Marty, I see this a lot - folk shying away from MQTT because they "dont know it".
It is super simple and most definitely worth taking 5 minites to have a play. Seriously, if you have any knowledge of computers and programming, you will pretty much grasp the basics of MQTT in 5 minutes.
check out this post I did for someone else.
Once you have the basic understanding of publish (sending something) and subscribe (receiving something), it is worth reading up on MQTT to understand the finer points (like topic naming conventions etc) but I just want to say, dont shy away - it really is very very simple to utilise.
