How do we use nrf9160DK with google cloud MQTT Pub/Sub?

RE: How do we use nrf9160DK with google cloud MQTT Pub/Sub?

Carl Richard — Thu, 23 Dec 2021 12:39:51 GMT

Hi, Jeffrey!

Great stuff! I will have a look at our version as well over the holidays and see if I can updated it to work with newer versions of the SDK.

One thing that you should be aware of when connecting to GCloud. The JWT must be updated every 24 hours, according to the specified time limits. I can't see that the google_iot_mqtt sample does this, it should be updated.

Have a merry Christmas!

Best regards,
Carl Richard

RE: How do we use nrf9160DK with google cloud MQTT Pub/Sub?

Jeffrey Urban — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 14:30:29 GMT

I moved the example to a new repo github.com/.../sdk-nrf.

RE: How do we use nrf9160DK with google cloud MQTT Pub/Sub?

Jeffrey Urban — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 00:37:39 GMT

As an alternative solution, I adapted the Zephyr google_iot_mqtt example to work on my nRF9160-DK dev kit with nRF Connect SDK v1.71. and modem firmware v1.31. See this pull request. Instructions are in the README.rst.

RE: How do we use nrf9160DK with google cloud MQTT Pub/Sub?

Jeffrey Urban — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 15:02:01 GMT

Trying the code from nrf_to_gcloud_ncs1.5.0.zip on nRF Connect v1.7.1 with my nRF9610 DK, Zephyr reboots after "Establishing LTE link" and before "Initializing modem info". Sometimes it gets a little further, and crashes after "Initializing modem info".

RE: How do we use nrf9160DK with google cloud MQTT Pub/Sub?

Carl Richard — Tue, 16 Mar 2021 06:55:43 GMT

Hi again!

No problem! Glad to hear that it works for you and that you got the subscription in order as well.

Please reach out if you face any other issues.

Best regards,
Carl Richard

RE: How do we use nrf9160DK with google cloud MQTT Pub/Sub?

Yuyanton — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 17:52:28 GMT

Hi Carl Richard!

Sorry for the delayed reply

We had to temporarily set this on hold while working with other things. We have finally got back to testing with google cloud, and your sample is working fine! 😄.

We have also enabled subscription on the default command-topic from google devices. We did this by running this function on the received data:

int mqtt_readall_publish_payload(structmqtt_client *client, uint8_t *buffer, size_t length)

Thank you again for helping us!

Best regards,

Yuyanton

RE: How do we use nrf9160DK with google cloud MQTT Pub/Sub?

Carl Richard — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 14:17:07 GMT

Hi again!

I have a working sample now. If you setup the device according to the blog post (or readme) it should work properly (even with the "old" Root CA). I've disabled topic subscription in the sample as there were some issues with the handling of the received messages, but I believe this is good enough for you to get started.

The sample is tested on version 1.5 of the nRF Connect SDK. The main loop simply publishes data with a timestamp at fixed intervals. I hope this helps you on your way and as always; feedback would be appreciated!

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../nrf_5F00_to_5F00_gcloud_5F00_ncs1.5.0.zip
Best regards,
Carl Richard

RE: How do we use nrf9160DK with google cloud MQTT Pub/Sub?

Carl Richard — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 07:08:43 GMT

Hi again!

Just wanted to pop in and update that I'm working on getting a simple sample up and running now!

Best regards,
Carl Richard

RE: How do we use nrf9160DK with google cloud MQTT Pub/Sub?

Yuyanton — Thu, 25 Feb 2021 16:34:57 GMT

Hi again

We've been trying to port different gcloud projects over the past week, including, but not limited to (ZephyrGoogleIoT and pathfinder), but haven't been able to make it work.

Unfortunately we don't have enough experience to make a proper port of others code. Most of our attempts we don't really know what we are doing.

Something we noticed across the different projects is that the CA certificate varies, but we don't know how it works or how to set it up correctly. That seems to be the issue.
Everything else including JWT used for authenticating device seems to be the same for all the projects.

Would it be possible for you to make a simple example for our use case?

(Connect to Gcloud, publish a message via MQTT from nrf9160dk)

Kind Regards,

Yuyanton

RE: How do we use nrf9160DK with google cloud MQTT Pub/Sub?

Carl Richard — Wed, 17 Feb 2021 14:35:30 GMT

Hi!

1. Great!

2. Understood! Looking through the code now. Does the log provide any meaningful information? I still recommend debugging the code to see where it gets stuck. I've also attached the pathfinder project, which was done on NCS v1.0.0 (i.e. newer) and should be easier to port.

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../pathfinder.zip

Best regards,
Carl Richard

RE: How do we use nrf9160DK with google cloud MQTT Pub/Sub?

Yuyanton — Tue, 16 Feb 2021 16:28:13 GMT

Hi again!

Yes, the LED1 does turn on before gcloud_connect() is called.

We have not tested the gcloud_thread since we have made new changes to our code since the last time we uploaded our zip-file in DevZone.
The changes we've made does not make use of threads but still tries to connect to GCP after we've succesfully run Modem_configure(). This version of our code is based on mqtt_simple. We tried adding what we thought was necessary from gcloud.c.

Attached is our new version of the code.

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../mqtt_5F00_gcloud_5F00_custom.zip

RE: How do we use nrf9160DK with google cloud MQTT Pub/Sub?

Carl Richard — Tue, 16 Feb 2021 15:24:31 GMT

Hi!

Continuing our offline discussion here. I notice two things in your log:
1. The application tries to (seemingly) connect to GCP before the LTE connection is established. This may be because LOG messages are less prioritized than printk. Does LED1 turn on before gcloud_connect(...) is called?
2. The gcloud_thread is not started at all. The code you have based your application on has implemented some changes to how the threads are started, though they are removed in your code. Try to add them again so that the thread is started properly. Alternatively you can uncomment line 72, 73 and 74 in gcloud.c.

Best regards,
Carl Richard

RE: How do we use nrf9160DK with google cloud MQTT Pub/Sub?

Marte Myrvold — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 13:29:46 GMT

Hi,

As of now, we do not have any official updated example where the nRF9160 connects to Google Cloud. The first guide you linked to was a student project, and as such has not been updated. I believe it was built using NCS v0.4.0, so it's very outdated, and you're correct that this causes it to not work. The SDK has changed a lot since that version, so it might not be straightforward to get it to work with a newer version of NCS. Something you can also do is to look at the samples we have in NCS that connects to other cloud services and uses MQTT, such as Simple MQTT and Cloud client, to see how this is done with other cloud services than Google.

You should be able to see whether your device is connected or not in the Google Cloud Platform. When you go to IoT Core -> <your_registry> -> Devices, you should be able to see a list over your devices and when they were last seen. If they haven't been seen yet, you haven't been able to connect to Google Cloud and communicate with it. You can also see active devices under Monitoring in IoT Core. From your log it seems like it wasn't able to connect to Google Cloud. It started connecting, but there's no log that you successfully connected, and it says that you're trying to publish data while not connected.

Best regards,

Marte