shiftr.io is a unique web service that makes working with MQTT a breeze. Using a graph-based real-time visualization, debugging MQTT messages becomes very easy:
The website of shiftr.io—the network in the background is an actual representation of an MQTT network; the text and numbers in this image are intentionally illegible
As you have probably noticed in previous chapters, I am not a huge fan of proprietary, closed web services, mainly because of the lock-in effect. If you create an application that uses a certain web service, in most cases, you are tied to it. Your code will only work if the web service is online, and if you decide to move to an alternative web service provider, you often have to put in a lot of effort to make your code work on the other platform. For platforms that are built around MQTT, this effort is minimized...