AWESOME EMQX MQTT Broker add-on. Excellent UI for Home Assistant!

[@MrSully350]

I just wanna say a BIG thank you! New to the HA/IoT world, your videos are comprehensive and extremely helpful!

[@mostlychris]

Thank you!

[@zzdestroyallhumanzz1134]

This is so great. I am working on my HA infrastructure and EMQX looks like its going to fit nicely.

[@MarkGhali]

Chris great video! I would love to see a cluster setup of this!

[@mostlychris]

Let me add that to my list.

[@Zbyszekakaduk]

Krzysiek, I train best with your films as a home assistant. Thank you.

[@benniuji2133]

Great tutorial! Thank you, Chris!

[@mostlychris]

You're welcome. Thanks for watching!

[@rockthomas67]

Thanks for nice guide. Did a quick test after watching, everything looks nice, but HAS didn’t see any devices, all offline. I think I need to so video again and read documentation.

[@Ian-yt6kv]

Having just subscribed earlier today, I found your video about EMQX. I really like how you explain what you are talking about and in this case, how to install and configure the add-on . I'll give this a go. How long have you been using EMQX and do you find it stable?

[@mostlychris]

I've been using it a month or more at the time of this comment. It has been reliable. Just turn off (or don't turn on) watchdog. That seems to restart it often for some reason.

[@carlosgallego1076]

Thanks for the video

[@jaddofficial]

First of all: very helpfull video howto setup the EMQX MQTT broker! I had problems with the mosquitto broker and hass.agent, No entities came into HA. So i switched to emqx and still none of the sensors i defined in hass.agent pops up (out of the box) into HA as an entity. I do have 3 433 entities in HA, but those have been defined as binary sensors before. Am i missing something, do i need to add other configuration? Quite lost where i go wrong....

[@OPB682]

Hey Chris - any chance you can do a video about how to secure MQTT using EQMX

[@bogorad]

I've been playing with it for quite some time. Things I love - Redis authentication, high degree of programmability, generally it's quite fast. I run it in a docker container. However, the upgrade from v4 to v5 didn't go well; I had to roll back (thank god for docker!). One other thing potentially of concern to some people - this software is Chinese. Not everyone's cup of tea.

[@mostlychris]

Thanks for the information.

[@Zbyszekakaduk]

I'm messing around with two HA instances and support the additional multi-cluster activation video. I installed EMQX in proxmox but it doesn't work :) maybe because I didn't spend enough time...

[@jmr]

One thing that is hard with Mosquito is subscribing to another broker like the one that runs in my Energy Bridge(reads my electric meter). You have to create a file and upload it to the correct directory with Mosquito. This might be a good alternative if it can do that easily.

[@mostlychris]

Great point

[@zyghom]

I had some glitches on my HA and I moved my MQTT from Mosquitto to EMQX - much better overall experience now. Plus the possibility of deeper configuration of MQTT server - yeap, I will probably stay with EMQX. As we speak: EMQX shows 100 messages per second

[@noraddlb]

Hey Chris - I Followed your instructions - I am a Zigbee2MQTT user that wants to start using EMQX - but I'm having a hard time transitioning from Mosquitto to EMQX - is there another guide you can provide?

[@emf9]

What do you use for the retainer settings? Apparently the default is to allow unlimited retention.... My instance ran out of memory

[@ChrisValcke]

great video, everything worked first time around! while i am familiar with mqtt, would be good to see how you actually use it....10 connections??

[@mostlychris]

All my tasmotized plugs use a direct connection as well as my Zigbee2Mqtt add-on..and my frigate instance for alerts, etc. Ten is probably a small number compared to some on here.

[@ConChairman]

Discord and I don't get along, so I will ask my question here. You mentioned Cluster and Failover. My Home Assistant is running on an Intel NUC i3 and my broker is on a separate Raspberry Pi3 running Mosquitto. I started using MQTT on Node-Red long before Home Assistant, and since the broker IP is hard-coded in my MQTT devices, it was just so much easier to keep the Raspberry Pi broker running. If I were to run EMQX, I would have to reprogram e few devices that aren't easily accessed. (Inside outlet boxes, etc). Would clustering/failover be a way to start using EMQX, turn off the Raspberry broker, then as access becomes an option reprogram the devices?

[@chris415-a]

Will this work with frigate? I saw in another video you did in which I installed the MQTT broker you suggested. Sounds like I need to turn that off and install this one for better visibility, but don't want to break frigate.

[@Zbyszekakaduk]

Chris is Krzysiek in my language. That's what we say to cool guys :)

[@ahmadsaeed8332]

I want an HMI (MT8071ie) As publisher for mqtt or emqx, and an Hmi as subscribe, or a pc as subscribe or visualize data on dashboard, for remote login access? Please make a video or guide me

[@dretwav]

What are the options for running EMQX as a stand-alone broker external to HA. I do that with mosquito because I have other appllications that use mqtt which have nothing to do with HA.

[@mostlychris]

Just do it! You can run it all by itself. In Home Assistant, you need to point your MQTT integration to the IP of the EMQX location. Should work the same as using the add-on.

[@JasperTielen]

Followed this and it worked, but I have 3 tasmota devices that keep losing connection, they never had problems with mosquito. When I enter password again they work until I reboot the HA system then they won't come back online.

[@mostlychris]

Are there logs that show what is going on?

[@antoniodecrisci2369]

My broker for HA is actually a different computer, a Ubuntu server. Sounds like I have to install this on my Ubuntu machine or move my broker to HA? Too bad, looks like an awesome program, but can't use it right now.

[@mostlychris]

You have to install it somewhere 😀 You can install it on HA and update your MQTT integration to use that--or--install it on Ubuntu and point the integration there. So you should be able to use it.

[@shawndamon3055]

anyone knows how i can store the user id and password in the configuration so that i dont need to keep login when accessing it within Home Assistant ?

[@mostlychris]

There is an option to stay logged in when you sign in. That should keep you signed in unless you are using a browser in private or incognito (or some other cache clearing thing).

[@shawndamon3055]

@@mostlychrisjust got this working : - name: EMQX_DASHBOARD__TOKEN_EXPIRED_TIME value: 365d

[@yousaf.saleem]

how to create entities for WLED MQTT sensor? I was previously using the Mosquitto broker

[@mostlychris]

The entities are not created by the broker. If you already had those setup they should still be there.

[@yousaf.saleem]

@@mostlychris fixed it. Working now

[@mostlychris]

@@yousaf.saleem Excellent!

[@darokis]

Hi Chris. How did you change the node name ?

[@mostlychris]

If I understand your question, the node name is automatically created. I didn't change anything there.

[@joeh2397]

Hmm, is this Hass only the way you show the addon here?

[@mostlychris]

Not sure what you mean.

[@DementedDog]

I get as far as authentication but when I navigate to the UI get 'Bad Gateway' - can't see how to fix this. Any ideas?

[@TomAHawk-py6vj]

Bad Gateway appears for any addon in HA that fails to start. Check the debug log

[@DementedDog]

@@TomAHawk-py6vj yeah it doesn’t start automatically but when I start it manually I get the bad gateway. I’ll take another look through the logs.

[@DementedDog]

@@TomAHawk-py6vj Got it - even though I'd removed it, there was another mq gateway running. Sorted now 🙂

[@mostlychris]

Glad you got it going!

[@fred7flinstone]

Awesome tutorial, thanks for putting that up for us. One question someone here might be able to answer... How do I change the listener port of EMQX from :8083? I'm in the app add-on, listeners page, I click the 'ws' settings but I cannot edit the port. There is a crossed circle icon on the "bind" field. Want to change it as it conflicts with WebRTC.

[@fred7flinstone]

For anyone else with the same question.... I disabled the existing listener and created a new one with the same settings. Restarted the add-on, seems to work.

[@mostlychris]

Excellent! Thanks for the tip. I had to move my webrtc port but now I can put it back and change EMQX.

[@-vermin-]

Is this going to create duplicate or new devices/entities if I swap over from Mosquiiito? I have 172 existing mqtt entities and 29 device connected, all of them discovered. It would be a pain to have to edit and delete that many _2 entities.

[@Sim3Dfly]

Hi, I was wondering the same. Did you tried an find out?

[@-vermin-]

@@Sim3Dfly No I have not.

[@Sim3Dfly]

Today I changed to emqx. It was pretty easy. I literally did nothing. Just stopped mosquitto Broker and started emqx. And all my 18 devices are shown in emqx and have the same entity. My username in mosquitto broker was „mqtt“. Dont now, if this makes any difference.

[@mostlychris]

I didn't have to update anything regarding entities. Just switched brokers.

[@-vermin-]

@@mostlychris Thanks Chris. I gave it a go. After a bit of messing about with Zigbee2Mqtt I nearly had everything working. However I use the mosquitto_pub CLI command (not service) and so this stopped working and I had to revert to using the Mosquitto add-on. Also I could not get MQTTExplorer to work for some reason.

[@TheOvenCook]

Installed EMQX after watching this video. Really like the software, but I don't think it's stable... And currently early release to Home assistant, so finding help is difficult. Continually loosing connection, upon further inspection, I find this in my supervisor logs ever ~1 minute. "Watchdog found addon EMQX is unhealthy, restarting..."

[@sarnog]

I have the same problem, but can't findout why. I took off the watchdog, to prevent the rebooting. I also get a " 500 network error " when i try to go into the " Diagnose -> Topic Metrics " that i can't seem to fix. I hope somebody can help us out...

[@mostlychris]

Turn off watchdog. I have been using it without issue. I'm not sure what is causing it to be listed as unhealthy.

[@Ian-yt6kv]

Do you know if zigbee2mqtt can communicate with EMQX?

[@mostlychris]

I'm using it that way. EMQX is just a broker. Anything should be able to communicate with it.

[@christoffbothma3905]

Makes my nuc run hot for some reason

[@AnthonyDiRuggiero]

Any idea of resources used by this vs the built in broker?

[@mostlychris]

Each add-on has a status page that shows the usage. This shows 0.1% CPU and 4.2% RAM on my HA Blue. So, basically nothing.

[@th3batfink]

I tried this on my 12th gen i7 nuc running HA in a VM. HA will usually happily sit at around 4% cpu total for the whole installation (I only throw it 2 of the 16 available cores). I swap out mosquitto for emqx and it immediately goes to an average of 12% with constant spikes above 20 and 30%. Something a miss somewhere. I stopped it and switched everything back to mosquitto and its back to normal usage. Whilst even with emqx the host system itself is only increasing from 1% to 4%, I can run 4 vm’s on a third of the cpu emqx is taking alone? Strange.

[@mostlychris]

@@th3batfink I should look at that as well. EMQX does a bunch more so that probably explains it.

[@th3batfink]

@@mostlychris maybe it was something I set up strange (although it all appeared to be working). Or maybe why it is still in experimental status. I was surprised a mature installation of HA w/ mosquitto and everything else used half the cpu emqx seemed to want to use (excluding the constant spikes it also seemed to be causing). I did google around for other instances of high cpu being reported but didnt find much. I saw reference to some users saying with watchdog enabled it was causing the addon to be perpetually restarted (which may be why I saw high usage spikes), I had disabled and gone back to mosquitto when I read that though so couldn’t confirm. Although it doesnt explain the jump from 4 to 12% baseline cpu usage for HA as a whole unless emqx really is that heavy. Maybe I am just over sensitive, I am on a mission to reduce electricity consumption at the moment due to costs here, I value lightweight more than I ever have before.

[@sarnog]

Installed EMQX after watching this video. I really like the program, but I run on some troubles that i can't seem to get fixed... 1. Inside the application, when i try to go into the "Diagnose -> Topic Metrics" i get a "500 network error" message. 2. When i set "the watchdog" enabled on the add-on in Home Assistant, it keeps rebooting the add-on, because it keep showing up as "Unhealthy". The logs don't show anything strange. I can't find anything to fix these problems, so i really hope that somebody can help me out.

[@mostlychris]

I think there are still a few bugs. I get a 404 on the metrics page after viewing the topics. The MQTT broker portion works without issue so these are UI issues. I also don't set the watchdog. I don't do that on any of my addons.

[@m.a.s.lelystad8150]

Hi Chris You told in this video that you can set up 'multiple brokers' or something like that I've got 2 RPi's. One with Domoticz and Mosquitto-broker on it (192.168.192.234) , and one with Home Assistant and EMQX on it. (192.168.192.233) On the HA-RPi I want to listen to 192.168.192.233 port 1883 (which I achieved in this video) I've already some devices wich are connected to this broker. But on my Domoticz RPi I've also some devices which I want to control by Home Assistant. So EMQX should also listen to 192.168.192.234 I don't want to connect these MQTT-channels to one big channel. Because I don't want anything of these HA-rpi be sended to the Domoticz RPi. But HA must see and control the Domoticz-devices. I hope you understand what I mean. How must I setup EMQX to do this? Many thanks in advance. Helping me on TEAMVIEWER is also possible for me.

[@riaangrobler3447]

Works Great. One thing I cant get working is how to set up a bridge with this EMQ X. EMQ X - with Mosquitto broker , I added a file mosquitto.conf in /share/mosquitto, with the bridge settings. I Don;t see the option with the emq x for adding the bridge in a file.. So now i revert back to the standard broker as cant get bridges to work for topics in/out. created a file in etc\emqx.conf. i then see some topics but cant get it to work properly.

[@mostlychris]

I'll need to play with this since I haven't tried it.

[@dracat16]

What would be the configuration for zigbee2mqtt? it stopped working for me. Tried to change the server to server: mqtt://localhost:1883 ...

[@mostlychris]

This is my server setting in zigbee2mqtt: mqtt://172.16.1.121:1883 Use the IP rather than localhost and see if that works. Also make sure your user/pass are correct in the settings.