Labrador - MQTT broker for router lab environment

Labrador is a simple MQTT broker for a router lab environment. It's at the core of the lab environment.

Features

It has a web dashboard where it'll display the state of the devices in the lab. It gets this state from snooping on the MQTT messages that the devices publish.

The same HTTP server can also be used to serve HTTP objects, such as firmware images, that the devices might need to download.

Usage

Routerunner, when setting physical routers, are given two options:

• What power device to use - POWER_DEVICE
• What storage device to use - STORAGE_DEVICE

Both of these are device IDs. In the labrador MQTT topic hierarchy, these correspond with the following topics:

• lab/power/$POWER_DEVICE
• lab/storage/$STORAGE_DEVICE

Built in power devices

Labrador comes with built-in power devices. These are based on Philips Hue smart plugs and work through the Hue bridge. The package gohue, which is in turn generated out of the openhue api project yaml, is used to control the smart plugs.

Labrador tries to use the HUE_BRIDGE environment variable to connect to the bridge. It also requires the HUE_USERNAME environment variable to connect.

MQTT Topics

General status topisc

lab/status

• anyone is free to post here to update the status of the lab. These would be mostly for human consumption.

{
  "status": "message"
}

Recovery image

The recovery image needs to signal routerunner to synchronize its progress. This is done through the following topics: lab/install/$mac/control when the recovery image is ready to accept the firmware.

{
  "status": "ready for firmware"
}

This should have "reply topic" set to lab/install/$mac/firmware. The response should be:

{
  "firmware": "http://example.com/firmware.bin"
}

Also, when the firmware is done, the recovery image will signal routerunner that it can disable the USB storage. This is done through the following topic: lab/install/$mac/control when the recovery image is ready to reboot.

{
  "status": "ready to reboot"
}

This should have "reply topic" set to lab/install/$mac/response. The response should be:

{
  "status": "usb storage disabled"
}

Power devices

lab/power/$device_name

• status - on state change a message is published to this topic

{
    "power": true
}

• control - messages are published here to control the power state of the device.

{
  "power": true,
  "error": "error message"
}

Note that requests might be posted to this topic. The request itself will then specify where the response should be posted. I recommend lab/power/$device_name/response for this.

Magic storage gadgets -

lab/storage/$device_name

• status - on state change a message is published to this topic

{
  "active": true,
  "images": [
    {
      "source": "image_reference",
      "lun": 0,
      "size": 123456
    }
  ]
}

• control - messages are published here to control the state of the storage gadget

{
  "active": true,
  "images": [
    {
      "reference": "image_reference"
    }
  ]
}

Note that requests might be posted to this topic. The request itself will then specify where the response should be posted. I recommend lab/storage/$device_name/response for this.