I’m sharing a new MQTT driver today - MQTT Devices V1 - that addresses a use case not covered by my previous MQTT drivers: specifically, cases where the MQTT topic used by your device or application cannot be configured. One example is Tasmota devices that publish MQTT messages to a specific topic and respond to messages on a specific topic.
How is this different from the MQTT Handler/Discover driver?
The MQTT Handler/Discovery driver requires messages to be published to a specific topic format (starting with ‘smartthings/’), and was implemented as a SmartThings version of the Home Assistant MQTT Discovery feature. It allows for devices that support HA’s implementation to be integrated with SmartThings. Another feature is that a new SmartThings device is created by sending an MQTT message with a specific topic format.
With the new driver (MQTT Devices V1), devices are created within the SmartThings mobile app using a ‘master’ creator device (not unlike my vEdge driver) and then are individually configured to respond to whatever topic string you want. It supports MQTT messages that are JSON-formatted, as well as simple strings.
Initially, the new driver supports Switch, Momentary Button, Contact, and Motion type devices, with more to come. The Switch and Button devices can also be configured to publish MQTT messages when the switch or button state is changed within SmartThings.
For more information, please see the README file in the github repository.
Thanks go out to @gst and @montyfert for being initial testers of this new driver.