Control your Camera over MQTT with your Android Phone

The MQTT Protocol is supported by a wide range of third-party software. In the following we want to take a look at two Android apps that will allow us to use the MQTT Endpoints we added to our Node-RED flows to control our camera from our smartphone.

IoT MQTT Panel

First, go to the Google Play Store on your Android phone to download the App IoT MQTT Panel.

IoT MQTT Panel

We need to add the MQTT Server connection to get started. Type in the IP address of your MQTT Server - this either the local IP of your Windows machine or your Raspberry Pi (depending on where you installed it). There we also added a MQTT login that we need to use here to connect to the Server and save your settings.

IoT MQTT Panel

Now click on the Mosquitto Connection you just added and click the orange Plus Icon to add a new panel. Choose a Button to get started:

IoT MQTT Panel

Give your button a name, choose an MQTT Entry Point that you want to target - in the case above, we choose the Trigger Alarm Node that can be targeted with the topic ipcam/alarm/pushalarm:

IoT MQTT Panel

The necessary payload is injected by the dashboard button - {"pushalarm" : "triggered"}:

IoT MQTT Panel

Save your settings and try out your brand new button:

IoT MQTT Panel

MQTT Dashboard

First, go to the Google Play Store on your Android phone to download the App MQTT Dashboard.

MQTT Dashboard

We need to add the MQTT Server connection to get started. Click in the Plus Icon and type in the IP address of your MQTT Server - this either the local IP of your Windows machine or your Raspberry Pi (depending on where you installed it). There we also added a MQTT login that we need to use here to connect to the Server and save your settings.

MQTT Dashboard

MQTT Dashboard

Now click on the Connection you just added, choose Subscribe and click the Plus Icon, in the top right, to add a new MQTT Subscription:

MQTT Dashboard

We want to subscribe to the Trigger Alarm MQTT Node that we already used for the IoT MQTT Panel:

MQTT Dashboard

Save your settings and switch to the Publish tab to add a button that can trigger the MQTT Entry Node from our Node-RED Flow:

MQTT Dashboard

Here we need to add both the MQTT Topic to target that Node and the MQTT Payload required to trigger its execution:

MQTT Dashboard

Now save your settings and try out your new button:

MQTT Dashboard

Switch back the Subscribe tab to check if your payload was published successfully:

MQTT Dashboard