RTI AD8X Amplifier and MQTT bridge

Setup, Configuration and Use Beginners
1

So I finally made some time to finish integrating my RTI multizone home amplifier via a custom python bridge created by a homeassistant contributor. The bridge uses paho-mqtt client to connect to a pretty much out of the box mosquitto installation on openhabian (rpi 4, OH 5.2.1 current) and the MQTT binding/bridge thing.

I’m still figuring out MQTT but the setup works really nicely. I used an rpi3 I borrowed from it’s core job as a libreelec streaming box. But I’d like to return it to that job now that I’ve worked the bugs out. So my question is are there any downsides to setting up the paho-mqtt client and python bridge on my existing openhabian installation? Anything already installed in openhabian distribution that I would be better off making use of for either the MQTT client or python?

Thanks in advance.

2

There really isn’t enough information here to really answer the question. We don’t know what else you have running on the openHABian machine.

In general the sorts of conflicts that could happen include:

  • different conflicting versions of Python - use a venv
  • port already in use: you’ll have to figure out how to move one of the services to another port
  • running out of resources: RAM, CPU, SD card space, etc.

Over all, a small Python service that uses MQTT is unlikely to cause any problems.

3

Thanks rlkoshak, always appreciate your advice. Understood on the lack of detail, I meant it as a more generic best practices/arch type of question. But to add a bit more on my config as a rough order of magnitude…

  • OH5.2.1 current/openhabian running on rpi4/4gig ram and using zram and a 64 gig sd card
  • nothing additional other than Mosquitto now installed locally as MQTT broker
  • python bridge is using venv now on my test rpi so I’d use it also on the OH rpi
  • 121 things across a variety of bindings, no issues with current capacity as far as I’m aware of, no swapping going on, cpu generally in the 15% range
  • the only dependencies for the bridge that I’d need to install on my OH rpi locally are paho-mqtt and psutil library ( haven’t checked, wouldn’t be surprised if they are already installed by default on openhabian)

I’m nearly due for my once every couple years SD card replacement, perhaps I’ll redo a current backup and give the local bridge a try before hand and see how it works.

Cheers

4

Which would only be installed in the venv so would have no impact on anything else.

In that case, so long as the python service isn’t using one of the ports that openHAB or Mosquitto use there should be no problem running it on the openHABian machine.