Testers for new MQTT plugin device wanted

siclark · Post by **siclark** » Sun Mar 22, 2026 9:22 am

I’m trialling something a bit crazy for automated support for devices that are controlled through mqtt (not zigbee2mqtt) and looking for testers where you might currently use shims and/or be missing some functionality.

CliveS · Post by **CliveS** » Sun Mar 22, 2026 11:11 am

What sort of MQTT devices are you thinking of controlling?

berkinet · Post by **berkinet** » Sun Mar 22, 2026 12:55 pm

siclark wrote: ↑Sun Mar 22, 2026 9:22 am I’m trialling something a bit crazy for automated support for devices that are controlled through mqtt (not zigbee2mqtt) and looking for testers where you might currently use shims and/or be missing some functionality.

siclark · Post by **siclark** » Sun Mar 22, 2026 1:01 pm

CliveS wrote:What sort of MQTT devices are you thinking of controlling?

Anything at all. Where users have had to manually set up individual devices with shim devices before, that was amazingly flexible but could be complicated.

I’m looking to see how easy it is to create custom plugins in an automated way to cover devices so that each user of the same device can download a plugin rather than having to each setup their own shim devices.

racarter · Post by **racarter** » Tue Mar 24, 2026 8:43 am

Happy to help. I use MQTT to monitor and control a solar inverter via Solar Assistant, and to receive status updates from Hubitat and HA.

siclark · Post by **siclark** » Tue Mar 24, 2026 12:24 pm

This is the plugin and the readme briefly explains the process.

https://github.com/simons-plugins/mqtt-device-sniffer

But the concept is to automate the data sourcing of a new device and the AI generation of a plugin using the Claude Indigo skill in one process.

The above plugin grabs the mqtt data, either one off if data is retained on broker or leave it running and activate device to grab it live.
It then passs this as an issue, scrubbed of personal data, to GitHub.
Another repo which contains the Claude Indigo skill with details of the indigo object model and basic scaffolding of a plugin and how to build an mqtt based plugin then automatically runs a workflow that builds the plugin, runs code review to validate against the IOM and other guidelines then when passes publishes this to a new repo ready for user testing

Definitely a POC and the UAT is manual for now but could be automated too to get to a working plugin.

Clearly some support and cost issues to resolve but starting with does it work.

CliveS · Post by **CliveS** » Tue Mar 24, 2026 4:28 pm

Simon, I don't think I have permission to your Device Factory

MQTT Device Sniffer Error Submission failed (HTTP 502): {"error":"GitHub API error: GitHub API error (401): {\r\n \"message\": \"Bad credentials\",\r\n \"documentation_url\": \"https://docs.github.com/rest\",\r\n \"status\": \"401\"\r\n}","code":"GITHUB_ERROR"}

siclark · Post by **siclark** » Tue Mar 24, 2026 4:33 pm

Strange. I’ll have a look. But it actually posts to the issue via a relay that has my PAT in it so that it doesn’t require anyone to have a GitHub account to keep the process very simple.

siclark · Post by **siclark** » Tue Mar 24, 2026 4:48 pm

Should work now.

CliveS · Post by **CliveS** » Tue Mar 24, 2026 5:25 pm

different error

24 Mar 2026 at 23:20:23
MQTT Device Sniffer Submitting device profile for 'Qashqai_Charger_Plug-3c8a1fecfc84'...
MQTT Device Sniffer Error Submission failed (HTTP 502): {"error":"GitHub API error: GitHub API error (422): {\"message\":\"Validation Failed\",\"errors\":[{\"message\":\"body is too long (maximum is 65536 characters)\",\"value\":null,\"resource\":\"Issue\",\"field\":\"body\",\"code\":\"invalid\"}],\"documentation_url\":\"https://docs.github.com/rest/issues/iss ... THUB_ERROR"}

siclark · Post by **siclark** » Wed Mar 25, 2026 1:40 am

You have a device with a lot more data than I tested with.. I have cut it off the raw data off at GitHub issue max length, so will fit now. The actual topics and field types are small.. there was just some example data to help it work with.

Can you try one more time.

CliveS · Post by **CliveS** » Wed Mar 25, 2026 11:41 am

25 Mar 2026 at 17:31:04
MQTT Device Sniffer ============================================================
MQTT Device Sniffer MQTT Device Sniffer — Captured Data
MQTT Device Sniffer ============================================================
MQTT Device Sniffer Device: Qashqai_Charger_Plug-3c8a1fecfc84 (shelly)
MQTT Device Sniffer Root Topic: shellies
MQTT Device Sniffer Captured: 1463 messages across 52 topics
MQTT Device Sniffer Duration: 60s

25 Mar 2026 at 17:33:22
MQTT Device Sniffer Submitting device profile for 'Qashqai_Charger_Plug-3c8a1fecfc84'...
MQTT Device Sniffer Device profile submitted successfully! Track progress: https://github.com/simons-plugins/indig ... y/issues/5

Not sure what happens next but hope this helps

siclark · Post by **siclark** » Wed Mar 25, 2026 12:14 pm

Hi. . I check then kick off the automated workflow. This is for a custom plugin for a single device, so if you want this for the Qashqui plug then you need to set the root topic at that level not just shellies.
It might be an unexciting plugin, but the test of concept still works.

https://github.com/simons-plugins/indig ... y/issues/5

Indigo Domotics