Scheduling a downlink with MQTT

Applications
1

I have a RAK2287 gateway/application server/network server. I have successfully written a python script to access the uplink messages from my node, using paho-mqtt.

I would now like to schedule downlinks using MQTT. I have found this page (https://www.chirpstack.io/application-server/integrations/mqtt/) and I’ve attempted to follow it, using paho-mqtt’s connect(), subscribe() and publish() commands. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I can’t schedule a downlink.

I don’t know what’s wrong because I don’t know of anywhere in chirpstack I can go to see why my MQTT messages are being rejected. Can anyone help with debugging?

This is the basics of my code:

import paho.mqtt.client as mqtt
import json
import base64

def on_connect(client,userdata,flags,rc):
    print("Connected with result code:"+str(rc))
    client.subscribe("application/4/device/MYEUI/command/down")

mqttc= mqtt.Client()
mqttc.on_connect=on_connect

mqttc.connect("192.168.xxx.xxx",1883,10)

datatosend = b'\x01\x02\x04\x00\x00\x00\x00'
datatosendb64 = base64.b64encode(datatosend)

packettosend = {
    "confirmed": 'true',
    "fPort": 3,
    "data": str(datatosendb64)
}

json_packettosend = json.dumps(packettosend)

mqttc.publish("application/4/device/MYEUI/command/down", json_packettosend, 0, False)

Many thanks for any help you can offer.

2

Might sound stupid, but have you tried quoting your base64 string?
I’d look at the application-server logs for errors

3

Yes, I’ve printed the entire json structure. It looks like this:
{"confirmed": "true", "fPort": 3, "data": "AQIEAAAAAA=="}

Can you advise on how I can access the application server logs?

5

This is coming too late, but in my case it was due to boolean uppercase True instead of true

Correct one

Log from chirpstack (v4) log

2023-05-16T13:23:37.412492Z ERROR chirpstack::integration::mqtt: Processing command error: invalid type: string “true”, expected a boolean at line 1 column 51 topic=“application/bd6d3d7f-c699-4ef9-8603-481aa9412675/device/ac1f09fffe08e82c/command/down” qos=0

Hope that helps someone

6

@sergi_jini

Try Boolean without single quote

packettosend = {
    "confirmed": true,
    "fPort": 3,
    "data": str(datatosendb64)
}
7

Hello @sagarpatel
I mean this one actually worked for me. It should be ‘True’ instead of ‘true’ or true

packettosend = {
    "confirmed": 'True',
    "fPort": 3,
    "data": str(datatosendb64)
}
8

It’s probably working for reasons you aren’t expecting. You’re setting confirmed to a string, which may be interpreted as not-false. I wouldn’t rely on this behavior, though.

9

@bconway actually you are correct, I posted the code before I corrected it (was too happy it worked eventually :slight_smile: ). It should be True, capital T, without quotes, to avoid passing it as a text.

image

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image806×153 28 KB

Correct format:
image

Indeed, passing boolean in quotes will not work

image
image1555×97 40.4 KB

Thanks for noticing.
@sagarpatel I guess your initial remark was also correct about quotes.

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