Refrigerated cases, HVAC, electronic shelf labels, digital signage, people counters and self-checkouts each come with their own portal. ConnectMQ puts them on one MQTT broker, so facilities, store operations and IT see every store in one place and act before shoppers notice.
No card required
PUBLISH retail/store-0412/refrigeration/case-07/temp
{"air":-17.8,"setpoint":-20,"defrost":false,"door_open_s":0,"ts":"2026-10-22T06:48:10Z"}QoS 1 · TLS 8883 · PUBACK
A chain of a few hundred stores runs a refrigeration controller, a BMS, an ESL base station, a signage CMS and a fleet of self-checkouts — each from a different vendor with its own cloud. A freezer case that is warming up or a lane that froze is found by staff or shoppers, and head office cannot compare one store with the next.
An edge gateway in each store reads refrigeration controllers and rooftop HVAC over Modbus or BACnet; signage players, people counters and self-checkouts report their own status.
Everything is published under retail/{store}/{system}/{device}, with each device’s current status retained and the store gateway’s Last Will set.
Threshold rules flag a case above its set point, a door left open or a lane offline; the live dashboard shows every store, aisle and checkout.
Facilities raises a refrigeration ticket in the CMMS, store ops reacts to footfall peaks, IT restarts a signage player or changes an HVAC schedule remotely.
A private broker instance for your chain; each store gateway connects with its own credentials and a per-topic ACL for its own store, such as retail/store-0412/#.
Store broadband and 4G backup drop out. Last Will marks a store offline at once, and persistent sessions with QoS 1 deliver queued commands when it reconnects.
Config changes and remote actions travel on their own command topics, and ACLs decide which systems are allowed to send them.
Retained status means a new dashboard, an analytics job or a technician’s app sees the current state of every store the moment it subscribes.
retail/store-0412/refrigeration/case-07/temp
retail/store-0412/hvac/rtu-2/state (retained)
retail/store-0412/sco/lane-3/status (retained)
retail/store-0412/counter/entrance-a/footfall
retail/store-0412/gateway/status (retained)Most refrigeration controllers and rooftop units speak Modbus or BACnet. A small edge gateway or industrial PC in the store reads them and publishes to ConnectMQ over TLS; newer controllers and BMS platforms can often publish MQTT directly.
Yes. Each store needs only a gateway connection or a handful of device connections, with topics and ACLs per store. Start a pilot on the Free plan with no card, then move to Basic or Scale as you roll out, without changing your code.
ESL systems usually run on their vendor’s own base stations and server. MQTT fits around them: the ESL server can publish base station and label health, and your pricing system can publish price change events that the ESL integration subscribes to.
Start on the Free plan — no card required — connect your first devices today and upgrade when you go live.
