As I’m testing my Message Queue Telemetry Transport(MQTT) LoRa gateway I’m building a proof of concept(PoC) .Net core console application for each IoT platform I would like to support.

This PoC was to confirm that I could connect to the myDevices Cayenne MQTT API and format the topics and payloads correctly. The myDevices team have built many platform specific libraries that wrap the MQTT platform APIs to make integration for first timers easier (which is great). Though, as an experienced Bring Your Own Device(BYOD) client developer, I did find myself looking at the C/C++ code to figure out how to implement parts of my .Net test client.

The myDevices screen designer had “widgets” which generated commands for devices so I extended the test client implementation to see this worked.

The MQTT broker, username, password, client ID, channel number and optional subscription channel number are command line options.

class Program
{
	private static IMqttClient mqttClient = null;
	private static IMqttClientOptions mqttOptions = null;
	private static string server;
	private static string username;
	private static string password;
	private static string clientId;
	private static string channelData;
	private static string channelSubscribe;

	static void Main(string[] args)
	{
		MqttFactory factory = new MqttFactory();
		mqttClient = factory.CreateMqttClient();

		if ((args.Length != 5) && (args.Length != 6))
		{
			Console.WriteLine("[MQTT Server] [UserName] [Password] [ClientID] [Channel]");
			Console.WriteLine("[MQTT Server] [UserName] [Password] [ClientID] [ChannelData] [ChannelSubscribe]");
			Console.WriteLine("Press <enter> to exit");
			Console.ReadLine();
			return;
		}

		server = args[0];
		username = args[1];
		password = args[2];
		clientId = args[3];
		channelData = args[4];

		if (args.Length == 5)
		{
			Console.WriteLine($"MQTT Server:{server} Username:{username} ClientID:{clientId} ChannelData:{channelData}");
		}

		if (args.Length == 6)
		{
			channelSubscribe = args[5];
			Console.WriteLine($"MQTT Server:{server} Username:{username} ClientID:{clientId} ChannelData:{channelData} ChannelSubscribe:{channelSubscribe}");
		}

		mqttOptions = new MqttClientOptionsBuilder()
			.WithTcpServer(server)
			.WithCredentials(username, password)
			.WithClientId(clientId)
			.WithTls()
			.Build();

		mqttClient.ConnectAsync(mqttOptions).Wait();

		if (args.Length == 6)
		{
			string topic = $"v1/{username}/things/{clientId}/cmd/{channelSubscribe}";

			Console.WriteLine($"Subscribe Topic:{topic}");
			mqttClient.SubscribeAsync(topic).Wait();
			// mqttClient.SubscribeAsync(topic, global::MQTTnet.Protocol.MqttQualityOfServiceLevel.AtLeastOnce).Wait(); 
			// Thought this might help with subscription but it didn't, looks like ACK might be broken in MQTTnet
			mqttClient.ApplicationMessageReceived += MqttClient_ApplicationMessageReceived;
		}
		mqttClient.Disconnected += MqttClient_Disconnected;

		string topicTemperatureData = $"v1/{username}/things/{clientId}/data/{channelData}";

		Console.WriteLine();

		while (true)
		{
			string value = "22." + DateTime.UtcNow.Millisecond.ToString();
			Console.WriteLine($"Publish Topic {topicTemperatureData}  Value {value}");

			var message = new MqttApplicationMessageBuilder()
				.WithTopic(topicTemperatureData)
				.WithPayload(value)
				.WithQualityOfServiceLevel(global::MQTTnet.Protocol.MqttQualityOfServiceLevel.AtLeastOnce)
				//.WithQualityOfServiceLevel(MQTTnet.Protocol.MqttQualityOfServiceLevel.ExactlyOnce) // Causes publish to hang
				.WithRetainFlag()
				.Build();

			Console.WriteLine("PublishAsync start");

			mqttClient.PublishAsync(message).Wait();
			Console.WriteLine("PublishAsync finish");
			Console.WriteLine();

			Thread.Sleep(30100);
		}
	}

	private static void MqttClient_ApplicationMessageReceived(object sender, MqttApplicationMessageReceivedEventArgs e)
	{
		Console.WriteLine($"ApplicationMessageReceived ClientId:{e.ClientId} Topic:{e.ApplicationMessage.Topic} Qos:{e.ApplicationMessage.QualityOfServiceLevel} Payload:{e.ApplicationMessage.ConvertPayloadToString()}");
		Console.WriteLine();
	}

	private static async void MqttClient_Disconnected(object sender, MqttClientDisconnectedEventArgs e)
	{
		Debug.WriteLine("Disconnected");
		await Task.Delay(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5));

		try
		{
			await mqttClient.ConnectAsync(mqttOptions);
		}
		catch (Exception ex)
		{
			Debug.WriteLine("Reconnect failed {0}", ex.Message);
		}
	}
}

For this PoC I used the MQTTnet package which is available via NuGet. It appeared to be reasonably well supported and has had recent updates. There did appear to be some issues with myDevices Cayenne default quality of service (QoS) and the default QoS used by MQTTnet connections and also the acknowledgement of the receipt of published messages.

Overall the initial configuration went ok, I found the dragging of widgets onto the overview screen had some issues (maybe the caching of control settings (I found my self refreshing the whole page every so often) and I couldn’t save a custom widget icon at all.

I put a button widget on the overview screen and associated it with a channel publication. The client received a message when the button was pressed

But the button widget was disabled until the overview screen was manually refreshed.

I need to revisit how I confirm that the actuator has been set to the desired value and the command completed.

Overall the myDevices Cayenne experience (April 2019) was a bit flaky with basic functionality like the saving of custom widget icons broken, updates of the real-time data viewer didn’t occur or were delayed, and there were other configuration screen update issues.