mqtt_bridge

mqtt_bridge provides a functionality to bridge between ROS and MQTT in bidirectional.

mqtt_bridge is not actively maintained now. Feel free to check out mqtt_client, a high-performance C++ ROS nodelet with recent development!

FOR USE ON UBUNTU 20.04 with ROS NOETIC

mqtt_bridge and dependencies require python 3.9. otherwise it throws an error 'TypeError: 'type' object is not subscriptable'. 20.04 and ROS Noetic are using python 3.8 and it is NOT reocmmended to upgrade to 3.9. So the work-around is to also install 3.9 on your machine, install the mqtt_bridge dependencies also in python 3.9.

1. Install python3.9 : apt install python3.9
2. Instal the depending libraries within python3.9(defined in the "dev-requirements.txt" : python3.9 -m pip install -r requirements-dev.txt

And then FORCE scripts/mqtt_bridge_node.py to use python 3.9, by modifying the first line to '#!/usr/bin/env python3.9'

Principle

mqtt_bridge uses ROS message as its protocol. Messages from ROS are serialized by json (or messagepack) for MQTT, and messages from MQTT are deserialized for ROS topic. So MQTT messages should be ROS message compatible. (We use rosbridge_library.internal.message_conversion for message conversion.)

This limitation can be overcome by defining custom bridge class, though.

Demo

Prerequisites

$ sudo apt install python3-pip
$ sudo apt install ros-noetic-rosbridge-library
$ sudo apt install mosquitto mosquitto-clients

Install python modules

$ pip3 install -r requirements.txt

launch node

$ roslaunch mqtt_bridge demo.launch

Publish to /ping,

$ rostopic pub /ping std_msgs/Bool "data: true"

and see response to /pong.

$ rostopic echo /pong
data: True
---

Publish "hello" to /echo,

$ rostopic pub /echo std_msgs/String "data: 'hello'"

and see response to /back.

$ rostopic echo /back
data: hello
---

You can also see MQTT messages using mosquitto_sub

$ mosquitto_sub -t '#'

Usage

parameter file (config.yaml):

mqtt:
  client:
    protocol: 4      # MQTTv311
  connection:
    host: localhost
    port: 1883
    keepalive: 60
bridge:
  # ping pong
  - factory: mqtt_bridge.bridge:RosToMqttBridge
    msg_type: std_msgs.msg:Bool
    topic_from: /ping
    topic_to: ping
  - factory: mqtt_bridge.bridge:MqttToRosBridge
    msg_type: std_msgs.msg:Bool
    topic_from: ping
    topic_to: /pong

you can use any msg types like sensor_msgs.msg:Imu.

launch file:

<launch>
  <node name="mqtt_bridge" pkg="mqtt_bridge" type="mqtt_bridge_node.py" output="screen">
    <rosparam file="/path/to/config.yaml" command="load" />
  </node>
</launch>

Configuration

mqtt

Parameters under mqtt section are used for creating paho's mqtt.Client and its configuration.

subsections

• client: used for mqtt.Client constructor
• tls: used for tls configuration
• account: used for username and password configuration
• message: used for MQTT message configuration
• userdata: used for MQTT userdata configuration
• will: used for MQTT's will configuration

See mqtt_bridge.mqtt_client for detail.

mqtt private path

If mqtt/private_path parameter is set, leading ~/ in MQTT topic path will be replaced by this value. For example, if mqtt/pivate_path is set as "device/001", MQTT path "~/value" will be converted to "device/001/value".

serializer and deserializer

mqtt_bridge uses msgpack as a serializer by default. But you can also configure other serializers. For example, if you want to use json for serialization, add following configuration.

serializer: json:dumps
deserializer: json:loads

bridges

You can list ROS <--> MQTT tranfer specifications in following format.

bridge:
  # ping pong
  - factory: mqtt_bridge.bridge:RosToMqttBridge
    msg_type: std_msgs.msg:Bool
    topic_from: /ping
    topic_to: ping
  - factory: mqtt_bridge.bridge:MqttToRosBridge
    msg_type: std_msgs.msg:Bool
    topic_from: ping
    topic_to: /pong

• factory: bridge class for transfering message from ROS to MQTT, and vise versa.
• msg_type: ROS Message type transfering through the bridge.
• topic_from: topic incoming from (ROS or MQTT)
• topic_to: topic outgoing to (ROS or MQTT)

Also, you can create custom bridge class by inheriting mqtt_brige.bridge.Bridge.

License

This software is released under the MIT License, see LICENSE.txt.