py-iot-project

A Python IoT mockup

A simple application that imitates the publish-subscribe model of IoT sensors.

Components

• Broker: Mosquitto is used as a message broker to interpret MQTT traffic to allow mocked publish/subscribes.
• subscriber.py: Subscribes to a set of topics, in this case, deviceID/status. Once read, devices.json is updated with the last timestamp. devices.json here serves as a local database. The subscriber also logs this information to the console.
• publisher.py: Publishes anywhere between 1 or 5 topics on random.
• web.py: Simple page in Flask that reads from the json file and displays device information.

Usage

• Set up a python virtual environment and run: make install to install all requirements.
• Run mosquitto, subscriber.py, and then publisher.py
• Logs are generated in subscriber.py
• Run web.py, and visit http://127.0.0.1:5000/ to see a minimal UI showing status.

Current Assumptions

• Only dynamic field on device state is: Online/Offline status.
• Software version remains static.

Future improvements

• Switch from file based status updates to sqlite/duckDB, or any other lightweight database.
• Build a simple UI with fastAPI/django that reads off of the DB to show device list and status.
• Save application logs to a physical file.
• Understand envryption standards.