Mosquitto — Intro To MQTT

It is Suitable for the Internet of Things Applications — MQTT — Episode #01

Hi, let us install mosquitto broker (v 1.6.8) in your machine & reconfigure its service in Win10 so we can start & stop it manually.

In late 2016 I’ve already posted about MQTT using ESP8266 & MIT Inventor and Adafruit MQTT Broker…for codes & how-to-use it, please check it out here:

5º Episode — KidsTronics — Adafruit-IO Meets ESP8266, Arduino & MIT App Inventor 2 — Hello World for Adafruit-io & MQTT Protocol

But now, as a grown-Arduino-man…well, not that much 😅…I’ll deal with this IoT-prone protocol more deeply and install a mosquitto broker on my own pc…

Welcome to MQTT!

But first…I’d like to thank my followers, especially Mr. Zoltán Groska — Happy new year and thank you for your support o/

The MQTT protocol (implemented by mosquitto) provides a lightweight method of carrying out messaging using a publish/subscribe model.

Designed as an extremely lightweight publish/subscribe messaging transport, it is useful for connections with remote locations where a small code footprint is required and/or network bandwidth is at a premium.

Why use MQTT?

For the IoT apps!

As IoT devices communicate via broker servers with sensors and actuators distributed at the computer networks, but not with people, normal HTTP protocol would be cumbersome… HTTP header is up to 16 bytes long!

IoT device needs often one single byte…

HTTP server tends to disconnect clients often and it does not know when the clients have disconnected.

IoT devices need to receive updates often and have a guaranteed connection with the brokers...

The web traffic for IoT app needs speed, low-data-footprint, low throughput, and frequent updates, rather than ultra-high digital data throughput.

That’s why MQTT is so important for the IoT app!

Installations Procedures for Mosquitto

Mosquitto is highly portable and available for a wide range of platforms.

I will use Windows 10 (Windows 10 Home Single Language — Version 10.0.18362 Compilation 18362). In an upcoming post, I will implement it in RPi :)

Please refer to mosquitto official page first:)

1° Step — Go to https://mosquitto.org/download/ and for Windows get this file:

mosquitto-1.6.8-install-windows-x64.exe

2° Step —Adding Dependencies files (.dll)

As you complete the Mosquitto installation, please copy/paste these dependencies files into the Mosquitto root directory (you can download these .dlls directly from my google drive below):

Edited:
nowadays, Dez 2020, there is no need to load these libs; 
skip this step :)

Administrator credentials might be asked as you are dealing with systems files;)

3° Step — Go to Windows Explorer > MyComputer, left mouse click go to Properties > Advanced Systems Configurations

hint: Ctrl+R, type: 
sysdm.cpl (System Properties)

4° Step — Click Environment Variables (1), Path (2), New (3) and paste C:\>Program Files\mosquitto directory (4), pointing to mosquitto’s .dll & .exe files location. Click ok.

5° Step — Open Cmd Prompter, go to C:\> and type:

C:\>mosquitto -v

6° Step —Set mosquitto service as Manual;

Go to Services > Properties > Initializations > and set it as Manual

7° Step — Testing the installations; at the console, type:

C:\mosquitto - -help

8° Step — As the broker’s clients can be server, publisher, subscriber, and password services, mosquitto API brings us these four executables programs.

9 Step — Communications test;

Now let’s consume pub and sub-services from the API and get communication in the publisher/subscriber pattern.

But this is an issue for the next Mosquitto Series post.

Bye, for now, o/

Download All Files For This Project

Related Posts

01 # Episode — Mosquitto — Intro To MQTT — It is Suitable for the Internet of Things Applications — MQTT (this one)

02# Episode — Mosquitto — User Access Configurations Setups — Editing mosquitto.conf File to Configure SSL Authentications — MQTT

03# Episode — Mosquitto — Mosquitto — ACLs — Wildcards & ACL — access control lists — MQTT

04# Episode — Mosquitto — MQTT QoS — How To Set QoS at Mosquitto Broker — MQTT

05# Episode — Mosquitto — Bulletproof TLS & SSL Mosquitto — How To Set Up Mosquitto Broker/Client Keys & Certificates — MQTT

06# Episode — Mosquitto — Mosquitto Bridge — How To Bridge Two Mosquitto Brokers — MQTT

07…be tuned for the upcoming post about MQTT and IoT o/

From: https://developer.ibm.com/articles/iot-mqtt-why-good-for-iot/

Notes: Why not other protocols:

Most developers are already familiar with HTTP web services. So, why not just have IoT devices connect to web services? The device could send in its data as a HTTP request and receive updates from the system as the HTTP response. This request and response pattern does have some severe limitations:

.HTTP is a synchronous protocol

The client waits for the server to respond. That is a requirement for web browsers, but it comes at the cost of poor scalability. In the world of IoT, the large number of devices and most likely an unreliable / high latency network have made synchronous communication problematic. An asynchronous messaging protocol is much more suitable for IoT applications. The sensors can send in readings, and let the network figure out the optimal path and timing for delivery to its destination devices and services;

.HTTP is one-way

The client must initiate the connection. In an IoT application, the devices or sensors are typically clients, which means that they cannot passively receive commands from the network;

.HTTP is a 1-1 protocol

The client makes a request, and the server responds. It is difficult and expensive to broadcast a message to all devices on the network, which is a common use case in IoT applications;

.HTTP is a heavy weight protocol with many headers and rules

It is not suitable for constrained networks.

For the above reasons, most high performance scalable systems use an asynchronous messaging bus, rather than web services, for internal data exchange. 
In fact, the most popular messaging protocol used in enterprise middleware systems is called AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol). 
However, in the high-performance environment, computing power and network latency are typically not a concern. AMQP is designed for reliability and interoperability in enterprise applications. It has a rich feature set, but it is not suitable for resource-constrained IoT applications.
Besides AMQP, there are other popular messaging protocols. For example, the XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) is a peer-to-peer instant messaging (IM) protocol. It is heavy on features that support IM use cases, such as presence and media attachments. Compared with MQTT, it requires much more resources both on the device and on the network.
So, what makes the MQTT so lightweight and flexible? A key feature of the MQTT protocol is its publish and subscribe model. As with all messaging protocols, it decouples the publisher and consumer of data.

References & Credits

Eclipse Mosquitto™ An open-source MQTT broker

Microgênios — Treinamento em Sistemas Embarcados — Microchip Regional Partner — Microchip Certified Brazilian Training Education Startup & a Simplício-owned enterprise o/

Internet of Things: State-of-the-art, Challenges, Applications, and Open Issues — Article (PDF Available) in the International Journal of Intelligent Computing Research

Microgênios — Treinamento em Sistemas Embarcados — Microchip Regional Partner — Microchip Certified Brazilian Training Education Company & a Simplício-Owned enterprise o/

What is the smallest possible http and https data request by https://stackoverflow.com/

Getting to know MQTT — Why MQTT is one of the best network protocols for the Internet of Things by IBM Articles

MQTT is the leading protocol for connecting IoT devices by IBM Articles

MQTT by Wikipedia

MQTT Version 5.0 — OASIS Standard — 07 March 2019 by OASIS

The Internet of Things has the potential to change the world, just as the Internet did. Maybe even more so.

by Kevin Ashton, who is the founder of MIT auto-identification center in 1999.

(edited @ Dez 2020 — test again and no libs need; add notes:)

(edited @ Jan 2021 — correcting the minimum for HTTP header: 400 -> 16; adding StackOverflow link :)