MQTT topic naming for fleet of sensors, conventions that scale
Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2026 11:00 pm
Deploying 50+ sensor nodes for facilities client. Topic naming is going to matter for the next 5 years of dashboards and alerts.
Conventions I am evaluating:
Wildcards work for "all temp in hq": cir01/hq/+/+/+/temp.
IoT veterans: what topic structure did you regret after 2 years of operation? Better patterns?
Conventions I am evaluating:
- flat: sensors/temp_lobby (simple, brittle when scaling)
- hierarchical: site/building/floor/room/sensor (Homie style)
- asset-tagged: sensors/{uuid}/temperature (DB-friendly, opaque)
Wildcards work for "all temp in hq": cir01/hq/+/+/+/temp.
IoT veterans: what topic structure did you regret after 2 years of operation? Better patterns?