Device-Level Sensing Availability and MQTT Application-Response Latency in an openHAB-Based Smart-Building System

Abstract

Smart-building systems need reliable sensing, long-term storage, and remote control, but many studies mix up fast network response with slow physical changes in the building. We report measurements from an openHAB deployment at University Lab 1 and University Lab 2 in Greece over 19 months (April 2024–October 2025), with Z-Wave and ZigBee devices and Parquet exports for offline analysis. We treat sensing availability, Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) command latency, and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) behavior as separate questions. In March–June 2024, raw record-level temperature field availability was 79.7% and 74.2% at University Lab 1 and University Lab 2, respectively, increasing to 99.7% and 98.5% after the <30 min linear field interpolation used in golden-dataset construction; assessable device-month cadence-normalized reading-count ratios were far lower (7.9% temperature and 13.0% humidity under the 300 s assumption at University Lab 1; humidity 7.8–26.0% across 180–600 s), reflecting heterogeneous archival participation rather than a fully populated expected-cadence denominator over the full archive span. In May–June 2024, 1247 MQTT commands yielded 1246 successful correlated responses; the archived application log contained no repeated correlation identifiers or duplicate response records (broker DUP flags are not archived); median, p90, and p99 latencies were 287 ms, 487 ms, and 1.66 s. These times describe the MQTT–edge-agent–openHAB path only, not physical device action. HVAC figures are illustrative; we do not infer settling times. The results show why availability metrics, archive denominators, and response-time boundaries must be defined separately in smart-building evaluations.