TapHome

MQTT Broker

Introduction to the MQTT protocol and activation of MQTT Broker service in TapHome system for communication with third-party devices.

What is MQTT?

MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) is a lightweight publish/subscribe communication protocol specifically designed for the Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication.

Basic MQTT Concepts

Publish/Subscribe Model:

  • Unlike traditional client-server communication, MQTT uses a model where devices don’t need to know each other’s addresses
  • Devices communicate through a central point - the MQTT Broker
  • One device publishes messages to a specific topic
  • Other devices subscribe to these topics and automatically receive messages

Topics:

  • An organizational structure for messages, similar to folders in a file system
  • Example: home/living_room/temperature, home/kitchen/light/status
  • Devices can subscribe to specific topics or use wildcards (home/# = everything in home)

MQTT Advantages:

  • Extremely low data and energy consumption
  • Works on slow or unstable networks
  • Simple to implement
  • Scalable from small to large systems

MQTT Broker in TapHome

MQTT Broker is a service for managing MQTT communication between devices. The Broker can be run on an external machine or directly on the TapHome controller.

TapHome MQTT Broker functions as:

  • Central mediator for all MQTT messages in the system
  • Bridge between TapHome and third-party devices (Shelly, Zigbee2MQTT, Tasmota, and others)
  • Local service - all communication stays in your network, no data is sent to the cloud

How to activate MQTT Broker in TapHome

  1. Go to Settings → Hardware and select MQTT Broker
  2. Enter configuration details including port number, client ID prefix, username, and password
  3. Save the settings to activate the service
MQTT Broker Configuration - Settings

Configuration Details

After activation, the MQTT communication configuration is defined in Hardware → Packet parser.

MQTT Broker Configuration - Application

Practical Usage Example

Scenario: You have a Shelly device (smart plug) and want to integrate it into TapHome.

  1. Activate MQTT Broker in TapHome (following the steps above)
  2. Configure the Shelly device - in its web interface, enter the TapHome controller’s IP address and MQTT broker port
  3. Create a Packet Parser module in TapHome with MQTT protocol
  4. Set up MQTT topics - for example, shellies/shellyplug-s-12345/relay/0 for relay control
  5. Device is connected - now you can control Shelly through the TapHome app and create smart rules

Result: Shelly publishes its state to an MQTT topic, TapHome receives notifications about changes. When you want to turn Shelly on/off, TapHome publishes a command to the corresponding topic.