Built a headless MQTT + Node-RED gateway on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

Built a headless MQTT + Node-RED gateway on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

Been running a lightweight edge IoT gateway on a Pi Zero 2 W — completely headless, no monitor ever attached.

Stack:

Mosquitto MQTT broker (with proper username/password auth, no more allow_anonymous)

Node-RED + Dashboard 2.0 for flows and a live web UI

Avahi/mDNS + static IP for reliable headless access

A custom SSH welcome banner showing live RAM/CPU temp/uptime because why not

Publishing sensor data to a Node-RED gauge is as simple as one mosquitto_pub command from anywhere on the network. Whole setup fits comfortably on a Zero 2 W with room to spare.

Full write-up + all commands are in the README: ,

https://github.com/kritishmohapatra/pi-iot-gateway

Happy to answer questions if anyone's setting up something similar.