MQTT Node Monitor for Meshtastic

Overview

This program connects to an MQTT broker to monitor messages from Meshtastic nodes. It displays the data in a terminal-based interface, providing both a summary of the last message from each node and a detailed table of all messages. The program uses color-coded dots to indicate the age of the last message, making it easy to see the freshness of the data at a glance.

Features

• Real-time Monitoring: Continuously listens to an MQTT topic and processes messages as they arrive.
• Alias Mapping: Converts node IDs to human-readable names using an alias map.
• Message Age Indication: Uses colored dots to indicate how recent each message is, with colors ranging from green (very recent) to black (older than 2 hours).
• Configurable: All MQTT settings and node configurations are managed via a configuration file (config.py).

Requirements

This program requires Python 3.x. You will also need to install the following Python packages:

• paho-mqtt: For connecting to and interacting with the MQTT broker.
• termcolor: For printing colored text in the terminal.
• tabulate: For formatting data into a nice-looking table.

Installation of Required Packages

You can install the required packages using pip:

pip install paho-mqtt termcolor tabulate

Configuration

The program relies on a configuration file (config.py) to specify MQTT settings, alias mappings, and color mappings. Below is an example of what your config.py should look like:

# Define MQTT settings
MQTT_BROKER = "your_mqtt_broker_address"
MQTT_PORT = 8883
MQTT_TOPIC = "your/mqtt/topic/#"
MQTT_USERNAME = "your_mqtt_username"
MQTT_PASSWORD = "your_mqtt_password"

# SSL Usage
USE_SSL = True

# Alias mapping for node IDs to human-readable names
ALIAS_MAP = {
    "!node1id": "Node 1",
    "!node2id": "Node 2",
    # Add more node IDs and corresponding aliases here
}

# Color mapping for aliases
COLOR_MAP = {
    "Node 1": "yellow",
    "Node 2": "cyan",
    # Add more aliases and corresponding colors here
}

# Fields to ignore in the message display
IGNORE_FIELDS = ['from', 'to', 'type', 'id', 'timestamp', 'node_id']

Explanation of Configuration Parameters

• MQTT_BROKER: The address of your MQTT broker.
• MQTT_PORT: The port used by your MQTT broker (default for MQTT over SSL is 8883).
• MQTT_TOPIC: The MQTT topic to subscribe to (wildcards can be used to subscribe to multiple topics).
• MQTT_USERNAME: Your MQTT username.
• MQTT_PASSWORD: Your MQTT password.
• USE_SSL: Boolean value to indicate if SSL should be used.
• ALIAS_MAP: A dictionary mapping node IDs to human-readable names.
• COLOR_MAP: A dictionary mapping node aliases to colors for terminal display.
• IGNORE_FIELDS: List of fields in the MQTT message that should be ignored in the display.

Running the Program

To run the program, simply execute the Python script in your terminal:

python meshmqttmonitor.py

Ensure that the config.py file is in the same directory as your script. The file config.py.txt is provided as an example.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.