Reliable Image Notifications for Smart Home Security with MQTT

Internet of Things (IoT) applications utilize low-powered battery operated devices and reliable event notifications depend on low-power messages from the sensors node to the server and vice versa over bandwidth constrained unreliable channels. Publish/subscribe communications protocols play an important part in such low-powered device communications with MQTT protocol being most prevalent for such deployments. These protocols have enabled IoT applications such as smart home, fleet management, oil pipelines and space exploration that heavily depend on reliable communications. This paper investigates utilization of MQTT protocol for a smart home security system. A Raspberry Pi implementation detects an intrusion event using a passive infrared sensor triggering an image capture which is then communicated to the subscribed client for countermeasures. Results for power consumption and data transfer are provided that help understand the behaviour with different service qualities.