Create Thingworx mqtt broker

[aarushi_mittal]

Hello Team,

I am trying to implement a solution that has 2 branches :

Branch 1 : publish sensor data through simulated devices on node red to Thingworx iot platform using mqtt protocol

Branch 2 : create web application in nodejs that subscriber to these messages using mqtt

The only problem i am facing is that , from my understanding of all the threads on this community, thingworx does not provide any mqtt broker for mqtt connectivity. It only provides an mqtt client like eclipse paho and we need to integrate the mqtt extension with our own mqtt broker: that can be AWS, Azure or Mosquitto and so on.

Kindly confirm and suggest otherwise

Thanks,

Aarushi

[zyuan1]

That's true, the MQTT extension only provides the MQTT client, and my users used 3rd party Broker.  It's like when we are posting data to TWX for tests, we would use Kepware, also an independent tool from TWX server.

[aarushi_mittal]

Hello,

Could you elaborate as to how you used kepware ?

Also, is there any other way to use ThingWorx as an mqtt broker. Any way possible?

[zyuan1 · Accepted solution]

We only used Kepware as remote data source, and it cannot be used in MQTT communication.

For MQTT extension, we have Market Place version and a pre-release version, but there are only differences in configuration settings and some possible performance improvements, you still need to use an external MQTT datasource or Broker.

[aarushi_mittal]

Thank you

[jbester]

Hi @aarushi_mittal,

You can deploy a MQTT broker on the server where your Thingworx is deployed, but Thingworx itself cannot be a MQTT broker.

Also Kepware can be configured to be a MQTT client and in this way work as a "protocol adapter" because it has the AlwaysOn protocol deployed to communicate with Thingworx (e.g. MQTT message goes to the MQTT Broker to Kepware to Thingworx with AlwaysOn). This would however only make sense if you are already using Kepware for its main purpose of acting as an OPC server and even then it would only make sense in specific use cases.

@zyuan1 is the pre-release version of the MQTT extension available somewhere for testing purposes? And is there a timeline for when the new version will be released?

Kind regards,

[aarushi_mittal]

Hello @jbester

Thank you. I think I will need to use the rest api side, as I do not use Kepware as a main component

Regards,

Aarushi

[zyuan1]

My client is a big company in the POC process, and they have strong request for MQTT communication, so pre-sales contacted product team and R&D to get the pre-release version. I heard of it but didn't try it, probably the release date is close but i don't know the details.

[aarushi_mittal]

That is great.

It would be great if you could share the information with us on this once you get something.

Regards,,

Aarushi