EPICS Support for the MQTT protocol

This module provides an EPICS driver for the MQTT protocol, allowing EPICS clients to communicate with MQTT brokers and devices directly from EPICS.

Contributions are welcome - feel free to open issues and pull requests!

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Table of Contents

• EPICS Support for the MQTT protocol
  • Table of Contents
  • Features
  • Building the module
  • Usage
  • Implementation status

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Features

• Auto-update of EPICS PVS via I/O Intr records;
• Support for read/write flat MQTT topics (i.e, topics where the payload is a single value or array);
• Support for reading JSON payloads;
• Support for MQTT QoS levels;
• Checks and reject invalid messages (based mostly on type-checking);
• Auto reconnection of broker;
• Planned - short term:
  • Support for MQTT retained messages.
  • Support for MQTT last will messages.
  • Support for MQTT authentication and TLS.

Note: Virtually all features from the Paho C++ MQTT client are available to be implemented in this driver, so feel free to open an issue if you need a specific feature.

This module is built on top of Cosylab autoparamDriver, which uses the standard asyn interfaces for device support. For now, the supported interfaces are the following:

• asynInt32
• asynFloat64
• asynUInt32Digital
• asynOctet
• asynInt32Array
• asynFloat64Array

  See Implementation status to check the status of development of the interface you need.

Building the module

1. Install the dependencies:

   Tested with the following versions.

   • EPICS Base 7.0.8.1: https://github.com/epics-base/epics-base/releases/tag/R7.0.8.1
   • Asyn 4.45: https://github.com/epics-modules/asyn/releases/tag/R4-45
   • autoparamDriver 2.0.0: https://github.com/Cosylab/autoparamDriver/releases/tag/v2.0.0
   • Paho 1.5.3: Follow these instructions.

Note: AutoparamDriver explicitly requires EPICS >= 7.0, see reference. For this reason, this module requires EPICS 7.0 or later to be built and used.

2. Clone this repository:

  git clone https://github.com/AndreFavotto/epicsMQTT.git

3. Edit the configure/RELEASE file to include your paths to the dependencies:

   EPICS_BASE = /path/to/epics/base
   ASYN = /path/to/asyn
   AUTOPARAM = /path/to/autoparamDriver
   PAHO_CPP_INC = /path/to/paho/cpp/include #by default, should be /usr/local/include
   PAHO_CPP_LIB = /path/to/paho/cpp/lib     #by default, should be /usr/local/lib

   For now we have two macros for setting paho path because we build the module with separate linking flags -I and -L, but this might change soon.

4. Run make. The library should now be ready for usage.

Usage

1. Include the module in your IOC build instructions:

   • Add asyn and mqtt to your configure/RELEASE file:

     ## Other definitions ...
     ASYN = /path/to/asyn
     MQTT = /path/to/epicsMqtt
     ## Other definitions ...

   • Add the mqtt database definition and include the necessary libraries to your yourApp/src/Makefile:

     #### Other commands ...
     yourIOC_DBD += mqtt.dbd
     #### Other commands ...
     yourIOC_LIBS += asyn
     yourIOC_LIBS += mqttSupport

2. In your database file, link the EPICS records and the MQTT topics through the INP and OUT fields. The syntax is as follows:

  field(INP|OUT, "@asyn(<PORT>) <FORMAT>:<TYPE> <TOPIC> [<FIELD>]")

Where:

• <PORT> is the name of the asyn port defined in the asynPortDriver configuration.
• <FORMAT> is the format of the payload: FLAT or JSON.
• <TYPE> is the general type of the expected value [INT|FLOAT|DIGITAL|STRING|INTARRAY|FLOATARRAY].
• <TOPIC> is the MQTT topic to which the record will be subscribed/published.
• <FIELD> is JSON pointer to extract value from a JSON payload (e.g. /sensor/temperature). If empty, JSON root is used.

Note on JSON write: JSON write currently publishes the record value as a plain JSON scalar/array. Composing JSON objects within the driver is not yet supported (see #14). To write a structured JSON payload, compose it at the application level using a FLAT:STRING record and a scalcout record.

Important: Due to the pub/sub nature of MQTT, ALL input records are expected to be I/O Intr.

Example:

record(ai, "$(P)$(R)AnalogIn"){
  field(DESC, "Analog Input Record")
  field(DTYP, "asynInt32")
  field(SCAN, "I/O Intr")
  field(INP, "@asyn($(PORT)) FLAT:INT test/analogtopic")
}

record(ai, "$(P)$(R)AnalogOut"){
  field(DESC, "Analog Output Record")
  field(DTYP, "asynInt32")
  field(OUT, "@asyn($(PORT)) FLAT:INT test/analogtopic")
}

Note: Several examples can be found in mqttExampleApp/Db for other record types.

3. Load the module in your startup script using the following syntax:

 mqttDriverConfigure(const char *portName, const char *brokerUrl, const char *mqttClientID, const int qos)

Example:

  # (... other startup commands ...)
  epicsEnvSet("PORT", "test")
  epicsEnvSet("BROKER_URL", "mqtt://localhost:1883")
  epicsEnvSet("CLIENT_ID", "mqttEpics")
  epicsEnvSet("QOS", "1")
  mqttDriverConfigure($(PORT), $(BROKER_URL), $(CLIENT_ID), $(QOS))
  # (... other startup commands ...)
  dbLoadRecords("your_database.db", "PORT=$(PORT)")
  iocInit()

Implementation status

Below are the supported interfaces and their implementation status.

Message type	Asyn Parameter Type	FORMAT:TYPE string to use	Direction	Status
Integer	asynInt32	FLAT:INT	Read / Write	Supported
Float	asynFloat64	FLAT:FLOAT	Read / Write	Supported
Bit masked integers	asynUInt32Digital	FLAT:DIGITAL	Read / Write	Supported
Strings	asynOctetRead/asynOctetWrite	FLAT:STRING	Read / Write	Supported
Integer Array	asynInt32ArrayIn/asynInt32ArrayOut	FLAT:INTARRAY	Read / Write	Supported
Float Array	asynFloat64ArrayIn/asynFloat64ArrayOut	FLAT:FLOATARRAY	Read / Write	Supported
Integer	asynInt32	JSON:INT	Read / Write	Supported
Float	asynFloat64	JSON:FLOAT	Read / Write	Supported
Bit masked	asynUInt32Digital	JSON:DIGITAL	Read / Write	Supported
String	asynOctetRead/asynOctetWrite	JSON:STRING	Read / Write	Supported
Integer Array	asynInt32ArrayIn/asynInt32ArrayOut	JSON:INTARRAY	Read / Write	Supported
Float Array	asynFloat64ArrayIn/asynFloat64ArrayOut	JSON:FLOATARRAY	Read / Write	Supported

Licensing Terms

Copyright (C) 2026 André Favoto

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.