Using AWS IoT Platform for IoT Development

IoT design and development always come along with some IoT challenges. How to connect devices, add edge intelligence, safely transfer data to the cloud, handle the load and ensure security? The answers to these and many other questions determine the design and functionality of the future IoT system.

Using IoT platforms helps quickly and efficiently address these challenges. IoT platforms provide comprehensive services for connecting and managing IoT devices, edge, cloud and user applications.

In this article, we’ll talk about one of the most widely used IoT platforms — Amazon IoT platform AWS IoT.

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The product of Amazon, AWS IoT is a part of an AWS cloud computing platform, the third biggest cloud service in North America, according to Statista. AWS IoT provides end-to-end device and data control and management services which allow IoT developers to build and configure IoT systems of various complexity and scale. Among the companies that already use this platform are NASA, General Electrics, LG and Philips. Let’s find out why.

AWS IoT offers a wide range of services to connect and operate IoT devices, collect data and act on it both locally and via the cloud.

Amazon FreeRTOS, for example, is an open-source OS that helps deploy and manage end devices like microcontrollers (eg. sensors, trackers). It’s free and offers rich software libraries to connect simple devices to more powerful devices at the edge and the cloud.

Using AWS IoT, devices designed for more complex functionality (e.g. gateways) can compute, process and act on data at the edge. Amazon IoT Greengrass service allows computing devices to take local actions based on the data gathered on the periphery without waiting for cloud processing. It even allows running machine learning models when integrated with Amazon SageMaker service.

Amazon IoT Core is the basic Amazon and IoT service that connects all the devices mentioned above with each other and Amazon cloud. It’s powerful enough to handle billions of device connections and ensure secure messaging and data transfer. And, importantly, Amazon IoT Core allows enhancing functionality of an IoT system using additional services like Amazon S3 or AWS Lambda.

These are the basic, however, not the only services of AWS IoT platform. Let’s learn what else it can offer.

Read: 5G and the Internet of Things

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Amazon FreeRTOS, Amazon IoT Greengrass and Amazon IoT Core are AWS IoT services mainly focused on connecting and operating IoT devices and smart equipment at the edge and enable interacting with the cloud. Apart from them, the platform offers instruments to monitor and maintain the health and security of a device fleet. They are extremely helpful when we are talking about hundreds or thousands of connected devices.

For instance, AWS IoT Device Management helps onboard and register devices, monitor and diagnose their activity, maintain logging and even physical conditions like temperature. This tool is indispensable when you need to remotely control a large fleet of devices.

AWS IoT Device Defender was designed to provide security. This tool runs audits and monitors device behavior. If it finds any abnormalities or deviation, the service sends the alerts and lets you troubleshoot the problem according to security best practices.

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In order to make sense of all the data, generated by IoT system, IoT AWS Analytics service comes in play. This powerful tool helps both prepare IoT data for analytics (cleanse, enrich, sort, etc.) and implement various analytics and visualization techniques to extract insights from IoT data, as well as prepare it for machine learning.

For industrial IoT systems or products, AWS IoT SiteWise and AWS IoT Events are used. AWS IoT SiteWise simplifies collecting and routing multiformat data from equipment scattered across large industrial and manufacturing facilities. This service helps organize, manage and act on performance metrics locally by providing software for getaways and other computing devices in the facility. In turn, AWS IoT Events service helps quickly identify, communicate and address pre-configured events like overloaded machinery or an extreme increase in temperature.

AWS IoT Things Graph is a valuable service that simplifies the development of IoT applications. Either using pre-built models for popular devices like motion sensors, or designing a custom module for a unique use case, developers can easily connect different IoT devices and services, determine their interactions and build IoT applications faster compared to traditional custom coding.

One of the most unique AWS IoT services is AWS IoT 1-Click. It allows developers to quickly configure simple actions for supported devices, for example, call on support at a click of a button.

If you are curious to learn more about AWS IoT services and see how they can be implemented on your IoT project, contact our expert team.

Addressing to Amazon Web Services for IoT development provides multiple benefits from enabling robust security to simplicity and usability. Here are the most attractive benefits for business:

The platform offers truly end-to-end services for diverse use cases. Thanks to its serverless approach, it can address the needs of huge IoT systems with millions of devices and diverse end-users and, at the same time, be useful for small IoT projects and prototypes.

Together with AWS IoT, Amazon offers many services across different technologies and industry applications. Most of them are compatible with AWS IoT and can be integrated to enhance the capabilities of an IoT system.

AWS IoT has a growing catalog of qualified hardware producers, partner devices and solutions. In this catalog, AWS lists only vetted and verified partners and technologies. It can help narrow down the choice and answer many IoT questions developers often confront at the early stage of system design.

Every service of AWS IoT platform provides security features including in-build authorization and authentication, device behavior monitoring and alerts. On top of that, the platform allows the integration of custom security procedures and technologies.

According to AWS IoT rules, you pay only for what you use. In fact, every service of the platform implies a friendly pricing model. It calculates the total depending on the connectivity time, the number of messages, registered devices, etc. depending on the case. There are no default service payments or upfront commitments.

As a big and mature platform, AWS IoT offers myriad ways to uncomplicate the life of developers and business owners. From SDKs, drag-and-drop tools, out-of-the-box industrial solutions to libraries, learning resource and developer communities, the platform and, in general, Amazon cloud for IoT helps build IoT systems simpler and more efficiently.

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AWS is highly committed to its own and global sustainability goals. In 2018, more than 50% of the energy used for running AWS was renewable. The new goal is to reach 100%. For this purpose, AWS invests in renewable power projects and opens wind and solar farms across Europe and the U.S.

Among successful AWS IoT examples are such projects as Philips Healthcare, Rio Tinto and Bayer Crop Science.

Philips uses AWS services to collect real-time condition data from more than 190 million patients around the world, analyze this data and share it with healthcare professionals to improve diagnosis.

Bayer Crop Science uses a variety of AWS IoT services for precision farming. Using field sensors, they monitor seed conditions at different stages and use the insights to optimize the growing environment for better yield. This is a great example of the application of IoT in agriculture.

The giant in the mining industry, Rio Tinto, also relies on AWS IoT platform to monitor roads on their sites and truck conditions to determine the safest way for heavy loaded transport and equipment thus saving millions of dollars on maintenance and repair.

At Digiteum, we have experience working with various AWS services for IoT applications development. For example, we use Amazon S3 and other AWS services on an IoT power consumption monitoring and control project to ensure secure and efficient data management.

If you consider using the AWS IoT platform on your IoT project and looking for the experts to help you implement it, call our team. We can help you select the right AWS services and configure edge and cloud technologies according to your project requirements and infrastructure needs.