MQTT Sparkplug B

Eclipse Protobuf IIoT MQTT profile Sparkplug B.

Definition

Sparkplug B v3.0 (published August 2022) covers: Birth Certificate (NBIRTH, DBIRTH), Death Certificate (NDEATH, DDEATH), Data (NDATA, DDATA), Commands (NCMD, DCMD). Topic structure: spBv1.0/{group_id}/{message_type}/{edge_node_id}/{device_id}. Google Protobuf payload instead of JSON for ~50% size reduction. Adoption: Inductive Automation Ignition (~120000 deployments), Cirrus Link MQTT Engine, AWS IoT Greengrass Sparkplug.

Origin

Sparkplug B specification published by Eclipse Foundation 2016 ; v3.0 published August 2022 ; ISO/IEC 20922 underlying MQTT v3.1.1.

Example in context

A Tesla Gigafactory publishes ~50000 metrics/sec from Allen Bradley PLCs via Sparkplug B NDATA messages ; Azure IoT Hub cloud bandwidth consumption reduced 60% vs JSON.

Related terms

• MQTT broker — transport protocol.