Slim down required Homie topics

[davidgraeff]

I thought about the effort and additional memory usage to make an existing MQTT embedded client Homie compatible (in this case ESPeasy). I noticed that Homie actually requires a lot of topics to be implemented.

Why is it required to have "$localip", "$mac", "$fw/name", "$implementation", "$stats" and other attributes.? Can those attributes be marked as "optional" or "recommended" instead?

You have to thing of what a controller essentially needs from a homie device. That is:

• auto-discovery of the device, the nodes, the properties,
• the property types, formats and units,
• the device's name and state.

Everything else can be omitted for a working controller<->device communication. Right now such an implementation would violate the spec though.

[nicola-lunghi]

+1

[ThomDietrich]

I agree and was discussing this with @marvinroger before. We started with #48 but wanted to discuss further optional topics.
Marvin: Wdyt?

[davidgraeff]

Oh. This is a duplicate of #45. Sorry for that.

[ThomDietrich]

Indeed. Let's move the discussion over there then. Would you add your OP and some additional comments over there?