MQTT Broker on ESP8266

Running an MQTT broker to serve all devices for a house ( 20pcs) it requires at least a Raspberry Pi or an equivalent SOC.

SD card fails from time to time and requires some Linux skills to make it work and the final price is over USD 70. (Good power supply, case, HDMI cable, keyboard )

But how about running an MQTT broker on this USD 3.99 ESP8266 board ? It is possible ? Yes, it is ! Go to http://iotcentral.eu and with few clicks you will be able to flash your ESP8266 ( 4Mb) with the binary. 

No need to compile code, to solve errors , just click and run. More than that your MQTT broker will communicate with your http://iotcentral.eu instance so you still get your messages on your phone if your mobile app is connecting to the websockets to your http://iotcentral.eu cloud instance. 

But what I am at home and my internet connection is down ? Can I communicate with my devices or I am isolated?  Don't worry, your mobile app will still be able to connect to the ESP8266 MQTT Broker over the websocket so you can control your devices.

Mqtt broker on ESP8266 #2

[Later edit]. On iotcentral.eu you will find instructions on how to install the ESP8266 MQTT broker on your EPS8266 and how to use the MQTT service provided by iotcentral.eu 

 Working on MQTT broker on ESP8266 has reached the first milestone. Until now functionality  includes MQTT broker and bridging to another instance of MQTT broker cloudmqtt.com or mosquitto. It should work also on AWS IoT but I didn't tested yet.

After more then one million of seconds uptime and hundreds of thousands of transported messages I can declare it in 1.0 version.

Next to implement:

• websocket server using the noPoll   my own library (work in progress  Done )
• web interface configuration 

New ESP8266 board

I've received a new type of module and what I can tell you that it is amazing.

It is a sandwich module, upper board is having the ESP-12F,  RGB LED, photo resistor connected to ADC pin and a button.

The lower board is having the CH341 USB to serial chip which was recognized well by Windows or Linux ( native or in Virtual Box).

Other two buttons RST (reset) and FLASH are on the lower part.

Interesting is that I don't need to put the GPIO0 to GND for flashing the board, this is done automatically, so just compile and flash with one command line.

Both boards are having micro usb connectors so you can use the one from the lower board for programming and later in production you can power the board using the connector from the ESP board.

Flashing can be done at 230400 so the time is reduced to half which is great.

Board was originally for Witty cloud, a cloud service launched in China but my board is running now a porting of mosquitto broker for ESP8266 ( I also ported it for ESP31B) and I can tell you that is more stable and more responsive then ESP31B which is in an early development stage at this time. 

You can buy the module from here for 4.23USD ( at this time). You will receive the entire module, can use the ESP board and have for "free" an extra USB to serial for other projects.