Run the Sensor Data Producer

This guide explains how to run the sensor_data_producer.py script to generate and publish simulated sensor data to an MQTT broker.

Overview

The sensor_data_producer.py script is a Python application that simulates a sensor device. It generates timestamped data packets at a configurable rate and publishes them to a specified MQTT topic. This is useful for testing and demonstrating data pipelines in the TSN sample application.

Prerequisites

Before running the script, ensure you have Python 3 and the paho-mqtt library installed.

pip install paho-mqtt

MQTT Broker Setup

If you do not have an MQTT broker set up, you can quickly run one using Docker. The following command will start an Eclipse Mosquitto MQTT broker on your machine:

cd deterministic-threat-detection/sensor_data_producer
docker run -d \
  --name mqtt-broker \
  --network host \
  -v "$(pwd)/configs/mosquitto.conf:/mosquitto/config/mosquitto.conf:ro" \
  eclipse-mosquitto

Running the Script

Navigate to the deterministic-threat-detection directory and run the script from there. You need to provide the IP address of the machine where the MQTT aggregator is running or assume localhost if –broker is not specified.

cd deterministic-threat-detection/sensor_data_producer
python3 sensor_data_producer.py --broker <MQTT_BROKER_IP>

Replace <MQTT_BROKER_IP> with the actual IP address of your MQTT broker.

Command-Line Arguments

The script supports several command-line arguments to customize its behavior:

Argument	Description	Default Value
--broker	The IP address or hostname of the MQTT broker.	localhost
--port	The port number for the MQTT broker.	1883
--topic	The MQTT topic to publish the sensor data to.	sample/sensor/data
--rate	The rate in Hertz (Hz) at which to publish data.	30

Example

To publish data to a broker at 192.168.1.100 on topic factory/sensors at a rate of 50 Hz, you would use the following command:

python3 sensor_data_producer.py --broker 192.168.1.100 --topic factory/sensors --rate 50