NEW FEATURE: Tracking MQTT Client Connections

New feature!

We’ve added a new MQTT topic at :username/clients (where :username is replaced with your username) and a section on the IO Monitor page to track live MQTT client connections. We aren’t doing anything fancy with the data (yet!), so it’s “stateless” / streaming only for now.

What you’ll see if you subscribe to the topic is a JSON object with the connection status, time of event (at), and an object containing information about the client. At this moment it’s only the client’s self-reported MQTT id. For example:

    // on connection
    {"status":"connected","at":"2017-10-24T16:08:38.552Z","client":{"id":"io-mqtt-39dc5a71"}}

    // on disconnectiohn
    {"status":"disconnected","at":"2017-10-24T16:08:40.691Z","client":{"id":"io-mqtt-39dc5a71"}}

We use that bit of data on your IO monitor page to show when clients are connecting and disconnecting in real time.

Using the /clients topic

We’re not yet storing detailed client connection state, we’re just reporting on it live. So how is this useful? The first and easiest way to use the topic is just to track clients as they connect and disconnect and catch funny business before you get throttled. The feed only shows authenticated client connections, so you won’t see failed attempts, but you will be able to track any hardware, software, or browser sessions as they connect and disconnect.

Since the only piece of identifying information that’s sent along with connection updates is the id, we can use that to record which specific clients is doing the [dis]connecting. Most MQTT clients generate a random identifier if one is not specified. So, by setting a custom client ID, we can pass some information through the system to see which device is acting up.

For example, on my home environmental monitor, which is running on an Arduino MKR1000, I can use the Adafruit MQTT Library to manually specify the MQTT client ID I use. Using the Adafruit_MQTT_Client constructor that takes a clientid argument, my code looks like this:

Which shows up on my monitor page with the custom clientid value!

Choosing a client ID value

Now, not just any client ID will do, there are a few guidelines:

1. Stick with printable bytes, anything else won’t be helpful for tracking.
2. Only the first 32 bytes of your clientid will be displayed, so keep the IDs at or under 32 bytes in length. The MQTT v3.1 spec requires that we allow at least 23, but lets us handle more. Internally IO can use more than 32 bytes to track clients, but only the first 32 will be published on the /clients topic.
3. Make sure it’s unique! Only one client with the given ID can be present on the network at a time. A good pattern for creating a client ID might be: your username + a device name + something random. Then you’ll know whether it’s the lamp controller or the weather station that keeps dropping its connection.

This is just a step towards a more complete device tracking / monitoring system, but gives a lot more insight into what’s happening on your IO account. Let us know how you’re using IO or IO+ on the forums or in our Discord chat room

IO Plus, The Adafruit IO Subscription Plan

LIVE NOW We announced it was coming, and now it’s finally here. You can sign up for IO+ from your profile page and check out more details, and screenshots from our previous announcement!

Thank you to all of the beta testers that have been providing feedback to us while we built out a system that you hopefully find easy, useful and fun to use.

Here are the stats for the past week:

* 82.1 million inserts of logged data in the last 7 days
* 30,816 online feeds (105,563 feeds total)

We’re responding to issues you may run into on our Adafruit IO Forum. Please post any issues with as much detail as you can. It definitely helps us out when fixing the bugs.

Also, if you’re still using version 1 of our API, you may want to upgrade to the latest version 2. It has more features, and is generally better designed and easier to use than our previous API. The default for our docs is V2 now as well.

IO Plus, The Adafruit IO Subscription Plan

COMING SOON After a long time in beta testing mode, IO is getting a subscription plan, IO Plus! It’s been in our minds since we started this project a few years ago and “How can I get more feeds?” has been the most frequent and persistent question from people using and interested in IO, which is GREAT! The good news is that we finally have an answer for you. Say hello to IO+!

Here is what’s coming (we have not decided on a date yet!):

1. For a flat $10 per month, you can subscribe to IO+ and get unlimited feeds, unlimited dashboards, and two months of data storage.
2. We will always continue to provide a free plan, but for new subscribers, the free plan will be limited to 5 feeds and everyone on the free plan will be limited to 30 new data points per minute.
3. As a thank you to everyone who’s been with us this far, we’re giving away three months of IO+ free when you subscribe¹. You won’t pay anything unless you keep your subscription after the third month. Additionally, if you have more than 5 feeds when we move to the new account limits, you can keep the extras².
4. No more “Beta” ;)

It’s always been our goal with Adafruit IO to make the best designed Internet of Things platform for makers of all ages and skill levels. We want it to work well with the connected devices and kits we sell and we built it with an open API to make sure it can work with any device that can speak HTTP or MQTT. Additionally, as a business, we need a way to make the service self-sustaining financially, without making it inaccessible to the makers we are trying to serve.

IO+ will provide more functionality at a single flat rate to the people who need it while our continuing free plan will let anyone build a project on IO, whether it’s their first time working with the Internet of Things or their hundredth.

We will keep standing up for everything we’ve said before in our Internet of Things Bill of Rights, whether you’re using IO+ or IO Free. Our platform is built on open technologies and you control your clients and devices. You own your data and you will always be able to decide what is public and what is private. We want to keep building a system that is easier to use for good and harder to use maliciously. We hope you’ll join us!

So that’s the big news, IO+ is coming in the beginning of October. If all goes as planned, it will be available Monday, October 2. Please stop by the IO Forum or our Discord chat server to ask questions or communicate with us. We’d love to hear from you.

Other changes

We’ll also be launching some changes to the IO interface to clean up navigation and make sure you know what’s up with your plan. Since those changes will go live with the IO+ launch, here are some screenshots to give you a preview:

An updated landing page. Way more information and an attractive new design.

We’ve cleaned up the site navigation and made it easier to tell when you’re looking at Adafruit IO and not www.adafruit.com.

All Feeds and Groups are now on a single page. This should make it easier to see how Groups and Feeds are related, and also easier to manage them.

A new account profile page. This one is going to see more work in the coming months, but for now it’s the one-stop screen to see which plan you’re running and to get access to your account settings.

The account download feature has been rebuilt to be more robust and reliable. (this feature has already launched)

There will, of course, be design tweaks as we get closer to launch and we’re always working on the site, so small things will continue to get better.

That’s all … for now!

We’re still hard at work on IO and there’s lots more to come. If you’re already using Adafruit IO, thank you for continuing on this journey with us, and if you haven’t yet signed up, now is a great time :D

¹: The “IO Beta Thank You” coupon is for any user who has had an account since before September 1, 2017 and will be applied automatically at checkout.

²: If you keep your free account after IO+ launches, we’re not going to delete your feeds, but you won’t be able to create new feeds if you already have more than 5, the IO Free plan limit. If you choose to subscribe to IO+ and then cancel, however, your feeds will be dropped back down to 5 after your subscription ends but you will have plenty of time to download all your data before that happens.

We’ll continue to clarify details as we get closer to launching and if you have any questions please stop by the forums and get in touch.

Just remember this is coming soon, we have not set a date yet 🙂

Here are the stats for the past week:

* 81.4 million inserts of logged data in the last 7 days
* 31,742 users
* 27,295 online feeds (94,065 feeds total)

We’re responding to issues you may run into on our Adafruit IO Forum. Please post any issues with as much detail as you can. It definitely helps us out when fixing the bugs.

Also, if you’re still using version 1 of our API, you may want to upgrade to the latest version 2. It has more features, and is generally better designed and easier to use than our previous API. The default for our docs is V2 now as well.