MQTT Debugging on Ai-M61-32S-Kit (EMQX + Remote LED Control)

[Yaqing-Zheng]

What you'll learn

In this tutorial you will set up a local EMQX MQTT broker, connect an Ai-M61-32S-Kit to it, and control the on-board LED remotely by publishing MQTT messages — a complete end-to-end MQTT debugging walkthrough.

Prerequisites

• Ai-Thinker Ai-M61-32S-Kit development board
• Ai-M6X SDK environment set up
• EMQX (free MQTT broker) downloaded

---

Step 1 — Download & Start EMQX

1. Download emqx-5.3.2-windows-amd64.zip and extract it.
2. Open a terminal in the extracted directory and start EMQX:

./emqx/bin/emqx start

(On Windows the command is usually bin\emqx start.)

---

Step 2 — EMQX Default Ports

EMQX 5.x exposes these ports by default:

Port	Purpose
1883	MQTT (plain TCP)
8883	MQTT over SSL
8083	MQTT over WebSocket
18083	EMQX Dashboard (web console)

---

Step 3 — Log in to the EMQX Dashboard

Open your browser and visit:

http://localhost:18083/

(Replace localhost with your actual IP if accessing remotely.)

Default credentials:

Field	Value
Username	admin
Password	public

---

Step 4 — Create an MQTT Client Account

The device needs credentials to connect. In the Dashboard, create a client account:

username: test
password: test

💡 Tip: create two accounts — one for the device, and one for you to publish/subscribe from the Dashboard during testing.

---

Step 5 — Configure the Device

In the SDK example, edit the configuration to match your environment:

• Change the Wi-Fi SSID & password to your own network.
• Change the MQTT username & password to the account you just created (they are hard-coded in the example).

---

Step 6 — Flash and Run

Flash the firmware to the board. After booting, the board connects to Wi-Fi and then to EMQX. In the EMQX Dashboard you should see the device listed as connected.

---

Step 7 — Remote LED Test 🎉

From the EMQX Dashboard, publish a message to the LED control topic:

• The example subscribes to a topic that turns the LED on/off.
• Publish an "on" message → the board's UART prints the received data and the LED turns on.

(Note: the LED starts on by default in the example, so the author first sent "off" — otherwise it wouldn't feel like a proper "lighting ceremony" 💡.)

---

Done! 🎊

You've completed a full MQTT loop: EMQX broker → Ai-M61-32S-Kit → remote LED control.

---

Questions?

• ❓ Stuck on EMQX or MQTT config? Post in the Q&A category.
• 🙌 Built an MQTT project? Share it in Show and tell.

📖 Original (Chinese) tutorial: Ai-M61-32S-Kit 开发板 MQTT 调试

---

Contributed by wxlinus · Curated by the Ai-Thinker community team

[bzhou830]

cool!