Using ESP8266 to publish serial input to MQTT [Solved]

Projects Programming
1

Hi ,
I have a whispernode (RFradio) receiving a message from another whisper node and sending it to the serial port on an ESP8266. The radio is connected to TX, RX on ESP. I then want the incoming message on the ESP to be published to an MQTT topic. The message is similar to "63:0:2900".
The first part works ok, i.e. I can serial.print the message to the console, and initiate an MQTT topic, but there is nothing displayed as the payload when I subscribe to the topic using MQTT.fx or similar.
I suspect the message is not in the correct format/array for the publish command.
Here is the complete code. Any help would be awesome,

thanks

//#include <ESP8266wifi.h>

//#include <OneWire.h>
//#include <DallasTemperature.h>
#include <ESP8266WiFi.h>
#include <PubSubClient.h>
#include <SPI.h>
#include <stdlib.h>


const char* ssid = "xxx";
const char* password = "xxx";

IPAddress server(192, 168, 1, 117);     //Site Specific  ...........................................
WiFiClient WifiClient;

PubSubClient client(server, 1883, WifiClient);
unsigned long keepalivetime = 0;
unsigned long MQTT_reconnect = 0;
#define MQTT_CLIENT_ID ""
#define MQTT_RETRY 500

void reconnect() {
  // Loop until we're reconnected
  while (!client.connected()) {
    Serial.print("Attempting MQTT connection...");
    // Attempt to connect
    if (client.connect(MQTT_CLIENT_ID)) {
      Serial.println("connected");
      // Once connected, publish an announcement...
      client.publish("talk/heart", "beat");
      // ... and resubscribe
      client.subscribe("talk/reset");
      //Can subscribe to Out relay Aux Here
    } else {
      Serial.print("failed, rc=");
      Serial.print(client.state());
      Serial.println(" try again in 5 seconds");
      // Wait 5 seconds before retrying
      delay(5000);
    }
  }
}

unsigned long beat_time;

int i, messageLength;
void setup() {
  // Start serial
  Serial.begin(115200);


  WiFi.begin(ssid, password);
  while (WiFi.waitForConnectResult() != WL_CONNECTED) {
    Serial.println("Connection Failed! Rebooting...");
    delay(5000);
    ESP.restart();
  }
  
}

void loop() {
  // String stringVal = "";
  client.loop();
  reconnect();
  //heart beat
  unsigned long time_passed = 0;
  time_passed = millis() - beat_time;
  if (time_passed < 0)
  {
    beat_time = millis();
  }
  //360000
  if (time_passed > 30000)
  {
    time_passed = 0;
    Serial.println("heart beat");
    client.publish("talk/heart", "1");
    delay(500);
    client.publish("talk/heart", "0");
    beat_time = millis();

  }
  //Listen for begin of message
  if (Serial.read() == '

)
  {

char Message[100];

for (i = 1; i < 100; i++)
    {
      delay(1);
      Message[i] = Serial.read();
      if (Message[i] == '#')
      {
        break;
      }

}

//length of the message
    messageLength = i;

Serial.println("The incoming message is:");

for (i = 1; i < messageLength; i++)
    {
      Serial.print((Message[i]));

}

Serial.println();

//Publish mesaage to MQTT

client.publish("Talk", Message);

}

}

2

I tried
reading your code,
but I got too
dizzy with the piss-poor
indenting.

Use Tools + Auto Format and post the code again, if you want any to try to read it.

3

You're too polite mate.
When you've pick yourself up off the floor from your dizzy spell... any ideas on the code problem...

4

The PubSubClient class has several publish() methods. The one that you are using is:

boolean publish(const char* topic, const char* payload);

That means that the function takes two strings.

    client.publish("Talk", Message);

"Talk" is a string. Message is NOT.

A string is a NULL terminated array of chars. Your array of chars is NOT NULL terminated, so it is NOT a string.

5

Thanks mate, that did the trick!