The 5Ws (and 1H) of InfluxDB’s Native MQTT Collector

By Jason Myers / Product, Use Cases
Sep 06, 2022

MQTT is a messaging protocol used widely in the IoT space. Its publish/subscribe model is ideal for IoT because multiple devices can send data to a single MQTT broker, which MQTT clients can then access.

The MQTT integration for InfluxDB’s native collector feature is a fast and easy way to create cloud-to-cloud data pipelines.

Here’s the lowdown on using the Native MQTT collector.

Who: Users and companies that rely on MQTT to provide time series data for their applications.

What: The native collector feature provides users the ability to directly ingest data from popular data sources, like MQTT brokers, without the need to do any transformation to InfluxDB’s line protocol or to run a Telegraf agent.

When: The MQTT integration for InfluxDB’s native collector is available now for all paid accounts.

Where: Users and companies that employ cloud-first solutions for their MQTT needs. That includes users that operate their own MQTT broker in the cloud or leverage a cloud service to handle their MQTT brokerage needs.

Why: The native collector is one of several methods that InfluxDB provides for ingesting data. This particular method is ideal for cloud-first systems and applications because these users often lack a good place to install a collection agent, like Telegraf. Instead of running a virtual machine, which adds cost, or building something locally, which adds time, cost, and points of failure to the system, the Native MQTT collector provides a different option.

How: The Native MQTT collector offers a simple, three step configuration process. Users need to configure their MQTT broker, their topic subscriptions, and their parsing rules. Once configured, the native collector begins ingesting data into InfluxDB immediately. This allows you to write clean data to your datastore from the outset, so you can do more with it, faster.

The Native MQTT collector is a no-code solution that enables users to leverage MQTT without the need to build custom code, or to add complexity to cloud-first solutions with additional intermediary technology layers.

For more information, check out the Native Collectors page.