-simple

There’s still an open issue though, with handling string values which I’ve not had time to look at yet though. I did make sure the issues are logged and updated on github though

nice! thx a lot for your efforts!
now it’s up to @sweetpi to get it into the official plugin list