Homey needs MQTT

PieterKnuvers

Any plans for this...cant do without!

Emile

Basically, if a device needs it, it can be integrated in the App's driver. It's not 'general' enough to include it in Homey's core.

ErikVanDongen

@Emile, is it possible to create an app that gets a call(back) on every (every!) device-update?
Which nodejs modules are available on Homey? Is it possible to add nodejs modules per app?
With device update callbacks and the ability to use every nodejs module we want we can create a MQTT app with our left hand while unboxing the homey with the right hand B-).

Emile

I think the protocol supports that so yes, that's possible!

You can use any nodejs module on Homey as long as they don't require native code (bindings), because that would be a security leak.

axello

I was looking for MQTT as well. Most of the stuff I create use it.

JohanKuster

Why do you need MQTT on the Homey? Put it eg on a Raspberry and write an app to communicate with MQTT anywhere.

JohanKuster

pff never done this kind of stuff, but I give it a go. I'll do my best to make this work. Need some time though. But I want this very much myself 

Michael

JohanKuster said:

pff never done this kind of stuff, but I give it a go. I'll do my best to make this work. Need some time though. But I want this very much myself 

Huge thumb up!!

Uranday

That looks very cool! 

JohanKuster

This is want I want in the end, but then of course Homey iso Domoticz. Put the Mosquitto and Node-red on a PI and you can add anything to the Homey.

MatjaLipu

This is just a client, right? I would rather see two MQTT apps. Separate client and server (if needed).

JohanKuster

Yes, just a client. It would be much easier if Homey had the MQTT package installed. @Emile:?
I doubt if they would install eg the Mosquitto or Mosca broker on the Homey.

MatjaLipu

There is a mqtt-server package, but question is if Homey can handle such load

tomza

Hello everybody... I have been owner of Homey for some weeks and really like the "idea" of Homey. It's easy for end users (provided they do not need to create apps) and at the same time it has nice API to create app for whatever device you want. I have myself been in IOT for 5 years on and off as a hobby. But if you do not have indefinite time for fiddling around with frameworks then in the end it's better to buy some device as foundation and continue from there. 

But what I want to talk about is MQTT standard. I think Homey should certainly include (or make it possible to install native linux app) MQTT server in firmware. Below is why I think this. 

There are two parts to MQTT traffic. One is incoming, other is outgoing. I will go through them both.

It would be easy to think that homey does not need MQTT standard support for listening to external devices as there is possibility to create app for each of these devices. But it my opinion it just generates overhead. 

Lets for example take all those popular esp8266 based  development boards and even some esp8266 based end user devices. They have wifi, they have mqtt client. Now how do you integrate them at the moment? You still need to write some kind of app. If Homey would have MQTT built in then "adding device" would be just subscribing to some topic and defining the type of device.

Also other aspect would be multiple locations. Maybe it's not that general problem but I have Homey at home and also have summer cottage where are some sensors and internet connection. I would like to route those sensors to Homey. 

A little bit about outgoing traffic also. My use case is that if we have every kind of sensors that send data I would like to analyse this data further. In current firmware version the "insights" functionality is maybe not that polished. As I have not yet moved with all the stuff over to Homey I'm using some script "mqtt2rrd" that helps me visualize data the way I want and have granularity of data the way I want.

I guess this data logging example is too much over average user need but to generalize it - I think data should be free and should not be "caged" in Homey. It's your data - you take it and do whatever you want with it.

About performance issues that would potentially happen if we would have mqtt server in home - I have mosquitto mqtt server running in some arm based nas at the moment. It takes about 5mb of RAM sitting in memory. If comparing whatever app developed in JS for Homey it will take 25mb. So native code certainly has a lead compared to JS.

Some more points about developing app for every different device vs one standard app for multiple devices. In my opinion it's ok to write app for some hardware that is  using 433 or 868 or infrared or whatnot - there are a lot of standards and it's not possible to support them with "one mega-app" . But if there are devices that speak some kind of already existing standard language using wifi it's not that good idea any more. It would be more logical to take highest common protocol that everybody understands. It's the same with zwave - we do not try to support every device low level but using protocol that is developed by zwave.

BTW - developing app for end user is not easy at all. I'm quite competent programmer (have been last 20 years) and still if I need to support my devices on Homey and I need to go through all this learning process about Homey api just to create some really simple "sensor" is not that easy for me. I guess it's even harder for end users.