Simple MQTT Example Please?

Hi, I have developed a windows based MQTT rules engine, scheduler, scripting language etc for home automation and more - linking off the shelf and home-brew hardware in a common and extendable rules engine, which is working well…

I have been using Node-Red Dashboard as a temporary solution as a dashboard interface, but it is really clunky and tedious for anything but the simplest of use cases.

HRD on the other hand looks FAR better - much more of the sort of comprehensive IDE I am after, but I cannot find a simple example of using the MQTT device to manipulate controls and text - and send button events back to MQTT…

I can do all the data formatting and parsing in my application to avoid any coding at all in Node Red, and I am looking for the simplest way to connect your controls to MQTT topics as possible, as all the hard processing is already done - like converting all Boolean type values to true/false internally - and I can set my endpoints to send whatever is required as true/false values, or scale 0-100 percent values to 2 - 254 and so on…

Is there a super simple example of MQTT to (HRD controls) anywhere? - I much prefer documents to YouTube videos, personally - but I’ll go with whatever there is just to get this started!

Many thanks for creating and sharing what looks like an amazing project already.

As a follow up - I got incoming data working like this:
image

But it is not at all clear why only the Subscribe Topic field is used - when I use Subscribe Path for the path part of the topic, nothing is received…

It is also not obvious how to populate the controls with the current MQTT data like Node Red does automatically… Is this possible with Home Remote?

Helo,

I don’t know if this here https://thehomeremote.com/docs/mqttclient is what you are looking for (Documentation)
The links on the right for more about MQTT

Anyway I use mine lightly so I created variables for pub topics going out to my Node-RED and others link in from there for automation. So when I click on some of the configured buttons, topics are sent out…Not too advanced as what you may be looking for…

And below is an example of how I programmed the highlighted button after setting up the variables in the image above. It’s not much but things to consider…

Hi Eman
Thanks for getting back to me - I found that document, but it seems to be for connecting using the homie standard for MQTT devices - as far as I can see, there is no help info or documentation on the included Home Remote MQTT device that is bundled in the software

Of course, the Node-Red Dashboard acts as a web server and Node Remembers the last seen data, so the web browser sees data immediately - while when Home Remote starts, there is no data from MQTT until there is an update or the data is republished, leaving a (possibly very long) delay before the data is shown… Not what I wanted!

I’m not sure if this can be got round in a practical manner at the moment, but I am looking at the options, as I do like the HR designer and approach, even after only a short period of use, compared to Node Red Dashboard…

OK - Confession time! Problem solved…
My (ahem) software was not publishing messages with the “Retain” option set, having added a “true” into the publish command - Home Remote now shows the data instantly on start up… It’s looking good!

Some documentation on the other properties fields in the MQTT device would be good though - lol