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IoT real time data acquisition using MQTT protocol

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2017 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 853 012003

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International Conference on Physical Instrumentation and Advanced Materials IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1234567890
853 (2017) 012003 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/853/1/012003

IoT real time data acquisition using MQTT protocol

R A Atmoko*, R Riantini, and M K Hasin

Marine Electrical Engineering, Shipbuilding Institute of Polytechnic Surabaya
(SHIPS-PPNS), Indonesia

*Corresponding email address: [email protected]

Abstract. The Internet of Things (IoT) provides ease to monitor and to gain sensor data
through the Internet [1]. The need of high quality data is increasing to the extent that data
monitoring and acquisition system in real time is required, such as smart city or telediagnostic
in medical areas [2].Therefore, an appropriate communication protocol is required to resolve
these problems. Lately, researchers have developed a lot of communication protocols for IoT,
of which each has advantages and disadvantages. This study proposes the utilization of MQTT
as a communication protocol, which is one of data communication protocols for IoT. This
study used temperature and humidity sensors because the physical parameters are often needed
as parameters of environment condition [3]. Data acquisition was done in real-time and stored
in MySQL database. This study is also completed by interface web-based and mobile for
online monitoring. This result of this study is the enhancement of data quality and reliability
using MQTT protocol.

1. Introduction
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept that aims to extend the benefits of continuous internet
connection for various things such as data sharing, remote control, and data monitoring. IoT is the idea
of researchers who want to optimize equipment’s such as sensor, radio frequency identification
(RFID), wireless sensor network, and all equipment’s connected to the Internet network to
communicate with humans. IoT’s challenge is to bridge the physical world and the information world
such as the processing of data obtained from electronic equipment via an interface between the user
and the equipment. Sensors collect physical data such as temperature and humidity, and then send it to
the server to be stored in database or be displayed on the application interface [4].
IoT technology has started being developed in manifestations such as the Smart City, which has
been developed in many metropolitan cities of the world, Smart Factory which is used for production
optimization, Telediagnostic which facilitates the process of the patient's health monitoring, weather
information system which is used for weather prediction, and so forth. Two of the processes that are
often used in IoT applications are process control and monitoring (acquisition) of data.
Communication protocols for acquisition of data that can be used are HTTP and MQTT protocol.
HTTP protocol is used to web data exchange where it can usually be used for handling data
acquisition of hardware, but the ability of HTTP is less suitable when being used on IoT-based
applications.
HTTP protocol uses a request/response model, which is currently the most common message
exchange protocol. MQTT uses a publish/subscribe pattern [5]. HTTP protocol is not designed for
pervasive network and can cause a decrease in performance, especially in bandwidth usage and battery

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Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd 1
International Conference on Physical Instrumentation and Advanced Materials IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1234567890
853 (2017) 012003 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/853/1/012003

durability. [6]. The protocol for IoT applications require less bandwidth, real-time response, and low
energy use because it is commonly used for small appliances.
A study conducted by Vergara et.al showed the superiority of MQTT implemented on Android
devices, which can decrease energy consumption compared to HTTP protocol [7]. MQTT and HTTP
are both running over TCP. However, MQTT provides some advantages such as low energy, among
others. [8]. Compared to IoT protocols such as COAP, MQTT also provides advantage to be used on
client type of smartphone [9]. This study aims to implement the usability of MQTT protocol for
temperature and humidity sensor data acquisition system interfaced on mobile-based and web-based
applications.

2. HTTP protocol
Internet network is built to communicate via HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol). Various data,
from images to texts, are sent over internet every day. HTTP is as a primary protocol interface to move
a wide range of data quickly, easily, and stable from server to user devices such as browser. HTTP is
built on TCP. HTTP ensures that data transmitted from one device to another will not corrupt so that
the integrity of data transmitted is assured. HTTP is an open communication protocol that can be read
by any devices that have been developed for HTTP protocol as browser or smartphone through
browser application. An HTTP transaction consists of two parts: request command (request) sent from
client to server, and response command (response) sent from server to client. The process of response
and request is submitted using a data block with specific format known as HTTP Message. The
messages are sent by HTTP which moves in one direction.

3. MQTT protocol
MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) protocol is protocol specifically designed for
"machine to machine" communication. MQTT protocol runs over TCP / IP and has a data packet size
with low overhead minimum (> 2 bytes) so that consumption of the power supply is also small
enough. This protocol is a data-agnostic protocol that can transmit data in various forms such as binary
data, text, XML, or JSON and this protocol uses a publish/subscribe model rather than a client-server
model.
Stack TCP/IP is now widely supported by microcontroller likeSTM32Fx7 series, as well as
common market device board such as Wemos and Raspberry Pi. There are so many options for
implementing MQTT protocol on devices. A common system of MQTT requires two main software
components:
 MQTT Client is to be installed on device. A web platform, which uses Javascript, can use
Client PAHO library of Eclipse.
 MQTT Broker serves to handle publish and subscribe data. A Linux platform can use broker
that is available free such as mosquitto, HiveMQ etc.
The advantage of publish/subscribe system is that the data sender (publisher) and the data receiver
(client) do not know each other because there is a broker between both. In addition, there is time
decoupling which makes publisher and client unable to be connected simultaneously so that client will
stay to receive delayed data previously.

3.1. Control signal

MQTT has 14 types of control signal, namely:
 CONNECT — Client request to connect to Server
 CONNACK — Connection Acknowledgement
 PUBLISH — A message which represents a new/separate publish
 PUBACK — QoS 1 Response to a PUBLISH message
 PUBREC — First part of QoS 2 message flow
 PUBREL — Second part of QoS 2 message flow
 PUBCOMP — Last part of the QoS 2 message flow

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International Conference on Physical Instrumentation and Advanced Materials IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1234567890
853 (2017) 012003 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/853/1/012003

 SUBSCRIBE — A message used by clients to subscribe to specific topics

 SUBACK — Acknowledgement of a SUBSCRIBE message
 UNSUBSCRIBE — A message used by clients to unsubscribe from specific topics
 UNSUBACK — Acknowledgement of an UNSUBSCRIBE
 message
 PINGREQ — Heartbeat message
 PINGRESP — Heartbeat message acknowledgement
 DISCONNECT — Graceful disconnect message sent by clients
 before disconnecting
From those signals, there are only four main signals which are used directly by the client,namely
PUBLISH, SUBSCRIBE, UNSUBSCRIBE, CONNECT. Other signals are part of the
publish/subscribe mechanism.

3.2. Topic & Quality of Service (QoS)

In MQTT, it is as known topic that serves as filter for broker in sending message to every client
connected and subscribed. MQTT provides quality level of service, which is called QoS. This level
guarantees the reliability of message delivery. Level 0 message is sent only once. Messages are sent
depending on the existence of network, and there is no attempt to transmit a message back. Level 1
messages are sent at least once so that if the subscriber does not recognize (acknowledge) the message,
then the broker will send a message to publisher to receive the message acknowledgment status from
the client. Level 2 is to make sure that message was received. With this level, it can be ensured that the
message is certainly conveyed and avoided from duplication of messages sent.

4. System implementation
To implement usage of MQTT protocol, this study requires the following equipments:
1. Wemos D1 Mini & ESP 8266 Wifi Module
2. DHT 11 Temperature & Humidity Sensor
3. PC Server as MQTT Broker.
4. Android Smartphone
Wemos D1 Mini is a minimum system of controller that is equipped with ESP 8266 seriesWi-Fi
module. The Wemos has 9 Input/Output digital and 1 Input/Output analogue. Wemos serves as
publisher to transmit data of DHT 11 sensor to MQTT broker. DHT 11 is type of digital sensor of
temperature and humidity. DHT 11 can measure temperature of 00-500 Celsius and humidity of 20%-
90% RH. PC server is as MQTT broker to facilitate exchange of data between publisher and
subscriber, or among hardware, mobile application, and web application.

Figure 1.DHT11 Temperature & Humidity Sensor

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International Conference on Physical Instrumentation and Advanced Materials IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1234567890
853 (2017) 012003 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/853/1/012003

A DHT11 sensor was connected to digital pin number 4 at Wemos. The sensor read temperature
and humidity and then the information was sent (publish) to the broker. The MQTT broker used in this
study was mosquitto that is an open source broker application of MQTT from Eclipse product. The
data, which entered on broker then, was subscribed by client application. Subscribe application was
built to use Javascript that can install a library MQTT named PAHO, an open source application of
Eclipse product.
Table 1.MQTT Parameters.

Parameter Used

Broker Mosquitto

Subscriber PahoJavascript

Topic teleppns/temphum

MQTT Port 1883

Websocket Port 9001

Figure 2.MQTT Broker &Arduino Serial Monitor.

The subscriber application for android platform was built with Phonegap using HTML and
Javascript. The subscriber application of web platform was built using HTML and PHP. The
subscriber application is added with a feature to save data to MySQL database. The subscriber
application communicated to broker using Web Socket so that data exchange can happen in full
duplex and real-time.

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International Conference on Physical Instrumentation and Advanced Materials IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1234567890
853 (2017) 012003 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/853/1/012003

Figure 3.Web and Mobile Interfaces.

Figure 4.Data Storage MYSQL.

5. Results and discussion

This study also reports the performance test of HTTP and MQTT protocol. The test was performed by
taking data for 60 seconds. The following table shows the capability of each protocol to transfer data
from hardware to server and store it into a MySQL database.

Table 2. Comparison HTTP & MQTT.

Data Amount of Success Data Amount of Success Data
aqcuiring transfer via transfer via
order HTTP Protocol MQTT Protocol

1 938 data 6560 data

5
International Conference on Physical Instrumentation and Advanced Materials IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Journal of Physics: Conf. Series 1234567890
853 (2017) 012003 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/853/1/012003

Data Amount of Success Data Amount of Success Data

aqcuiring transfer via transfer via
order HTTP Protocol MQTT Protocol

2 930 data 6530 data

3 935 data 6501 data

4 931 data 6505 data

5 938 data 6505 data

Mean 934.4 data 6520.2 data

The performance test was conducted by calculating the successfully sent data from hardware to
server and also the successfully inserted data into MYSQL database for 60 seconds. Each transmission
from hardware has a sequential ID, so that when data has been entered into database, it can be checked
for its completeness of data to determine whether a loss occurs. The test results show that the ability of
MQTT is better in transferring data than HTTP. The above table shows that the MQTT has the ability
to send data up to six times faster than HTTP. This is because MQTT architecture is designed to
provide transfer speed by small data size that can reduce data transmission time. MQTT has a header
data size smaller than HTTP.

6. Conclusion
This study has implemented the use of MQTT protocol to build data acquisition application of
temperature and humidity sensor with a mobile interface, which is android and web-based. The test
result indicates that MQTT protocol has the ability of transfer data faster than HTTP protocol, which
can transfer amount of data 6 times of HTTP capability. MQTT usage can be an option for the
hardware data acquisition real-time application based on the Internet of Things.

References
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Rumah Walet Berbasis Android, Web, dan SMS Semantik 3 (1) pp. 283-290 ISSN 979-26-
02666
[4] Suresh P, Daniel J V, Aswathy R H 2014 A state of the art review on the Internet of Things
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[5] Lampkin V et al. 2012 Building smarter planet solutions with MQTT and IBM WebSphere MQ
telemetry IBM, ITSO
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