MQTT Control - I'm lost?

I think I need to set up MQTT somehow to control some lighting. I have Falcon Player (FPP) running on a RasPi 3B that runs an LED pixel controller over Wifi. I’m using these lights for my Fish Tank, but will expand if I can get this to work. The software on FPP is capable of accepting MQTT to trigger lighting sequences and effects. I can control this directly from my phone and can set up the lights to turn on and off based on time, but I would really like to integrate into ST, but I’m lost…

I’ve seen some stuff on Home Assistant but that would require another RasPi and I’m trying to avoid that. Is there any way to set up without HA?