How Development And Deployment of IoT In AWS Stack Can Increase Your Profit!
Iot or internet of things can be defined as the connectivity and exchange of data between a physical device and software by an embedded chip or sensor over a wireless network without human intervention. The personal or business possibilities are endless. An IoT system consists of sensors/devices which “talk” to the cloud through some kind of connectivity. Once the data gets to the cloud, software processes it and then might decide to act, such as sending an alert or automatically adjusting the sensors/devices without the need for the user. But if the user input is needed or if the user simply wants to check in on the system, a user interface allows them to do so. Any adjustments or actions that the user makes are then sent in the opposite direction through the system: from the user interface to the cloud, and back to the sensors/devices to make some kind of change.
Amazon Web Services has made it a mission to make sure that you should be able to know the state of everything on all your devices, you can reason on top of that data and are successfully able to solve business problems. The proliferation of devices has called for multiple solutions to connect, store and analyze this expanding data.
The AWS IoT have been providing multiple solutions be it IoT applications for quality, maintenance, and remote operations in the industrial solutions, or applications for home automation, security, monitoring, and networking in connected home solutions, to building commercial applications for traffic monitoring, health monitoring, public safety in commercial solutions.
DEVICE SOFTWARE
FreeRTOS
Being an open-source, real-time operating system FreeRTOS helps small, low-power edge devices (i.e hardware that controls data flow between two networks ) to securely connect to AWS cloud services like AWS IoT Core or more powerful ones like AWS IoT Greengrass.
AWS Iot Greengrass
AWS IoT Greengrass helps you accelerate time to market in two ways, first, it lets you build an intelligent software device with robust run time, second it lets you remotely deploy and manage software. Greengrass provides local processing, ML inferences, components to boost application development, messaging, and data management. It also creates a seamless connection with your edge device to any AWS service as well as 3rd party services.
CONNECTIVITY AND CONTROL SERVICES
AWS IoT Core
The AWS IoT Core helps IoT devices to connect to the AWS cloud without managing the servers, the applications stay connected to the devices and communicate even when they aren’t connected. AWS IoT Core eases the use of AWS and Amazon Services like Amazon CloudWatch, AWS CloudTrail, Amazon QuickSight, and Alexa Voice Service to build IoT applications that gather, process, analyze and act on data generated by connected devices, without having to manage any infrastructure. The AWS IoT Core uses Message Broker to publish and subscribe messages securely from all IoT devices to applications with low latency. Device Shadow helps to store the latest state of a connected device so that it can be read or set at any time, this enables you to get the latest state of your device even when you are disconnected.
The AWS IoT Core for LoRaWAN allows customers to create a private LoRaWAN network by connecting their own LoRaWAN devices and gateways to the AWS cloud.
AWS IoT Device Management
Secure tracking, monitoring, and management of millions of deployed devices are possible by AWS IoT Device Management, integrated with AWS IoT Core to ensure easy connection of devices with cloud and other devices for remote management. The AWS IoT Device Defender audits, monitors fleets, and sends alerts if it detects and deviation from what has been defined as normal behavior, when you act on these alerts the AWS IoT Device Management takes up mitigation actions like pushing security fixes.
ANALYTICS SERVICES
AWS IoT Analytics
The exponential generation of data by the tools we use often create
Data that is inconsistent, noisy and variable, makes it difficult for businesses to gain value from them, this is where AWS IoT Analytics comes into play. It collects, cleans, and analyzes IoT data which helps the business and device manufacturers to gain operational insights. Core users are the data engineer who collects, prepares and stores the data for analysis, the data analyst provides insights by exploring and visualizing the data. The architecture consists of three areas. The first is collect, which includes preparing data for analysis. Channels are how IoT Analytics listens to devices using the MQTT Topic filter to pull messages from all devices. Next is processing, as all messages are flowing, pipelines are used to process messages turning them into useful data using transformation, filtering, and enrichment from AWS services, after which Data stores provide a resting place to store the prepared data which is ready for analysis. The third area is analysis in which IoT Analytics allows users to slice their data to quickly gain insights.
AWS IoT Sitewise
AWS IoT Sitewise is a managed service that collects and organizes data from the plant floor generating real-time metrics to help customers make better data-driven decisions. It provides remote monitoring from multiple sites. AWS IoT Sitewise contains software called Sitewise edge allowing connection and reading data from equipment or databases. Customers first create a representation of their equipment, facilities, etc, and their performance metrics using assessment data. Once they are modeled in the cloud, Sitewise Edge uses the same model to organize and process data across both cloud and local environments reducing duplication, effort, and development cost. Customers can then choose to process and use their machine data to send them to IoT Sitewise or their industrial data lakes on the cloud for further analysis. AWS IoT Sitewise helps customers focus on understanding and optimizing operations rather than collecting in-house data collection and management applications.
AWS IoT Things Graph
Different IoT applications are being built for a wide range of use cases such as smart homes, industrial automation, energy management, this makes it difficult for developers as they have to write long sets of codes to wire together all devices and web services required for them. This is where AWS IoT Things Graph comes from which provides a drag and drop interface for connecting and coordinating interaction between devices and web services for building IoT applications. The AWS IoT Things Graph has pre-built models for popular devices like cameras, motion sensors, switches, as well as web services like Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) or Amazon Rekognition, or creating your custom model.
