MQTT Testing

The mosquitto broker package ships commandline tools (often as *-clients package) to send and receive MQTT messages. As an alternative have a look at hbmqtt_pub and hbmqtt_sub which are provided by HBMQTT. For sending test messages to a broker running on localhost check the example below:

$ mosquitto_pub -h 127.0.0.1 -t home-assistant/switch/1/on -m "Switch is ON"

If you are using the embedded MQTT broker, the command looks a little different because you need to add the MQTT protocol version.

$ mosquitto_pub -V mqttv311 -t "hello" -m world

or if you are using a API password:

$ mosquitto_pub -V mqttv311 -u homeassistant -P <your api password> -t "hello" -m world

Another way to send MQTT messages by hand is to use the “Developer Tools” in the Frontend. Choose “Call Service” and then mqtt/mqtt_send under “Available Services”. Enter something similar to the example below into the “Service Data” field.

{
   "topic":"home-assistant/switch/1/on",
   "payload":"Switch is ON"
}

The message should appear on the bus:

... [homeassistant] Bus:Handling <Event MQTT_MESSAGE_RECEIVED[L]: topic=home-assistant/switch/1/on, qos=0, payload=Switch is ON>

For reading all messages sent on the topic home-assistant to a broker running on localhost:

$ mosquitto_sub -h 127.0.0.1 -v -t "home-assistant/#"

For the embedded MQTT broker the command looks like:

$ mosquitto_sub -v -V mqttv311 -t "#"

Add the username homeassistant and your API password if needed.