ioBroker as MQTT Broker for your Camera

Q: I installed my MQTT camera according to your guide in ioBroker. But now I do use the MQTT Adapter as my primary MQTT Broker - not as a MQTT Client. And I am unable to update Command Topics through the ioBroker object tree.

Mike Polinowski
INSTAR MQTT
Firmware Update
Full HD Series
INSTAR Deutschland GmbH
INSTAR MQTT

Make your camera the heart of your smart home

INSTAR MQTT

Using the MQTT interface of your INSTAR Full HD cameras you can connect them to an existing smarthome system (Home Assistant, OpenHAB, Node-RED, Athom Homey, Homematic, ioBroker, Loxone, homee) can be added. Or even make it the main broker for your MQTT sensors. MQTT allows you to automate ALL functions of your camera and link them to other services in your smarthome.

Mike Polinowski
IFTTT Applets
Firmware Update
Full HD Series
INSTAR Cloud
INSTAR Deutschland GmbH
INSTAR IFTTT Applets

Control your camera via the IFTTT online service

INSTAR IFTTT

On the IFTTT platform, we provided a service called INSTAR. The INSTAR applets provide you with the ability to control some settings of your INSTAR camera or INSTAR Cloud with IFTTT. You can connect INSTAR with triggers for location (Geo Location) and date & time, send notifications and much more. For example, you can connect INSTAR applets to the IFTTT location service and automatically disable the alarm when you arrive home. You can also use the INSTAR applets to create your own automation and connect them to other third-party applets.

A: Our ioBroker Guide uses the MQTT service of your INSTAR Full HD camera as your MQTT broker. Accordingly, you have to set the MQTT Adapter to Client/subscriber mode and connect it to your camera:

INSTAR MQTT for ioBroker

Client Mode

Operated as an MQTT Client it is very important not to activate any of those option seen the center of the following screenshot. Especially, activating the publishing of states when a clients connects to ioBroker can have surprising consequences

INSTAR MQTT for ioBroker

After saving the settings and restarting the MQTT adapter, your camera should push out all retained MQTT Status Topics (login credentials are excluded and only accessible by Command Topics) and ioBroker will add them to the Object Tree. You can now use a tool like MQTT.fx to update a Command Topic and see your cameras response in the Status Topic in ioBroker:

INSTAR MQTT for ioBroker

Alternatively, you can edit the RAW Command Topic - that you added following our ioBroker Guide - directly inside the ioBroker Object Tree and trigger an updated, signaled by the status update immediately after:

INSTAR MQTT for ioBroker

You are now able to use any event inside ioBroker to update your camera settings. As well as, using updates in camera settings to toggle states in ioBroker.

Broker Mode

If you operate the MQTT Adapter in Server/broker mode:

INSTAR MQTT for ioBroker

Make sure that the prefix field is left empty, you check the option to publish topics if their value changed and set the Quality-of-Service to 1 - At least once:

INSTAR MQTT for ioBroker

This time we have to configure our camera to connect to the external broker (ioBroker):

INSTAR MQTT for ioBroker

And everything should now work like it did with the client mode.

Note: In mode the Status Topics will also be resolved to their RAW Value. So instead of seeing a value of {"val":"1"} you will have to work with the raw value 1:

INSTAR MQTT for ioBroker