New Plugin: mqtt-simple

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I know @skarcha is working on an mqtt plugin to create attributes dynamically, but in the meantime I hacked together a simple mqtt sensor plugin where you have to specify the list of attributes and topics here.

https://github.com/andremiller/pimatic-mqtt-simple

I am not very familiar with the plugin framework and have never used Coffeescript before, so I’m probably doing quite a few things wrong. I called it mqtt-simple becaues it’s very basic. I used @skarcha’s nut plugin as a template to get started.

The plugin creates a new connection to the mqtt server for each device you create. I’m considering moving the connection settings to the plugin configuration rather than the device instances, but that limits you to only using a single mqtt server.

You can specify multiple topics/attributes for a single device and will use a single connection for all of those topics.

(Also see discussion here: http://forum.pimatic.org/topic/344/pimatic-mqtt-would-be-nice/9 )

Update 2015-08-07: This plugin is now on NPM: https://www.npmjs.com/package/pimatic-mqtt-simple

You can install it or update it by going to your pimatic-app directory (the one with config.json and node_modules) and running
npm install pimatic-mqtt-simple

Hi,

Just trying your plugin and have the following device:

{
“class”: “MqttSimpleSensor”,
“id”: “KitchenCeilingLight”,
“name”: “Kitchen Ceiling Light”,
“mqtturl”: “mqtt://localhost”,
“attributes”: [
{
“name”: “Kitchen Ceiling Light”,
“topic”: “kitchen/mainlight”,
“type”: “string”,
“acronym”: “Stuff”
}
]
}

When i receive info I just get get “Kitchen Ceiling Light: [object ArrayBuffer]” instead of the text?

Also, how do I send messages?

Cheers!

Hi Che, sorry for the late response, I have not logged onto the forum in a few days and only saw the message now.

The plugin only listens for mqtt messages, it doesn’t have the capability to send them. It was put together very quickly, and I never tested the “string” type. I only have numeric sources myself.

It doesn’t look very difficult to fix, probably a type conversion that’s missing. I’ll have a look this evening if I get time.

@amiller Please check my Pullrequest for an additional parameter and merge it if you want:

https://github.com/andremiller/pimatic-mqtt-simple/pull/3

@che the string issue should now be fixed in the NPM version of the plugin (v0.1.1)

Thanks @xpix . That’s been merged, sorry for only replying to this thread now

I’ve managed to edit the plugin to accept a JSON message, it’s my first stab at coffeescript but works.
The code is on my github
https://github.com/matt2005/pimatic-mqtt-simple

I’ve also created a pull request to hopefully get it put in the main plugin.