In a support thread titled “Simple sensor-driven notifications in Discourse via Webhooks or MQTT?”, aria_12 seeks advice on integrating IoT sensors (e.g., motion or temperature) with Discourse to automatically post or message when thresholds are crossed. Inspired by an ESP32 + MQTT motion detection tutorial, they ask for lightweight, non-plugin solutions using webhooks or MQTT. pmusaraj recommends using scoped API keys to create posts via HTTP requests from any IoT platform, calling it a cool project. tobiaseigen follows up asking if aria_12 got it working, then suggests an alternative: configuring Discourse to accept incoming emails from IoT devices to auto-create topics or group messages as documented heretobiaseigen. The discussion centers on minimal, practical integrations using existing Discourse features rather than custom plugins.
Hi everyone, I’m trying to build a small sensor-to-Discourse integration: like having motion sensors or temperature sensors publish data to a Discourse topic (or trigger a post/private message) when certain thresholds are crossed. I was inspired by this article on using ESP32 + MQTT for motion detection and email alerts:
I also looked at Discourse’s webhook and plugin APIs, and a few community threads on MQTT bridges with Discourse. I’m curious: what’s the easiest way to send external IoT data into Discourse in a clean, minimal way (without building a full plugin)? Any known lightweight approaches or example setups people have used?