How Does Azure IoT Work?

Girdharee Saran
Whizlabs Education
Published in
5 min readJul 23, 2021

Azure IoT, like any other Internet of Things platform, offers security and operating systems for devices and data and analytics, all of which aid in the development of enterprises, the deployment of apps, and the management of data. Azure IOT offers the best-in-class solution for new businesses by bringing the best of both worlds to services that collaborate across things, insights, and actions.

Read more on An Intro to Microsoft Azure IoT Hub — Managed Service for IoT Devices and Azure

Things: Industrial equipment, devices, physical objects help connect the cloud persistently without interference.

Insights: Information collected by the things are analyzed, processed in actionable knowledge.

Actions: The way people respond to actionable knowledge to connect across their business.

These remarkable cutting-edge services in the field of IoT bring many opportunities for the eligible talent pool.

Benefits Of Azure IoT

We can see that Microsoft Azure IoT offers a variety of features and services that you can use. These services benefit Azure IoT users in different ways depending on their business operations. The Azure IoT is simple to use, secure, flexible, and one of the most trusted.

Azure IoT is cost-efficient as well as versatile, making the user experience exceptional.

Why Use Azure IoT?

Assume your system is built on the highly scalable PaaS components of the Azure IoT platform. The system communicates with Azure IoT Hub via Wi-Fi. Azure IoT Hub scales, authenticates and manages the system in a highly secure manner. It processes messages, initiates actions, and collects data on the system. The data is then cataloged and analyzed before being routed to the appropriate business system for a response. Aside from that, Azure IoT Hub provides device management. For example, do you have a second device with a system? You can manage the new device by registering it with Azure IoT Hub. Furthermore, Microsoft’s IoT connector generates a unique access key for every device. This ensures that devices only do what they are supposed to do and allows you to disable individual devices when they become corrupted.

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Major Features Of Azure IoT

The many impressive features provided by Azure IoT Hub are discussed in this blog. But first, let’s take a closer look at some of Azure IoT Hub’s most fundamental aspects.

The many interesting features provided by Azure IoT Hub are discussed in this blog. But, first, let’s have a look at some of the most important features of Azure IoT Hub.

1. Device Twins:

The digital representation of your connected device is identified as a device twin. It’s a JSON file on the cloud that IoT Hub manages, and there’s one for each of your IoT Hub-connected devices.

There are several sections in this device twin.

The first is known as tags. This feature allows you to organize your devices by location, building number, and building level and then address them all at once.

There are two additional key concepts to consider here: The reported properties are the device’s reported state, which is pushed to the cloud by the device, and the desired properties are the state you require your device to be in, which is pushed to the device by the cloud.

As the authoritative source, IoT Hub handles all of these pushes, or to put it another way, synchronization.

2. IoT Edge

An IoT Edge is a smart device with computing power designed to perform services in the field. Loads of transmission and network traffic can be avoided by processing data at the source. As a result, both costs and risks can be reduced.

Azure IoT Edge enables the deployment of complex event processing, machine learning, image recognition, and other high-value AI without the need for in-house development. Azure services such as Azure Functions, Azure Stream Analytics, and Azure Machine Learning can all be deployed on-premises using Azure IoT Edge.

3. Device Identity

Every device connected to Microsoft Azure IoT Hub has an Identity. Fortunately, all device IDs are dynamically generated and managed as you integrate them with other applications. When a device successfully connects to the IoT Hub, it is automatically assigned an ID. It is easier to monitor the hub fleet and identify devices when they have an ID and a device twin. In addition, IT staff can use tools like Microsoft Intune to enhance device identity and ensure security and compliance standards are met.

Setting Up Azure IoT Hub

To get started with the cloud service and integrate it with Particle for better device management, you must configure Azure IoT Hub before taking advantage of its full capabilities and integrating it with other benefits.

We have briefly outlined the steps you will need to follow while configuring the Azure IoT Hub.

STEP 1: Signing Up For An Azure Account

If you don’t already have an account, Navigate to the Microsoft Azure sign-in/sign-up page. Then, click try for free to create one.

STEP 2: Create An Azure IoT Hub

To manage your connected devices, you must first register an Azure IoT account. Creating an IoT Hub is a time-consuming procedure that demands careful consideration.

STEP 3: Shared Access Policy

Azure IoT Hub manages access permissions by comparing a received token against access policies.

STEP 4: Integration

After following the mentioned steps, You can now connect your IoT Hub to any other applications. Navigate to Particle Console and follow the instructions. After successful integration, you must confirm that data from your Particle devices reach Azure IoT Hub.

What Is Required To Use Azure IoT?

The parts that create the Azure IoT solution are- Devices, Communication, Back end services.

IoT devices are anything that has a sensor on them and can use the internet to communicate data from one object to another or humans.

You may use Azure IoT Hub to connect, manage, and scale your IoT devices so that they can securely communicate with backend services in both ways.

Backend services have several functions: receiving and analyzing telemetry, sending commands, monitoring the system, and others.

Providing Positive User Experience

Structures of IoT applications are becoming increasingly complex. Aside from traditional human users, there are new technologies, smart devices of all kinds, and new backend architectures. Perfect as long as all components and services operate and interact as expected!

But what if something behaves unsafely or breaks altogether, leaving the user dissatisfied?

A stable and high-performing system is required for a positive user experience. To accomplish this, it is critical that your monitoring includes all components along with the entire stack. Only by observing all transactions end-to-end do you obtain the necessary data set to monitor the behavior of your application and identify anomalies out of the box.

We now know that you can manage millions of linked devices with Azure IoT Hub using secure bi-directional communication from this article.

Therefore we can conclude that Azure IoT Hub is one of the best solutions if you require a dependable device-cloud and cloud-device messaging service as it provides you comprehensive network monitoring and allows you to ask the device twin for any information you require on-demand.

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Girdharee Saran
Whizlabs Education

Content Marketer and growth hacker. Founder of Axis Web Art Private Limited