Building powerful industrial IoT systems with MQTT Sparkplug
Share industrial data from OT to IT
MQTT Sparkplug is an interoperability protocol ideal 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 factory operations.
Why choose HiveMQ for MQTT Sparkplug?
HiveMQ is a fully Sparkplug compatible broker as defined by the latest Sparkplug 3.0 specification. Sparkplug allows smart manufacturing companies to get the most out of their IIoT deployments by adding additional context to MQTT data. With MQTT 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.
Industrial IoT architecture with HiveMQ and MQTT Sparkplug
Sparkplug is based on MQTT and adds capabilities like MQTT topic namespace, data model and structure, extensible process variable payload, and MQTT state management which are very important for IIoT and Industry 4.0 use cases. In the architecture below, an MQTT broker collects data from Sparkplug-enabled devices, sensors, and systems, and shares that data bidirectionally with IT systems including MES, Historians, analytics platforms and other applications.

HiveMQ and Sparkplug 3.0 compliance
The Sparkplug Working Group launched the Sparkplug 3.0 specification, introducing a technical compatibility kit (TCK) which allows vendors to certify themselves in support of Sparkplug compliance. HiveMQ provides the MQTT platform required for any Sparkplug architecture with these capabilities:

MQTT compliant
Reliable and scalable
Seamless integration
Flexible deployment

Sparkplug module available in HiveMQ platform
- Convert Sparkplug data to JSON without writing code
- Convert Protobuf to JSON for easy integration with IT applications
- Selectively route information to data pipelines and minimize data clutter
Sparkplug key resources
MQTT Sparkplug whitepaper
Sparkplug essentials
Obtaining Sparkplug 3.0 certification
Sparkplug eBook
Overcoming MQTT Sparkplug challenges for smarter manufacturing blog
Sending filtered MQTT Sparkplug messages to MongoDB blog
What’s new in Sparkplug® v3.0.0
MQTT Sparkplug webinar
OPC UA vs. Sparkplug whitepaper
How Sparkplug improves OEE
Sparkplug community
