Connect IoT devices over MQTT and read your IDRs

An IoT (MQTT) account gives your devices and applications an MQTT broker to talk through, with every message recorded and billed per message, next to your voice and SMS traffic.

Before you start#

Add funds to the account you'll use, or let it use another account's balance. Messages are refused when the balance plus credit limit can't cover the per-message fee.

How do I create an IoT account?#

1. Go to Accounts and click Add Account.
2. Choose Protocol Type IoT (MQTT).
3. Enter a Name. The MQTT Login is generated for you: it starts with your 10-digit customer number, which can't be changed. Click Generate IoT Credentials for a fresh MQTT Password.
4. Set Use Balance if the account should spend another account's balance, and click Add Account.

See Create your first account for the other fields. The account's edit page shows the credentials as Username and Password and a mosquitto_pub Usage Sample with the broker host and port, for example:

mosquitto_pub -u <login> -P <password> -h <host> -p 1888 -t 'SomeTopic' -m "YourTestMessage"

How do I connect and send messages?#

Connect each device or application to the broker with the account's Username and Password. Anonymous connections are refused.

Use plain topic names such as sensors/temperature. Topics are private to your account: the broker keeps each account's topics apart, so your subscribers only receive what your own clients publish, and you can't see other accounts' traffic.

Every message is checked against the account's balance before it is accepted:

• publishing a message is charged the per-message fee;
• delivering it to each subscriber is charged the fee again.

A message the balance can't cover is refused and recorded as Unauthorized.

How do I read the IoT Detail Records?#

1. Go to Logs → IDR (MQTT), the IoT Management page.
2. Filter by Topic, Message Type (Authorized Only, the default, All Messages or Unauthorized Only) and From Date and To Date. The page opens on the last 24 hours.
3. Click Search Messages.

Each row shows the Account, Topic, Direction (Outbound for a message your client published, Inbound for a copy delivered to one of your subscribers), Date/Time, Status (Authorized or Unauthorized), Amount and the Payload; hover over a long payload to read it in full. Download <n> Records saves them as mqtt_messages.csv.

The same records are available from the API as /buyers/iothistory; see Use the API.

What if something goes wrong?#