Article covering MobiusFlow Connectors service
MobiusFlow connectors are transceiver hardware that connect to the following technologies:
Connectors are designed to bridge the gap between these technologies and MobiusFlow via the MobiusFlow Connectors service.
The Connectors service uses MQTT to communicate with the Connectors. As such, the service must be pointed to and authenticated with an MQTT broker.
The service configuration pane requires entry of the following:
MQTT Broker
IP address / DNS name of where the broker is running. The service will assume MQTT (no TLS) however MQTTS (TLS) can be used by adding the mqtts:// prefix. In the most cases, the service will be set up to connect to the local MQTT broker running within MobiusFlow. As such, in this situation, the address of the broker will be localhost.
MQTT Port
The MQTT broker port. This will have been setup within the MQTT broker. Likely 1883 if using MQTT or 8883 if using MQTTS
MQTT Username
The username of the MQTT user set up within the MQTT broker
MQTT Password
The password of the MQTT user set up within the MQTT broker
Once these fields have been populated, save and start the service:
The MQTT connection status can then be observed within the service status:
The above screenshot shows a running example of a Connectors service connected to a local MQTT broker.
Each real-world connector must be represented in MobiusFlow using a connector object. The object settings require connector details such Serial Number and Pre-Shared Key (PSK) to be specified. It also allows the viewing of live connector status.
To add a connector object to the Connectors service, first navigate the to the service's object configuration page.
Once navigated to service's object configuration page, a MobiusFlowConnector object for each real-world connector should be added.
Each connector object requires the following configuration settings to be specified:
Serial Number
The serial number of the connector. In the form of MF_XXXXX. Can be found within the connector's configuration.
Pre-Shared Key (Key)
The unique pre-shared key of the connector. This can be anything however the key must be set to match within both the Connector object and the real-world Connector.
Ensure the service is restarted or hot-reloaded to realise changes made to objects
Once the connector object is live, the status of it can be checked by navigating to the resources of that object:
The above screenshots shows the useful status information a connected connector makes available. Checking if the connector is connected is possible by observing the objectLastUpdate resource.
Raw sensor data is not displayed anywhere within the Connector object. Instead, the service automatically relays incoming data from authorised connectors to the MobiusFlow hub, where it is then broadcast to all MobiusFlow services.
Some service types such as the EnOcean service, listen for and decode these messages into useable data. If the sensor data is valid, those service will then go on to populate corresponding device objects based.
The flowchart below shows how data flows from device level into the corresponding MobiusFlow objects via the Connectors and Connectors service:
The EnOcean technology sometimes requires messages /commands to be sent the devices. This is possible is MobiusFlow using the Flows. A full article on receiving and sending EnOcean telegrams within the flows can be found here.
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