Tag Archives: .NET 10

NanoMQ on Windows fail

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After hours of fail trying to get nanoMQ TCP bridge running on my Windows11 development system it was time to walk away. I ran nanoMQ with different log levels but “nng_dialer_create failed 9” was the initial error message displayed.

The setup looked good…

bridges.mqtt.MyBridgeDeviceID {
    ## Azure Event Grid MQTT broker endpoint
  server = "tls+mqtt-tcp://xxxx.newzealandnorth-1.ts.eventgrid.azure.net:8883"
  proto_ver   = 5
  clientid    = "MyBridgeDeviceID"
  username    = "MyBridgeDeviceID"
  clean_start = true
  keepalive   = "60s"

  ## TLS client certificate authentication
  ssl = {
    # key_password = ""
    keyfile    = "certificates/MyBridgeDeviceID.key"
    certfile   = "certificates/MyBridgeDeviceID.crt"
    cacertfile = "certificates/xxxx.crt"
  }
  ## ------------------------------------------------------------
  ## Topic forwarding (NanoMQ → Azure Event Grid)
  ## ------------------------------------------------------------
  ## These are the topics your device publishes locally.
  ## They will be forwarded upstream to Event Grid.
  ##
  forwards = [xxxx]

  ## ------------------------------------------------------------
  ## Topic subscription (Azure Event Grid → NanoMQ)
  ## ------------------------------------------------------------
  ## This is the topic your device subscribes to from Event Grid.
  subscription = [xxxx]
}

Turns out the nanomq-windows-x86_64 version is not built with Transport Layer Security(TLS) or Dashboard support enabled and If I had started with my Seeedstudio EdgeBox 200 the configuration would most probably have worked.

The management API did work, though I don’t understand why they didn’t use a more RESTfull approach e.g. using HTTP Status codes.

NanoMQ with a HiveMQ Client

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Most of my applications have focused on telemetry but I had been thinking about local control for solutions that have to run disconnected. In “real-world” deployments connectivity to Azure EventGrid MQTT Broker isn’t 100% reliable (also delay and jitter issues) which are an issue for control at the edge.

The approach to “transforming” telemetry data into “commands” has to be reliable, supportable, testable, scalable and portable (different processor architectures and operating systems). There are several Edge MQTT brokers which meet most, or all of these criteria and this series of posts will use NanoMQ a Linux Foundation Edge project which can run on my development system reComputer Industrial J3011- Fanless Edge AI, and Seeedstudio EdgeBox 200 devices.

The HiveMQClient application could publish and subscribe to topics

The MQTTX application could also publish and subscribe to topics

The HiveMQClient application has no way to “gracefully” shutdown which was visible in the NanoMQ console.

I have cut corners, the support for secure connections to nanoMQ is very limited and this setup should only be used for basic proof of concepts

Azure Event Grid Arduino Client – The joy of certs

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“Lets start at the very beginning, A very good place to start”

The Azure Event Grid MQTT Broker server X509 certificate chain can be copy ‘n’ paste from the output of the openssl command

openssl s_client -connect YourNamespace.newzealandnorth-1.ts.eventgrid.azure.net:8883 -showcerts

A self-signed X509 root certificate which can sign intermediate X509 certificates and key file can be generated with a single openssl command.

openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:4096 -keyout rootCA.key -out rootCA.crt -days 3650 -nodes -subj "/CN=devMobile  /O=devMobile.co.nz /C=NZ" -addext "basicConstraints=critical,CA:TRUE" -addext "keyUsage=critical,keyCertSign"

For a non-trivial system there should be a number of intermediate certificates. I have tried creating intermediate certificates for a device type, geography, application, customer and combinations of these. The first couple of times got it wrong so start with a field trial so that it isn’t so painful to go back and fix. (beware the sunk cost fallacy)

openssl genrsa -out intermediate.key 4096

openssl req -new -key intermediate.key -out intermediate.csr -subj "/CN=intermediate  /O=devMobile.co.nz /C=NZ"

I found creating an intermediate certificate that could sign device certificates required a conf file for the basicConstraints and keyUsage configuration.

[ v3_intermediate_ca ]
basicConstraints = critical, CA:TRUE, pathlen:0
keyUsage = critical, keyCertSign
  • critical-The extension must be understood and processed by any application validating the certificate. If the application does not understand it, the certificate must be rejected.
  • CA:TRUE-This certificate is allowed to act as a Certificate Authority (CA), meaning it can sign other certificates.
  • pathlen:0-This CA can only issue end-entity (leaf) certificates and cannot issue further intermediate CA certificates.
  • keyCertSig- The certificate can be used to sign other certificates (i.e., it’s a CA certificate).
openssl x509 -req -in intermediate.csr  -CA rootCA.crt -CAkey rootCA.key -CAcreateserial -out intermediate.crt -days 1825 -extfile intermediate_ext.cnf -extensions v3_intermediate_ca

Creating a device certificate is similar to the process for the intermediate certificate but doesn’t need to be able to sign certificates.

openssl genrsa -out EdgeBox100A.key 4096

openssl req -new -key EdgeBox100A.key -out EdgeBox100A.csr -subj "/CN=EdgeBox100A"

openssl x509 -req -in EdgeBox100A.csr -CA intermediate.crt -CAkey intermediate.key -CAcreateserial -out EdgeBox100A.crt -days 365

For production systems putting some thought into the Common name(CN), Organizational unit name(OU), Organization name(O), locality name(L), state or province name(S) and Country name(C)

// Minimalist ESP32 + Event Grid MQTT (mTLS) with PubSubClient
// Copyright (c) November 2025, devMobile Software
#include <PubSubClient.h>
#include <WiFi.h>
#include <WiFiClientSecure.h>

#include "constants.h"
#include "secrets.h"

// --- Wi-Fi ---
//const char* WIFI_SSID     = "";
//const char* WIFI_PASSWORD = "";

// --- Event Grid MQTT ---
//const char* MQTT_SERVER = "";
const uint16_t MQTT_PORT = 8883;

//const char* MQTT_CLIENTID = "";
//const char* MQTT_USERNAME = "";
//const char* MQTT_PASSWORD = "";
//const char* MQTT_TOPIC_PUBLISH = "devices/";
//const char* MQTT_TOPIC_SUBSCRIBE = "devices/";

/*
// The certificate that is used to authenticate the MQTT Broker
const char CA_ROOT_PEM[] PROGMEM = R"PEM(
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
      Thumbprint: 56D955C849887874AA1767810366D90ADF6C8536
      CN: CN=Microsoft Azure ECC TLS Issuing CA 03
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
      Thumbprint: 7E04DE896A3E666D00E687D33FFAD93BE83D349E
      CN: CN=DigiCert Global Root G3
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
)PEM";

The certificate that is used to authenticate the device
static const char CLIENT_CERT_PEM[] PROGMEM = R"PEM(
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
 CN=Self signed device certificate
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
 CN=Self signed Intermediate certificate
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
)PEM";

 The PEM encoded private key of device
static const char CLIENT_KEY_PEM[] PROGMEM = R"PEM(
-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----
-----END PRIVATE KEY-----
)PEM";
*/

WiFiClientSecure secureClient;
PubSubClient mqttClient(secureClient);

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
  delay(5000);
  Serial.println();

  // Connect to WiFi
  Serial.println("WiFi connecting");
  WiFi.begin(WIFI_SSID, WIFI_PASSWORD);
  Serial.print("*");
  while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) {
    delay(500);
    Serial.print("*");
  }
  Serial.println("\nWiFi connected");

  // Sync time for TLS
  Serial.println("\nTime synchronising");
  configTime(0, 0, "pool.ntp.org", "time.nist.gov");
  Serial.print("*");
  while (time(nullptr) < 100000) {
    delay(500);
    Serial.print("*");
  }
  Serial.println("\nTime synchronised");

  Serial.println("\nValidating ServerFQDN-Certificate combination");
  secureClient.setCACert(CA_ROOT_PEM);

  Serial.println("TCP connecting");
  if (secureClient.connect(MQTT_SERVER, MQTT_PORT)) {
    Serial.println("\nTCP connected");
  } else {
    Serial.println("\nTCP connection failed");
    return;
  }

  secureClient.setCertificate(CLIENT_CERT_A_PEM);
  secureClient.setPrivateKey(CLIENT_KEY_A_PEM);

  mqttClient.setServer(MQTT_SERVER, MQTT_PORT);

  Serial.println("\nMQTT connecting");
  Serial.print("*");
  while (!mqttClient.connect(MQTT_CLIENTID, MQTT_USERNAME, MQTT_PASSWORD)) {
    Serial.println(mqttClient.state());
    delay(5000);
    Serial.print("*");
  }
  Serial.println("\nMQTT connected");
}

static uint32_t sequenceNumber = 0;

void loop() {
  mqttClient.loop();

  Serial.print("'.");
  delay(10000);
}

My Arduino Xiao ESP32S3 and EdgeBox-ESP-100-Industrial Edge Controller devices could connect to the local Wi-Fi, get the time and date using the network time protocol(NTP), and validate the Azure Event Grid MQTT broker certificate. Then connect to the Azure Event Grid MQTT broker with the client name specified in the subject name of its X509 certificate.

Establishing a connection to the Azure Event Grid MQTT broker often failed which surprised me. Initially I didn’t have any retry logic which meant I wasted quite a bit of time trying to debug failed connections

.NET 10 OpenAPI and SwashBuckle NuGets

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Yesterday I downloaded Microsoft Visual Studio 2026 and started updating the projects I am working on to .NET 10 and updating any NuGets.

I left these three NuGets to the last as I have had problems updating them before, and this time was no different. The updated NuGets “broke” my code because the way that security definitions and security requirements were implemented had changed.

These articles were the inspiration for my approach

   options.AddSecurityDefinition("X-API-Key", new OpenApiSecurityScheme
   {
      Description = "JWT Authorization header using the Bearer scheme. Example: \"Authorization: Bearer {token}\"",
      Name = "Authorization",
      In = ParameterLocation.Header,
      Type = SecuritySchemeType.Http,
      Scheme = "Bearer"
   });

   options.AddSecurityRequirement(document => new OpenApiSecurityRequirement
   {
      [new OpenApiSecuritySchemeReference("Bearer", document)] = [],
      [new OpenApiSecuritySchemeReference("X-API-Key", document)] = []
   });
});

Warning: make sure the schema etc. have same case so you don’t lose an hour from your life that you will never get back.

With the above updates the application would work but….

WithOpenApi was originally designed for minimal APIs to attach an OpenApiOperation to endpoint metadata so tools like Swashbuckle could consume it.

Deprecation of WithOpenApi extension method

However, starting with .NET 9, ASP.NET Core introduced native OpenAPI document generation via Microsoft.AspNetCore.OpenApi. This made WithOpenApi unnecessary because the new pipeline already supports operation customization through transformers.

app.MapGet("Version", () =>
{
   return Results.Ok(typeof(Program).Assembly.GetName().Version?.ToString());
}).RequireAuthorization()
         .WithName("Version")
         .Produces<string>(StatusCodes.Status200OK)
         .Produces(StatusCodes.Status401Unauthorized)
         .AddOpenApiOperationTransformer((operation, context, ct) =>
         {
            // Per-endpoint tweaks
            operation.Summary = "Returns version of the application";
            operation.Description = "Returns the version of the application from project metadata.";
            return Task.CompletedTask;
         });

The new transformer API (AddOpenApiOperationTransformer) works directly with the built-in OpenAPI pipeline. It allows per-operation or global modifications without relying on third-party libraries.