Extending the Sparkplug Specification to allow MQTT Communication with Subsets of IoT Devices

A method comprising steps of:

• enabling publication-subscription (pub-sub) communication in a distributed system between a backend server and multiple end point devices using the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol;
• formatting MQTT messages between the backend server and multiple end point devices using the Sparkplug specification;
• and
• allowing the backend server to publish a single broadcast message targeting a subset of the multiple end point devices, thereby extending the Sparkplug specification.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium including a device trust program having logic instructions that enable one or more processing devices to perform steps of:

• enabling publication-subscription (pub-sub) communication in a distributed system between a backend server and multiple end point devices using the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol;
• formatting MQTT messages between the backend server and multiple end point devices using the Sparkplug specification;
• and
• allowing the backend server to publish a single broadcast message targeting a subset of the multiple end point devices, thereby extending the Sparkplug specification.