Customizing MQTT Broker in NRF Cloud

[girays]

Hello everyone,

I’m new to the Nordic development ecosystem and currently working on a project to implement a temperature and humidity monitoring system using the nRF9160 as an MQTT client. My goal is to periodically send data to nRF Cloud.

I have a question regarding the MQTT handling on the nRF Cloud side:

Is it possible to customize the MQTT broker in nRF Cloud, particularly in terms of how MQTT messages are parsed? For example, if the connection is lost for an extended period (e.g., 3 hours) and data points accumulate during this downtime, what happens when the connection is restored? If the device sends a large MQTT packet containing all the accumulated data, how does the cloud handle this? I wasn’t able to find any APIs or documentation that address this scenario.

I apologize if this is a basic question—I’m still getting up to speed and want to ensure I understand how this process works.

Thank you in advance for your help!

Best regards,

Giray

[Markus Tacker (he/him)]

Hei,

for this scenario, where you want to sent multiple messages at once, you can use the "bulk" topic: docs.nordicsemi.com/.../Topics.html

[girays]

Hei Markus,

Thank you very much for the insight, this would definitely help me with my project. Do you have any suggestions about the cloud side customization?

[Markus Tacker (he/him)]

The broker cannot be customized.

Can you clarify what customizations you need?

[girays]

I mean not only for the mqtt broker side of the cloud but rather as a whole system of cloud. For instance, adding a similar idea of lambda functions in AWS to trigger a specific event when a temperature exceeds a threshold. My question is can we add code pieces inside cloud and if yes how can I do them? I am asking this to understand the limits of the clouds and to see what I can do with it.

Thank you very much.

[Markus Tacker (he/him)]

nRF Cloud does not support that level of customization (running your own code), however you can forward all messages using the MQTT Bridge (https://docs.nordicsemi.com/bundle/nrf-cloud/page/Devices/MessagesAndAlerts/SetupMessageBridge.html) to the cloud of your choice.

[Markus Tacker (he/him)]

Note that there is also a specific feature for what you describe:

> When a device running an application encounters a trigger condition, it sends an alert to nRF Cloud. An alert is sent, for example, when the temperature exceeds a specified threshold value or the device’s battery level is below a specified value.

https://docs.nordicsemi.com/bundle/nrf-cloud/page/Devices/MessagesAndAlerts/AlertsAndLogs/AlertsOverview.html

You can then monitor the status of these alerts using the REST API:

https://api.nrfcloud.com/v1#tag/Alerts 

[girays]

Thank you Markus for the help.