I don¡¯t get why you are putting the board id as part of the topic string. MQTT doesn¡¯t care about this all for general control of the layout excluding DCC. You the user tell what boards or ¡°nodes¡± what topics subscribe and publish too. This multiple boards can tell JMRI to change a state of a turnout ?or whatever.?
This is is a great conversation and I agree with what most are saying. I do however think we need to apply the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) method and that is flexible for layout control. MQTT is lightweight, flexible, powerful, and is easy to use. It works across multiple different systems at the same time without problems. This is why it is used in home automation.
Maybe the easy way is get rid of the MQTT connect ion in JMRI and those of use that want to use it use NodeRed to get or post to the socket for MQTT to create a gateway. This way people can do whatever they want.
We in model railroading need to pay attention to things like this because it will allow people better control of their layouts at a fraction of the cost. Buy some ESP8266 boards or whatever to control the layout turnouts, signals, blocks, lights, etc and use mqtt to control with JMRI.?
Chris
