Compose-5000: Connect to an MQTT Broker using Compose

Publish and subscribe from a client to an IoT platform (external broker) using MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) protocol.

Attention: Valid only with Altair Communication Extension.

Prerequesites for This Tutorial

The following software and accounts are required for this tutorial:

Altair Compose
Free account on Altair IoT Studio platform: https://studio.swx.altairone.com/

Overview

One of Compose's communication protocol options is MQTT, a well-known communication protocol used in IoT (Internet of Things). It is possible to both publish and subscribe to any MQTT broker, local or external, very quickly and lightly.

When publishing messages to a topic, Compose sends data from the software to the broker. When subscribed to a topic, Compose receives data from the broker to the software.

In this tutorial, the external MQTT broker is on Altair IoT Studio. That is the end-to-end Altair IoT platform that covers all necessary technology for Smart and connected products development. In IoT Studio, it is possible to create Things, which represent the entities in your world. They store information about real-world objects like assets, rooms, or buildings, as well as information about concepts like Tasks or processes. These Things receive data if Compose is publishing, and sends data if Compose is subscribed to the MQTT topic. With the data on the IoT platform, you can create dashboards using that data: https://help.altair.com/altair-iot-studio/topics/mqtt_dashboard.htm?hl=mqtt.

General Setup on IoT Studio-IoT Platform

After you create an account on IoT Studio, create one Space to build the IoT project. The Thing is created there to send and receive data from Compose. All the names regarding the Spaces, Things, and MQTT credentials should be different for each user.

In IoT Studio, Create New Space > AnythingDB > Things > New Thing > Create.

After the Thing is created, a property is created to receive data from Compose and be stored on IoT Studio.
Select Properties (+) > Create.
Create Properties to be attributed to this object:
To set the MQTT credentials on IoT Studio, select Interfaces > MQTT Create Credentials > Set Username and Password > Save.

Publishing to an MQTT Topic on IoT Studio

In this tutorial, a standard Compose script is used to illustrate how is the process to send data from the software to the IoT platform using MQTT commands, that publishes data to a broker using MQTT.

Clear existing clients that are connected to the session:

cld_all  = mqttclientinfo('clientids');
if ~isempty(fieldnames(cld_all))
	cellfun(@mqttdestroy,{cld_all(:).clientids}, 'uniformoutput', 0);
end

Compose has a useful capability to return a response when the client receives a CONNACK (connect and response messages) from the server. For this, you must write the callback function:

function connect_mqtt_callback(clientid, rc, Mqttmessageinfo)
if rc == 0;
	printf('CONNACK return message for clientid %s: %s\n', clientid, Mqttmessageinfo);
else
	printf('Failed to connect broker with clientid %s: %s\n', clientid, Mqttmessageinfo);
end
end

Declare all the necessary arguments to be used on the MQTT functions, such as host, port, credentials, and topic attributes:

host = 'mqtt.swx.altairone.com';
port = 1883;
space = 'demo-models';
thing_id = '01HE682NDWSZ0F61JSFE0ZB6TE';
property = 'obj1';
topic = ['spaces/' space '/things/' thing_id '/properties'];
user = 'cmodel@demo-models';
password = 'cmodel';

Set a client to get the ID and send the message using that ID. This is the first step to set an MQTT connection. For this tutorial, the code below is used to set a client, using the callback function to advise if the connection was established:
```
clientid = mqttclient(host, 'port', port, 'username', user, 'password', password ...
			, 'keepaliveduration', 5, 'on_connect', 'connect_mqtt_callback');
```
In this case, a simple sinusoidal wave signal is generated to be sent to the client.
Note: Cells are used to be better manipulated further in the publishing section:
```
t = [0:0.1:10];
time = num2cell(t);
amplitude = num2cell(sin(t));
```
Create a loop to send the sinusoidal data individually. IoT Studio requires JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format on the data. For that, a function is used to manipulate the data individually, accessing each cell member of the sinusoidal wave. Finally, a plot is created, having 0.5 seconds as a pause condition, to see what is the data that is sent:
```
for i = 1:length(t)
	msg = jsonencode(struct(property, struct('amplitude', num2str(time{i}), 'time', num2str(amplitude{i}))));
	[mid, rc, msginfo] = mqttpublish(clientid, topic, msg, 2, true);
	pause(0.5);
	if rc == 0
		printf('Publishing to MQTT broker %s\n', host)
		printf('Send message %s with ID:%s, to topic: %s\n',num2str(amplitude{i}),num2str(mid), topic)
	end
	stem(t(i),amplitude{i});
	hold on;
end
```
It is possible to see that the data sent from Compose is being received on IoT Studio using the MQTT protocol.

Subscribing to an MQTT Topic on IoT Studio

In this tutorial, a standard Compose script is used to illustrate how is the process to receive data on the software from the IoT platform using MQTT commands.

Clear existing clients that are connected to the session:

cld_all  = mqttclientinfo('clientids');
if ~isempty(fieldnames(cld_all))
	cellfun(@mqttdestroy,{cld_all(:).clientids}, 'uniformoutput', 0);
end

Compose has a useful capability to return a response when the client receives a CONNACK (connect and response messages) from the server. For this, you must write the callback function:
```
function connect_callback(clientid, rc, Mqttmessageinfo)
	if rc == 0;
		printf('CONNACK return message for clientid %s: %s\n', clientid, Mqttmessageinfo);
	else
		printf('Failed to connect broker with clientid %s: %s\n', clientid, Mqttmessageinfo);
	end
end
```
It is possible to have a callback function to receive a message when the client subscribes to the broker:
```
function subscribe_callback(clientid, mid, grand_qos)
	printf('message id: %s\n', num2str(mid));
end
```
Get the message from the broker, in this case from IoT Studio. This is the last callback function in this model:
```
function msg_callback(clientid, topic, msg)
	data = jsondecode(msg);
	printf('amplitude: %s\ntime: %s', data.obj1.amplitude, data.obj1.time);
end
```
Note: A JSON function is used to decode the data, as the message from IoT Studio has that format.

Declare all the necessary arguments to be used on the MQTT functions, such as host, port, credentials, and topic attributes:

host = 'mqtt.swx.altairone.com';
port = 1883;
space = 'demo-models';
thing_id = '01HE682NDWSZ0F61JSFE0ZB6TE';
property = 'obj1';
topic = ['spaces/' space '/things/' thing_id '/properties/' property]

Set a client to get the ID and send the message using that ID. This is the first step to set an MQTT connection. For this tutorial, the code below is used to set a client, using the callback function to advise if the connection was established:
```
clientid = mqttclient(host, 'port', port, 'username', user ...
			,'password', password, 'keepaliveduration',5 ...
			,'on_connect','connect_callback' ...
			,'on_subscribe','subscribe_callback' ...
			,'on_message','msg_callback');
```
With all the setup done, subscribe to the broker and receive all the messages that are sent to the IoT platfom:
```
[mid1, rc1, msginfo1] = mqttsubscribe(clientid, topic, 0);
```
Considering that Compose is subscribed to the topic, if any message is sent from one device to that topic, Compose receives it:

It is possible to see that the data sent from IoT Studio is being received on Compose using the MQTT protocol.