qingping air monitor lite and mqtt and parsing json ...

[Dr__Bob]

Hi Guys (and Gals, of course!),

I have a Qingping AirMonitor Lite that can be set up to emit MQTT messages.  Great!  It took a while with many trials and errors, but it is now functioning, and mosquitto_sub shows a typical message:
qingping/MAC/up {"type":"17","id":1756,"need_ack":0,"mac":"MAC","timestamp":1764173842,"sensorData":[{"timestamp":{"value":1764173700},"temperature":{"value":22.56},"humidity":{"value":45.07},"co2":{"value":635},"pm25":{"value":1},"pm10":{"value":3},"battery":{"value":100}}]}

The topic is "qingping/MAC/up" and the message is clearly formatted as json.  So, now to get the relevant data points (pm25, pm10, co2 at a minimum) into weewx.  It looks to me like Rich Bell's  WeeWX-MQTTSubscribe could work, but I'm stymied by the (too?) many layers of the json.  Why the Qingping folks didn't just code the message as {"type":"17","pm25":1,"co2":635 ...} I don't know.  Anyway, type=17 is what I need to parse.  There are other types, but they just contain configuration data (such as wifi SSID, etc).  I *think* I need something along the lines of:

[MQTTSubscribeService]    
    [[message_callback]]
        # The 'type' of the message content.
        type = json
    [[topics]]
        # The WeeWX unit_system of the incoming data.
        unit_system = METRIC
        # The topic(s) of interest.
        [[[qingping/MAC/up]]]
            # This identifies a field, 'type', whose value is appended to every field in the current MQTT message.
            # For additional information see, https://github.com/bellrichm/WeeWX-MQTTSubscribe/wiki/Configuring-additional-options#msg_id_field
            msg_id_field = type
          [[[[sensorData_17]]]]

But then I don't know how to continue.  Do I just keep "punching" down and do something like
             [[[[[pm25]]]]]
               [[[[[[value]]]]]]]
                  name = pm2_5
or something similar or something completely different?

TIA!!!!
Bob

[vince]

https://github.com/bellrichm/WeeWX-MQTTSubscribe/wiki/json-example 

[bell...@gmail.com]

Expanding a bit on what Vince wrote:

A more readable version of your MQTT payload is

{

    “type”: “17”,

The sensor data is an array, so you want to follow this example

https://github.com/bellrichm/WeeWX-MQTTSubscribe/wiki/json-example#json-message-with-array

You might also want to learn about running MQTTSubscribe stand-alone. Specifically in simulator mode, https://github.com/bellrichm/WeeWX-MQTTSubscribe/wiki/Simulator-mode. This will allow you to run MQTTSubscribe without impact your production WeeWX installation. This should make it easier to figure out the necessary MQTTSubscribe configuration.

rich

[Robert Clare]

Thanks,

By the time I got this from you, Rich, I had already figured out from Vince’s email that I was dealing with an array (with one element) of nested data points.  So I did:

[MQTTSubscribeService]

    enable = true 

    stop_on_validation_errors = true

    binding = archive

    host = localhost

    log = false

    port = 1883

[[topics]]

        unit_system = US

         [[[message]]]

                type = json

        [[[qingping/mac/up]]]

            subscribe = True

            ignore = true

            [[[[sensorData]]]]

                ignore = False   

               [[[[[subfields]]]]] 

                 [[[[[[data]]]]]]

                  [[[[data_co2_value]]]]

                    ignore=false

                    name = co2

                  [[[[data_pm25_value]]]]

                    ignore=false

                    name = pm2_5

                  [[[[data_pm10_value]]]]

                    ignore=false

                    name = pm10_0

This seems to work, as simulate mode gives me stuff like this in the log file:

2025-11-26 18:10:09 DEBUG (Service) MessageCallbackProvider data-> incoming topic: qingping/mac/up, QOS: 0, retain: 0, payload: b'{"type":"17","id":2979,"need_ack":0,"mac":"mac","timestamp":1764209379,"sensorData":[{"timestamp":{"value":1764208800},"temperature":{"value":24.9},"humidity":{"value":40.85},"co2":{"value":640},"pm25":{"value":0},"pm10":{"value":0},"battery":{"value":100}}]}'

2025-11-26 18:10:09 DEBUG (Service) TopicManager data-> incoming qingping/mac/up: co2: 640.0, pm2_5: 0.0, pm10_0: 0.0

2025-11-26 18:14:59 DEBUG (Service) TopicManager data-> outgoing qingping/mac/up: co2: 640.0, dateTime: 1764209409.6722662, pm2_5: 0.0, pm10_0: 0.0, usUnits: 1

2025-11-26 18:14:59 DEBUG (Service) TopicManager data-> outgoing accumulated qingping/mac/up: co2: 640.0, dateTime: 1764209700.0, pm2_5: 0.0, pm10_0: 0.0, usUnits: 1

2025-11-26 18:14:59 DEBUG (Service) data-> final record is 2025-11-26 18:15:00 PST (1764209700): co2: 640.0, dateTime:  a1764209700.0, interval: 15.0, pm2_5: 0.0, pm10_0: 0.0, usUnits: 1

2025-11-26 18:14:59 INFO (Service) Archive Record 6 of 10 is: 2025-11-26 18:15:00 PST (1764209700) co2: 640.0, dateTime: 1764209700.0, interval: 15.0, pm2_5: 0.0, pm10_0: 0.0, usUnits: 1

So, it’s picking up the mqtt messages and parsing them correctly, spitting out archive records!  Thank you Vince and Rich for your help.

Next up:  moving to the extended schema, since I’ve been running the old wview version, but now I’ll need pm2_5, pm10_0 and co2 at least.

Cheers,

Bob

On Nov 26, 2025, at 16:24, bell...@gmail.com <bell...@gmail.com> wrote:



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