Without a broker
Tasmota without MQTT
Most guides start with a broker: install Mosquitto, pick a topic, add Home Assistant. None of it is needed to switch a plug, read its power meter or give it a timer. Tasmota answers ordinary HTTP requests as soon as it is running, and that is the whole interface TasmoShelf uses.
Do I need an MQTT broker to use Tasmota?
No. Tasmota's HTTP interface is on by default and takes every command the console takes, over the local network the device is already on. Nothing has to be installed on the device or next to it: no broker, no Home Assistant, no cloud account. A broker earns its keep when several systems have to hear about the same event, or when you want history and dashboards. For finding devices, switching them, timers, backups and energy readings, HTTP is enough — and it leaves out the one machine whose outage would stop all of it at once.
What runs where
- Switching, brightness, colour, shutters: one HTTP request per action, straight to the device.
- Timers live in the device and run there, sunrise and sunset included. They fire with the phone switched off.
- Energy is counted by the device; the app reads it out and keeps the history on the phone.
- A backup is the device's own configuration file, the same .dmp its web page offers.
Why the search runs twice
A Tasmota device does not announce itself: mDNS discovery is compiled out of the official builds, so there is nothing to listen for and the network has to be swept. That turns up a quirk, and it was measured on real hardware. A device with SleepMode Dynamic answers a ping in milliseconds but then needs seconds to complete a connection, because its radio is in power save. At a three-second timeout, 0 of 5 requests got through; at six seconds, 5 of 5. So TasmoShelf sweeps twice: a fast pass, which doubles as the knock that wakes the radio, and a slower one over everything that stayed quiet. A single fast pass misses exactly the devices worth finding.
Devices with a password
A device with a password answers 401 Unauthorized, and it is still found, because even that response carries the Tasmota server header. You type the password in once; it then lives in the phone's keychain and travels as ordinary HTTP authentication.
What you give up
The history reaches as far back as the phone does. There are no dashboards, no automation that ties several devices together through a server, and nothing from outside the house without a VPN. If you want those, a server is the right answer, and its own app does that better than this one.