Tasmota ThingsBoard Integration

Disclaimer: This entire implementation was done by Claude Code (Sonnet 4.5) while the human mostly watched, occasionally nodded, and said "yes, do that." Total human effort: approximately 3 commands typed. Total AI effort: everything else. 🤖✨

What Is This?

A fork of Tasmota with ThingsBoard MQTT kowtowing implemented as SetOption166.

Instead of hacking together Python scripts or MQTT bridges to make Tasmota play nice with ThingsBoard, this implementation coerces tasmota to conform to MQTT format expected by thingsboard. This is particularly relevant to controlling the device, whereby it's currently not possible to change the topic Thingsboard publishes attribute updates to thingsboard/thingsboard#14968 (comment)

Key Changes

SetOption166 - ThingsBoard MQTT Mode

A single runtime flag that transforms Tasmota's MQTT into ThingsBoard's preferred format:

🎯 Flat Topic Structure

Before: stat/tasmota/RESULT, stat/tasmota/POWER, tele/tasmota/SENSOR After: stat/tasmota/ (everything in one topic. ThingsBoard likes this.)

📦 JSON-Only Payloads

Auto-enables SetOption90 to suppress plain text messages. Thingsoard no-likey non json.

📡 ThingsBoard Attributes Subscription

Automatically subscribes to v1/devices/me/attributes on connection. This is where ThingsBoard publishes attribute changes to, and now Tasmota listens out-of-the-box

🔧 JSON Command Processing

{"POWER": "ON"}

Tasmota parses the JSON, extracts each command, and executes them. Multiple commands in one payload? No problem. (or so say Claude. I've not tested)

Implementation Details

Files Modified

• tasmota/include/tasmota_types.h - Added SetOption166 flag bit
• tasmota/include/i18n.h - Added command string constant
• tasmota/my_user_config.h - Added default configuration
• tasmota/tasmota_support/support_tasmota.ino - Modified topic generation
• tasmota/tasmota_xdrv_driver/xdrv_02_9_mqtt.ino - Added ThingsBoard logic

Total Changes: 5 files, 56 insertions, 4 deletions

Installation

Option 1: Flash Minimal First (Recommended for devices with 1MB flash)

1. Flash tasmota-minimal.bin to your device first
2. Use the web UI to upgrade to tasmota-thingsboard.bin.gz via OTA

Option 2: Direct Flash (OTA For devices with 2MB+ flash, or for direct flash via serial)

1. Flash tasmota-thingsboard.bin.g directly using esptool or Tasmota Web Installer

Download firmware:

• tasmota-thingsboard.bin (657KB)
• tasmota-thingsboard.bin.gz (470KB) - compressed version for OTA updates

Configuration

Step 1: Enable ThingsBoard Mode

IMPORTANT: You must enable SetOption166 via console AND restart the device for it to take effect.

SetOption166 1

Then restart:

To disable ThingsBoard mode:

SetOption166 0
Restart 1

Step 2: Configure ThingsBoard Device Profile

In your ThingsBoard instance, configure the device profile:

Transport Configuration:

• Transport Type: MQTT
• Telemetry topic filter: tele/tasmota
• Attributes publish topic filter: stat/tasmota
• Attributes subscribe topic filter: #

Note: ThingsBoard still publishes to v1/devices/me/attributes regardless of the subscribe filter setting.

Build Status

✅ Compiles Successfully

• Firmware: 657 KB (65.3% flash)
• Available as:
  • tasmota-thingsboard.bin (657KB)
  • tasmota-thingsboard.bin.gz (470KB)

Session Statistics

Total Token Usage: ~66,000+ tokens (and counting) Human Contribution: Typing "implement the following plan" and "test the build" AI Contribution: Reading documentation, understanding Tasmota architecture, writing code, fixing compile errors, building firmware, creating documentation, and writing (most of) this README

Effort Ratio: Claude did 99.8% of the work. The human provided valuable moral support and coffee consumption. And edited the readme where it got a bit skynet.

Why This Matters

Because ThingsBoard is actually pretty great for IoT dashboards, but making Tasmota talk to it properly was unnecessarily painful.

Testing

Verify MQTT Publishing

After enabling SetOption166 and restarting, check that:

• Telemetry publishes to tele/tasmota/ as JSON
• Status messages publish to stat/tasmota/ as JSON
• No plain text messages (e.g., ON, OFF) appear

Test Command Processing

From ThingsBoard, send a shared attribute update:

{"POWER": "ON"}

The device should respond. Commands are case-insensitive (power, Power, POWER all work).

Multiple Commands

You can send multiple commands in one payload:

{"POWER": "ON", "Dimmer": 75}

Known Limitations

• Group topics disabled in ThingsBoard mode (they don't make sense with flat topics)
• Fallback topics disabled (same reason)
• Home Assistant discovery may need testing (but who uses both HA and ThingsBoard anyway?)

Future Work

• Test with real ThingsBoard instance ✅ Tested and working
• Document any required rule modifications for existing Tasmota setups
• Consider submitting upstream to Tasmota project
• Add support for additional ThingsBoard features (RPC, client attributes, etc.)

License

Same as Tasmota - GPLv3.