A low cost implementation of MQTT using

ESP8266
Ravi Kishore Kodali and Kopulwar Shishir Mahesh
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
National Institute of Technology, Warangal
WARANGAL 506004 INDIA
Email: ravikkodali@gmail.com

Abstract—Technology is great growling engine of the change cities smart, it is important to apply smart solutions to the
and Internet of Things (IoT) is the backbone of such revolu- infrastructure and services to make it better plan by reducing
tionary engines. Basically, in the real world the things having the manpower, more throughput with less investments, lower
sensor capability, sufficient power supply and connectivity to
internet makes field like Internet of Things (IoT) possible. For cost for redevelopment and retrofitting[9]. The street lights
such rapid growing technology, it is the necessity to have very for such smart cities is one of the main concern and requires
light, inexpensive and minimum bandwidth protocol like Message system which can able to control street lights automatically
Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) Protocol. Because of such so as to match the brightness level of street lights with an
non-established protocol it is easy for the clients to publish or/and environment condition providing the information of ambient
subscribe the desire topic through the host acting as server of
the network also known to be the broker. In this paper, it is light intensity level along with the temperature, humidity of
shown that communication between the low power ESP8266 WiFi surroundings.
as client with the clients on smartphones and laptop using an For the fire alert system, the end user can keep an eye on the
MQTT protocol becomes easier and more reliable. The WiFi ambient conditions by monitoring and analyzing the conditions
enabled ESP8266 board interfaces with DHT11 sensor and LDR and can take subsequent action if needed. Also, the idea can
sensor to monitor the ambient condition and according to the
light intensity level the brightness level of 8*8 Neopixel matrix be implemented for whether monitoring systems.
is controlled. The adafruit.io is the MQTT server i.e, broker
which also provides the facility of monitoring system through
the dashboard. The clients on smartphone and laptop subscribes
to the topics of temperature, humidity and light intensity level
gets the respective update. The main objective of the paper is
to implement the idea for the smart home appliance, street light
system for the smart cities, fire alert systems, whether monitoring
system and so.

I. I NTRODUCTION
It is the human race to enhance the technology everyday
everywhere. One of the simplest clue is to make the environ-
ment around us wireless rather than the bulkier wired one. In
our home, the power outlet uses analog switches and bulkier
circuitry within it, in addition there are chances of getting
it damaged with the time and need a replacement plus the
outlet is kept in specific height in order to avoid shock to
children. What if all these problem can be resolved with the Fig. 1. System Configuration
simple design and implementation using a low power, low
cost technology wherein the home lights are being controlled The MQTT is the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport
automatically with respect to ambient light conditions in protocol which makes the communication independent of
addition with the temperature and humidity monitoring. Also request response approach by simply providing subscribe-
there can be provision for user to make a decision to let the publish architecture asynchronously. Basically, it is light
system turned ON and OFF remotely. With each user having weight IoT protocol working on default TCP/IP with port
its own username and key the system can be made secured 1883[4]. It is an open protocol standardize by OASIS Tech-
and the user will able to control the system anywhere in the nical Committee which determines how each message is
world having the internet connectivity. delivered from clients to clients through the broker, it is very
The Smart cities is one of the major application of the easy to implement and provides Quality of Services(QoS)
Internet of Things (IoT) technology. In order to make the to the communication network with the minimum network

978-1-5090-5256-1/16/$31.00 2016
c IEEE 404
bandwidth, also ensures the reliability and some degree of As in the circuit diagram, ESP8266 Nodemcu is USB
assurance of delivery[8]. powered and for the ambient conditions to monitor the two
sensors namely DHT11 Sensor for temperature and humidity
II. LITERATURE SURVEY monitoring and LDR Sensor (Light Dependent Resistor) for
In the IoT, the MQTT is a popular topic-based protocol monitoring light intensity level are interfaced with it. And
[15]. This paper extend the topic approach by developing a depending on ambient light condition, the brightness level of
new model in an IoT concept which is Web of Topics(WoX). Neopixel 8*8 RGB matrix will change that is it is programmed
This novel design model reduces the gap between design in such a way that for the more intense light condition the
and solution domain in the IoT. The MQTT publish/subscribe brightness level Neopixel 8*8 RGB matrix will be lesser and
messaging protocol helps to provide capabilities to transmit for lesser intensive light its brightness will be higher. The one
or receive sensor data [4]. This paper has created a secured pin of LDR Sensor is connected to the 3.3V of ESP8266 board
home automation system using MQTT protocol and also and the other pin is connected to one end of 10K resistor and
ACL (access control list) for encryption of sensor data. The the same end is connected to the ADC pin A0 of the ESP8266
MQTT messaging protocol provides the robust messaging board while the other end of 10K resistor is grounded. The
features that is needed for communication between remote VCC and GND of DHT11 Sensor is connected to the 3.3V
system and devices with consumption of very small network and GND of ESP8266 board while GPIO13 i.e, D1 pin of
bandwidth [6]. So for the design and implementation of this ESP8266 board is programmed for the DATA input of the
lightweight protocol an authorized mechanism is introduced DHT11 Sensor. For interfacing Neopixel 8*8 RGB matrix,
for IoT services [2]. This design is based on OAuth 1.0a, which the VCC and GND connected to 3.3V and GND of ESP8266
is an open authorization standard for web based application. and GPIO2 i.e, D4 pin of ESP8266 board is programmed for
One of the major concern in the field of IoT is the security the DIN input of panel.
of devices and communication among them [3]. To overcome
this issue, this paper proposed a new version of SMQTT and
MQTT-SN protocol. Its key features gives the better security
than previously existing MQTT.
There is major challenge for high demand of electrical
power consumption due to global warming and lack of natural
resources [16]. In this approach, one applicable method is
designed for the optimization of electrical power consumption
by using light dependent Registor (LDR). It automatically
optimize the light intensity according to the sensor readings,
thus it saves a lot of power in daytime.
The MQTT protocol is ideal for use in M2M communication
[17]. It enables connectivity that extends beyond smart devices
to some of the smallest remote devices and sensors. This key
features makes MQTT a critical component in self- managing
of M2M networks[5]. This paper discusses the development
and implementation of MQTT protocol for such kind of
application along with its merits and demerits.

III. CIRCUIT AND WORKING

Fig. 3. Circuit Connection of System

The ADC pin of ESP8266 has 10 bit resolution which will

vary analog reading from 0 to 1023[10]. The ADC pin only
converts voltage between 0 to 1V. On the other hand, each
pixel of the three primary color of 8*8 RGB Neopixel matrix
has 8 bit resolution for an individual Red, Green and Blue
color and thus comprising the total 256 brightness level for
the three primary colors Red, Green and Blue color ranging
from 0 to 255[12]. When the brightness of each primary
colors are equal it will result in white color and the brightness
of that white color will vary from 0 basically no color to the
255 the brightest level.
Fig. 2. Schematic diagram

2016 2nd International Conference on Contemporary Computing and Informatics (ic3i) 405
 Now, the light intensity levels of LDR Sensor are divided TABLE II
into sub-levels and are organized with the 256 brightness level ESP8266 ESP-12E W I F I M ODULE S PECIFICATION
of each pixel of Neopixel 8*8 RGB matrix as shown in the Parameters Specification
following table: Microcontroller ESP8266
Memory 32 bit
TABLE I Processor TenSilica L 106
D IVISION OF L IGHT I NTENSITY L EVEL V S B RIGHTNESS LEVEL
Processor Clock 80MHz-160MHz
Light Intensity Level of LDR Brightness level of each RAM ¡ 36Kb
Sensor pixel of 8*8 Neopixel panel Storage 16 Mb
0 - 199 255 Built-in WiFi 2.4GHz supports 802.11 b/g/n
200 399 150 ADC Pin 1(10bit Resolution)
400 599 100 GPIO pins 10
600 899 50 Operating Voltage 3.0V 3.6V
900 1024 0 Operating Current 80mA(Average)
Operating Temperature Range -40oC - 125 oC
In the proposed system, the Adafruit IO is MQTT server
also known as broker and ESP8266, smartphone, laptop are the
clients. The information of light intensity level, temperature B. DHT11 Sensor
and humidity of surrounding environment can be published The Digital Temperature and Humidity sensor DHT11
to the broker with its user defined light, temp and humid comes with the ultra small size of 12 x 15.5 x 5.5 mm,
topic name respectively. Once these data has been published low prices, highly reliable, optimized for long term stability
by client ESP8266 then the clients on the other side like having single wire digital interface[11]. It is used for whether
smartphone, laptop who have subscribes to that particular topic monitoring, home automation, fire alert system purposes.
gets that respective information.

IV. H ARDWARE A SPECT

A. ESP8266 ESP-12E WiFi Module

The module is best suited for Internet of Things(IoT) at
its low cost, low power consumption capability as it requires
3.3V power , built in WiFi module, integrated TCP/IP protocol
stack, easy to flash and erase firmware and is usb powered[10].
As the IoT application module it can deploy in home automa-
tions, home appliances, industrial wireless network, sensor
networks fields. Fig. 5. DHT11 Sensor

TABLE III
DHT11 S ENSOR S PECIFICATION

Parameters Specification
Input Output Voltage 3V 5V
Humidity Range 20-80 perc
Temperature Range 0-50 deg C
Sampling Rate 1Hz
Response time 50ms

C. LDR Sensor
The Light Dependent Resistor is made of semiconductor
material where luminance variation occurs due to the conduc-
tance changes. It possesses good reliability, high sensitivity,
small volume, fast response and the good spectrum characteris-
tics[14]. It is having wide range of applications in light control,
Fig. 4. ESP8266 ESP-12E Development Board camera automation, street lights, fire alert system, indoor ray
control[14].

406 2016 2nd International Conference on Contemporary Computing and Informatics (ic3i)
 V. SOFTWARE ASPECT
A. Arduino IDE
In Arduino IDE, the one has to put Server name i.e,
io.adafruit.com, Server port number 1883 which is TCP/IP
port reserved to use MQTT protocol, Username of Adafruit
account, the unique AIO key which can be regenerate, setup
feed and provide feed name which is the topic name that
can subscribe or/and publish through the server, SSID and
Fig. 6. LDR Sensor
password of the WiFi access point having internet connectivity.
Once everything is configured properly, the code is compiled
TABLE IV
and uploaded to the ESP8266 WiFi module.
LDR S ENSOR S PECIFICATION
B. MQTT Server
Parameters Specification The MQTT server provides Quality of Services to define
Model PGM2000 the priority to messages that are published and subscribed[1].
Physical Size 20mm The Adafruit IO supports MQTT protocol for device commu-
Vmax(DC) 500 nication. For an authentication purpose the one has to create
Ambient Temperature -30-+70 deg C an account on Adafruit.io with basic details and they will be
Spectral Peak 560nm ready to use that broker. Basically, it will introduce with an
Photo Resistance 2-5K Ohm account username, key and feed. The name of the account
Dark Resistance 1M Ohm is designated as username, the key is use to authenticate any
Response Time 3040 ms device that is long and is unique identifier which is designated
as AIO key, the feed is like sequential file having set of data
that can be read or write[7].
D. Neopixel 8*8 RGB LED Matrix
It is full color module wherein each RGB LED of primary C. MQTT Clients
colors can achieve 256 brightness level, the colors of light are 1) MQTT Spy: It is an open source utility for publishing
highly consistent and cost effective[12]. The WS1812B is an and monitoring activity on MQTT topics which supports
intelligent control LED light source that control circuit[12]. multiple concurrent connections, supports MQTT connection
The LED is having low driving voltage, environmental pro- properties like QoS, User Authentication, SSL/TLS[13]. Au-
tection, energy saving, high brightness and long life. tomated testing is written in JavaScript. The functionality of
charts and statistics are also available[13].
2) MQTT client: This app is installed on Android smart-
phone which adds/removes topic easily, configuration is easy,
gives the notification for a new message, ability to hide
notification for some topics and support SSL connection.
VI. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
At the inception, ESP8266 commence connecting to the
WiFi access point having internet connectivity, after the suc-
cessful connection it starts for the MQTT connection and once
MQTT connection is made between broker and clients, it starts
giving the results as shown in the figure below:
Fig. 7. Neopixel 8*8 RGB LED Matrix

TABLE V
N EOPIXEL 8*8 RGB LED M ATRIX S PECIFICATION

Parameters Specification
Supply voltage 5V
Number of pixels 64
Brightness Level 256
Scan Frequency 400Hz
Sending data Speed 800Kbps Fig. 8. Results from MQTT app on Smartphone for temperature
Total colors 16777216

2016 2nd International Conference on Contemporary Computing and Informatics (ic3i) 407
 VII. C ONCLUSION
Thus MQTT protocol is very easy to implement which
provides some degree of guaranty about delivery of messages.
The Adafruit IO facilitates good user interface and creates
simple device communication using MQTT protocol. As per
the requirements the more number of the peripheries can be
easily integrated to the system with a little change in its core
by means of which a low cost, low power consumption system
Fig. 9. Results from MQTT app on Smartphone for humidity can be designed and implemented.
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[7] https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-io/overview

[8] http://mqtt.org/

[9] http://smartcities.gov.in/

[10] https://espressif.com/en/products/hardware/esp8266ex/overview

[11] http://www.micropik.com/
Fig. 11. Results obtained on Serial Monitor of Arduino IDE
[12] https://www.adafruit.com/

[13] http://www.hivemq.com/blog/mqtt-toolbox-mqtt-spy

[14] http://www.4-direct.com/resistor/photo-cds.htm.

[15] L. mainetti, L.Manco, L.Patrono, I.Sergi, R. Vergallo, Web of

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[16] Ghassan Maan Salim, Hashimah Ismail, Niranjan Debnath, A.Nadya,

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Fig. 12. Results shown on Adafruit IO dashboard

408 2016 2nd International Conference on Contemporary Computing and Informatics (ic3i)