I do have a system, that is using a mqtt broker as central state hub (it is an EV Charging station).
The software used in there is quite unique and open source, as well as getting frequent updates.
When I try out a beta version, things sometimes get messed up/unexpected.
While the number of topics used is quite large but the debug log in the EV station is quite small, I thought of ...
a solution to continously record every topic change (maybe keeping the log for a 24-36hrs, not more)
..and when things get wrong (often only discoverd later throughout the day), try and find/evaluate the state/topic change by some way of inspecting/replaying the log (in a nice UI).
I thought of storing things in an influx DB and then finding a way to present the information in a nice UI, when rolling over/replaying the timeline.
Any Ideas, hints, pointers are very welcome!
Would it be good enough just to log it to a file? Then you could use a text editor to examine it. This command will generate timestamps with topic and values which may be helpful. You could just redirect this to a file. mosquitto_sub -t "some/topic/#" -h mqtt_broker_ip -v | perl -pe 'print scalar(localtime()), " ";'
Thank you for your fast response.
I thought about this as well, but I am a visual senses guy and sometimes you want to see events happening in context of the whole system.
Is there a feature available somewhere that would present things in a graph/tree?
The system is build on/comprises of about 270 mqtt topics.
Every data point (based on the time when some topic(s) changed could (re-)render the graph with the changed topics highlighted....maybe even two graphs side-by-side (before & actual time-step examined?)
...I know and use mqtt explorer...wonderful tool...and it offers a tree view, but only a "live mode".
When being connected, you can see topics flash/light up that get updated.
But as everything is happening so fast, navigation between topics and inspecting them is a challenge.
Also there is no "freeze frame" mode....
Hence I am thinking of storing the data in a DB and then navigating along, maybe in a tree view simlilar or enhanced (like displaying the topic value alongside the topic in the tree) to what mqtt explorer does..
I totally agree, it is a very, very nice tool when the use case is debugging live, including the ability to stop/pause monitoring.
My Use Case is that I want to "debug/analyse" after the fact...sometimes many hours later.
I am not the developer but a (Beta-)User so the basic use case is not testing but using a product, hence the wish to record the events and the ability to "replay"/view them later.
Maybe something like a hierachical map/tree is something that would work.
I see each point in time as a snappshot of the topic-tree...how can I visualize it?
Is there for example something in the influx/grafana ecosystem that could do that?
My Google foo just spat this out: https://cambridge-intelligence.com/keylines/features/ looks nice but not open.
