MQTT Sparkplug is an interoperability protocol that works perfectly for smart manufacturing and industrial automation use cases. Sparkplug provides a consistent way for equipment manufacturers and software providers to share contextual data, accelerating the digital transformation of existing operations.
Sparkplug allows IIoT deployments to decouple the data between hardware and software sources. With Sparkplug, new data sources are immediately discoverable to other system components and these sources can become a single source of truth. Sparkplug is fully secured, requiring no open ports for new devices and requiring TLS for all data transport.
HiveMQ is a fully Sparkplug compatible broker as defined by the latest Sparkplug 3.0 specification.
IIoT Architecture with Sparkplug
Sparkplug is based on MQTT and adds capabilities like MQTT topic structure definition, MQTT state management and payload data model definitions which are very important for IIoT and Industry 4.0 use cases.
HiveMQ and Sparkplug 3.0
For smart manufacturing companies to get the best benefit from MQTT, Sparkplug provides additional features like the Topic namespace, Data Model and Structure, Extensible process variable payload, and MQTT state management.
The Sparkplug Working Group launched the Sparkplug 3.0 specification, introducing a Technical Compatibility Kit (TCK) which allows vendors to certify themselves on the support of Sparkplug Compliant features such as:
- Quality of Service(QoS) levels 0 & 1
- "Retain" messages
- Last Will & Testament(LWT)
- Sparkplug Aware features like forwarding certificates, LWT timestamp for death messages, etc.
Once certified, an organization gets listed on the Sparkplug website as a compatible vendor and receives a Sparkplug Compatible logo. More details on the process can be found here.
HiveMQ is fully compatible with the Sparkplug 3.0 specification.
In addition, HiveMQ provides the MQTT broker platform required for any Sparkplug architecture. HiveMQ offers the following capabilities to Sparkplug deployments:
100% compatible with MQTT 3.1.1 and MQTT 5
An MQTT broker for business-critical systems that is reliable and scalable
Easy integration with OT and IT systems with an extension SDK
The ability to deploy on-premise, on Microsoft Azure or AWS, or with HiveMQ Cloud
More Resources
HiveMQ Partners in Sparkplug
HiveMQ is a core part of the Sparkplug Working Group and has been helping define the specifications and the TCK. Here are the other members of the Sparkplug Working Group:
Sparkplug Community
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