Control PC with MQTT

Tested on Windows 10, Windows 11 and Ubuntu Desktop 20.04

Features (modules)

audio

• home/room/pc/audio/volume/set - set volume, 0-100
• home/room/pc/audio/mute/set - set mute, 0 or 1

Publish to:

• home/room/pc/audio/volume
• home/room/pc/audio/mute

clipboard

• home/room/pc/clipboard/set - copy text to system clipboard

commands

Read file commands.yml (see commands.example.yml), subscribe to topics, execute commands via exec module.

dirwatch

Watch for changes in directories and send notifications.

exec

• home/room/pc/exec/cmd 'shell cmd' - simple execute command with arguments in system shell
• home/room/pc/exec/cmd/silent 'shell cmd' - execute command without notifications
• home/room/pc/exec/cmd '{"cmd" "shell cmd", "silent": true}' - execute command without notifications
• home/room/pc/exec/cmd '{"cmd": "shell cmd", "success_tts": "Success", "error_tts": "Error"} - execute command with tts feedback. You can define default tts feedback in config. Set success_tts: 'stdout' for answer with command output
• home/room/pc/exec/ssh user@host - open ssh terminal

filewatch

Watch for changes in files and send notifications.

gpt

• home/room/pc/gpt/ask - send request to GPT

Publish to:

• home/room/pc/gpt/answer - get answer

keys

• home/room/pc/keys/press - press a single key, you can pass several keys, space delimeted
• home/room/pc/keys/type - type a string

Keys:

• f1-f12
• enter, escape, tab, space, backspace
• up, down, left, right
• home, end, insert, delete, pageup, pagedown
• control, shift, alt, command
• audio_prev, audio_next, audio_pause

Full keys list

Modifiers control|ctrl|^, shift, alt, command|cmd|win can be used: (ctrl+alt+win)t

Examples:

• (win)x up up right down - suspend for Windows 10

midi

Binds midi signals to exec or mqtt actions.

mouse

• home/room/pc/mouse/click - click button, left|right|middle
• home/room/pc/mouse/point - move button to x, y, optional click and mouse backs, example: 400,200,left,1
• home/room/pc/mouse/get - get current mouse position

notify

• home/room/pc/notify/notify 'message' - simple notify
• home/room/pc/notify/notify '{"title": "title", "msg": "msg", "app": "Planfix", "icon": "/path/to/planfix.png", "actions": ["OK"]}' - full notify
• home/room/pc/notify/clear 'msg text' - clear notify on Android (for MacroDroid), you must define config.modules.notify.clearNotificationWebhook for this

obs

Commands:

• home/room/pc/obs/rec - start recording
• home/room/pc/obs/stop - stop recording

Events:

• home/room/pc/obs/state/rec - change recording state

reaper

• home/room/pc/reaper/record - start recording
• home/room/pc/reaper/stop - stop recording
• home/room/pc/reaper/play - start playing
• home/room/pc/reaper/stop - stop playing
• home/room/pc/reaper/prev - go to previous track
• home/room/pc/reaper/next - go to next track
• home/room/pc/reaper/loop - toggle loop

tabs

Send browser tabs stats to MQTT. Requires browser extension chrome-tabs-exporter.

tts

• tts - TTS received message

vad

Voice activity detection (VAD) using silero-vad.

• home/room/pc/vad/speech - 0/1, speech detected
• home/room/pc/vad/start - start
• home/room/pc/vad/stop - stop

windows

• home/room/pc/windows/autoplace - autoplace windows with config
• home/room/pc/windows/place '{"window":"current","fancyZones":{"monitor":1,"position":6}}' - place window with rules
• home/room/pc/windows/store - store opened windows
• home/room/pc/windows/restore - restore windows
• home/room/pc/windows/clear - clear store
• home/room/pc/windows/open '{ "apps": ["c:\\app1.exe"], "paths": ["d:\\prog"] }' - open store
• home/room/pc/windows/focus '{ "titleMatch": "blog.popstas.ru" }' - focus window by title
• home/room/pc/windows/restart - restart PC, nostore for just restart, other payload for store opened windows

It's using module, https://github.com/popstas/windows11-manager, Vitrual desktop manager work only for Windows 11 now, as I am single user.

Bugs

• Keyboard and mouse emulation not work while windows-mqtt running as Windows service.
• Process not kill when exit

Install

1. Copy config.example.yml to config.yml and update MQTT credentials and module settings for your environment.

2. This script will install Windows service "windows-mqtt":

git clone https://github.com/popstas/windows-mqtt
cd windows-mqtt
npm install
npm run install-windows

3. For TTS setup you should install gTTS (Python) and mpg123, see popstas/mqtt2tts.

4. When building desktop apps, make sure config.yml is present in the project root. Both Electron and Tauri builds package this file so the tray apps read the same configuration as the headless server.

Extend

1. Copy src/modules/_module.js to src/modules/yourModuleName.js
2. Add module options to modules.yourModuleName object in src/config.js

Module will receive as config variable.

Module should return list of subscriptions on MQTT topics:

return {
  subscriptions: [
    {
      topics: [
        config.base + '/status',
        config.base + '/status/get',
      ],
      handler: onStatus
    },
  ]
}

Desktop tray apps

The project includes both Electron and Tauri tray launchers. Both keep the main window hidden while exposing a tray icon for quick access to controls, but they differ in runtime requirements and packaging outputs.

Electron

• Start the Electron tray app with npm run start-electron once dependencies are installed.
• Portable builds are produced with npm run build:dist (Electron Builder), which places artifacts under dist/ (for example, a portable .exe when building on Windows).
• Electron uses the HTML UI from index.html for its tray popover and ships assets from the assets/ folder via electron-builder configuration.

Tauri

• Install the Rust toolchain (for example, curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh on Unix-like systems or the Rust installer on Windows) and install the Tauri CLI (npm install -g @tauri-apps/cli or use the local dependency via npm run start-tauri).
• Run the Tauri development tray with npm run start-tauri to launch the native system tray while keeping the window hidden unless explicitly shown.
• Build release bundles with npm run build:tauri; Tauri outputs installers and executables under src-tauri/target/release/bundle/ (for example, .msi and .exe files on Windows).
• Extra files are bundled from src-tauri/tauri.conf.json under tauri.bundle.resources. The current configuration includes config.yml, config.example.yml, commands.example.yml, data/**, and src/**. Add new paths there to ship additional assets with the Tauri build.
• Tauri uses the native system tray instead of the custom HTML popover used by Electron, so tray menus and balloon behaviors follow the host OS conventions.