2. Native MQTT Collector
Gene Hynson - Senior Software Engineer, InfluxData

3. The MQTT Native Collector is an all new way to natively ingest MQTT
data from your MQTT Broker into InfluxDB Cloud. This zero code
solution makes it easier than ever to monitor your IoT devices in
InfluxDB. This session provides an overview of the MQTT Native
Collector, describes when and how to use it, and explains how it works
behind the scenes. Lastly, Gene will demo his recent IoT project that
utilizes the MQTT Native Collector.
Gene Hynson
Senior Software Engineer,
InfluxData
Gene is a Senior Software Engineer at InfluxData who is passionate
about building thrilling product features for InfluxDB. Gene has 7 years
of experience as a full-stack engineer building modern, cloud-first
software at VMware, Pivotal, and Boeing. Outside of work, Gene
spends his free time skiing the slopes in the winter or playing volleyball
on the beach in the summer.
MQTT Native Collector

4. Agenda
1. What is the Native MQTT Collector?
2. How does Native MQTT Work?
3. How did we build Native MQTT?
4. Demo

5. What is Native Data
Collection?

6. The ability to directly ingest data from
popular data sources without the
need to do any transformation to Line
Protocol or run a Telegraf agent
6
Native Collection

7. 7
MQTT Topic Subscriptions
• Subscribe to topics being published by
their own devices and sent through a
message broker directly to the InfluxDB
Cloud service
• No code or installing any additional
software required

8. MQTT Ingestion: Telegraf vs Native MQTT

9. How does Native Data
Collection work?

10. Simple 3 Step Configuration
Define Parsing Rules
• Configure Rules for finding
timestamps, measurements,
tags, and field information in
the MQTT messages
Configure Broker
• Broker URL
• Broker TCP/IP Port Number
• Broker Authentication Type
• Broker Authentication
Parameters
Configure Topic
• Topic Name
• InfluxDB Bucket

11. Connect to Broker

13. Subscribe to Topic

15. Define Data Parsing Rules

17. View the Data

19. Zero Code Data Ingestion

20. How did we build Native
Data Collection?

21. How did we build Native MQTT?

22. How did we build Native MQTT?

23. Apache NiFi automates the flow of data
between systems.
●Open source
●Data source agnostic
●Data type, format, & size agnostic
●End-to-end data encryption
●Guaranteed delivery
●Operates at a massive scale
Apache NiFi

24. How did we build Native MQTT?

25. Demo: Monitoring car
OBD2 data over time

26. Monitoring car OBD2 data over time
https://github.com/genehynson/arduino-mqtt-influxdb-obd2

27. Monitoring car OBD2 data over time
Arduino MKR1010 (WiFi)
HC-05 Bluetooth
Module
NEO-6M GPS
Module

28. Monitoring car OBD2 data over time
Arduino
#include <WiFiNINA.h>
while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) {
WiFi.begin(ssid, pass);
delay(10000);
}
Serial.println("Connected to WiFi");
Serial.print("IP Address: ");
Serial.println(WiFi.localIP());
Arduino
#include <ArduinoMqttClient.h>
char host[] = "broker.hivemq.com";
int port = 1883;
if (mqttClient.connect(host, port)) {
Serial.print("Connected to broker");
}
Connect to WiFi Connect to MQTT broker

29. Monitoring car OBD2 data over time
Arduino
#include <ELMduino.h>
ELM327 elm;
elm.begin(Serial1, true, 5000);
...
float value = elm.rpm();
if (elm.nb_rx_state == ELM_SUCCESS) {
mqttClient.beginMessage("obd/rpm");
mqttClient.print(value);
mqttClient.endMessage();
}
Arduino
#include <TinyGPS++.h>
gps.encode(Serial2.read());
if (gps.location.isUpdated()) {
lat = gps.location.lat();
lng = gps.location.lng();
String json =
"{"lat":"+lat+","long":"+lng+"}";
mqttClient.beginMessage("odb/gps");
mqttClient.print(json);
mqttClient.endMessage();
}
Publish ELM327 as MQTT Publish GPS as MQTT

30. Monitoring car OBD2 data over time
Our data is being published to the
HiveMQ MQTT broker!
Now for the easy part: writing the
data to InfluxDB

31. Monitoring car OBD2 data over time
Connect to HiveMQ broker

32. Monitoring car OBD2 data over time
Specify the RPM topic

33. Monitoring car OBD2 data over time
Use Regex (.*) to capture the entire message as _value
“rpm” will be our _field name
“obd” measurement name can be reused in each subscription
Leave this empty to allow InfluxDB to assign a timestamp for us

34. import "experimental/geo"
from(bucket: "iot")
|> range(start: -1h)
|> filter(fn: (r) => r["_measurement"] == "obd")
|> filter(fn: (r) => r["_field"] == "lat" or r["_field"] == "long")
|> geo.shapeData(latField: "lat", lonField: "long", level: 20)
Monitoring car OBD2 data over time
Check out my shared Notebook!
https://tinyurl.com/influxdb-obd
from(bucket: "iot")
|> range(start: -1h)
|> filter(fn: (r) => r["_measurement"] == "obd")
|> filter(fn: (r) => r["_field"] == "mph")
|> toFloat()
Query MPH
Query GPS
Flux
Flux

35. Monitoring car OBD2 data over time
Check out my shared Notebook!
https://tinyurl.com/influxdb-obd

36. Monitoring car OBD2 data over time
https://github.com/genehynson/arduino-mqtt-influxdb-obd2

37. Monitoring car OBD2 data over time
If you want to skip the Arduino DIY…
● WiFi / 4G LTE Support
● Connects to any MQTT broker
● Includes support for EVs
● No coding required
● See https://community.autopi.io/
for fun extensions and project
ideas!
I have one on the way… xD

38. Additional Resources
Free InfluxDB: OSS or Cloud - influxdata.com/cloud
Forums: community.influxdata.com
Slack: influxcommunity.slack.com
Reddit: r/InfluxData
Influx Community (GH): github.com/InfluxCommunity
Book: awesome.influxdata.com
Docs: docs.influxdata.com
Blogs: influxdata.com/blog
InfluxDB University: influxdata.com/university
How-to guides: docs.influxdata.com/resources/how-to-guides/

39. T H A N K Y O U