Amazon enters the Internet of Things with AWS IoT Platform

Not content to be the dominant player in the book retail and growing cloud storage market - Amazon have recently announced the newest addition to their popular suite of cloud computing services - the AWS Internet-of-Things platform. AWS IoT is a managed cloud platform for supporting large numbers of devices in Internet-of-Things applications and securely connecting them to each other, as well as to web applications and other AWS services.

AWS IoT can support a huge number of devices and messages, and it can reliably and securely process and route these messages to AWS endpoints and to other devices or services.

It allows networks of IoT devices to maintain responsive connections to the cloud, and makes it easier to develop cloud applications that interact with IoT "things". It receives messages from things and then filters, records, transforms, or routes these messages as needed.

The AWS IoT service provides an easy-to-use interface that allows applications running in the cloud and on mobile devices to access data sent from IoT devices, and to send data and commands back to those devices. This makes it easy to integrate your IoT devices and data with existing Amazon Web Services components including Amazon Lambda, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon S3, Amazon Machine Learning, and Amazon DynamoDB. Using these services, you can build IoT applications, manage infrastructure and analyse your data.

Connected devices, such as sensors, actuators, wearables, smart appliances, and other embedded devices connect to AWS IoT securely, using either the HTTPS or MQTT protocols. AWS IoT provides authentication and end-to-end encryption throughout the entire platform, and data is never exchanged between devices and AWS IoT without without proper authentication and identity of each server or component in the network.

Using MQTT, the AWS IoT platform enables devices to communicate with the service through a publish-subscribe model. This means that a device, such as a smart thermostat, can publish its latest sensor readings and status updates to AWS IoT, and the server will push that data out to any subscribers to the thermostat's MQTT channel. Any other application or device can be subscribed to the thermostat's MQTT channel, such as a user-facing smartphone app or a home's network-connected air conditioner.

Amazon makes it easy for developers to get started with AWS IoT by providing several SDKs. These SDKs help IoT developers to easily and quickly connect their hardware devices, applications and mobile devices to the AWS IoT platform. The Amazon IoT Device SDK makes it easy to set up devices that connect, authenticate and exchange messages with AWS IoT using either MQTT or secure HTTP.

With AWS IoT, you can filter, transform and act upon device data on the fly, based on business rules you define. You can update your rules to implement support for new devices or new application features at any time. The AWS IoT Rules Engine enables you to continuously process data from devices connected to AWS IoT, and filter and transform that data in whatever way you need. Using an intuitive SQL-like syntax, the Rules Engine can process data and deliver messages to your own Web services or third-party services, as well as routing messages to other AWS components including Lambda, Kinesis, S3 and DynamoDB.

For example, a rule may be configured as a trigger to start storing time-series data in DynamoDB when a sensor reading exceeds a certain threshold, or it may invoke Amazon's Simple Notification Service to deliver push notifications to users.

This integration makes it easy to use the entire AWS ecosystem for further processing, analytics and storage of your IoT data. Furthermore, all internal message transport within the AWS ecosystem is not billed - moving messages between these services is free, regardless of the volume of data involved.

Pricing is based on the number of messages published to AWS IoT as well as the number of messages delivered by AWS IoT to devices or applications. (Traffic is measured in blocks of data, or messages, that are 512 bytes long).

The free AWS account tier allows you to get up and running to evaluate AWS IoT and other AWS components for free, with a limit of up to 250,000 messages published or delivered per month for 12 months.

Hardware support for the new AWS IoT platform is provided thanks to several hardware starter kits from partners including Broadcom, Intel, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments. These starter kits include microcontrollers and sensors that are already tested and documented for easy integration with the AWS IoT platform - allowing you to easily get started prototyping and developing IoT applications.

With prebuilt hardware, the AWS IoT device SDK, and a simple getting-started guide included, you can get up and running quickly to see if the AWS IoT service is a good fit for your IoT needs. If you already have appropriate hardware, you can simply download the IoT Device SDK and programming examples from Amazon to get started.

Here at the LX Group we have end-to-end experience and demonstrated results in the entire process of IoT product development, and we’re ready to help bring your existing or new product ideas to life. Getting started is easy – click here to contact us, telephone 1800 810 124, or just keep in the loop by connecting here.  

LX is an award-winning electronics design company based in Sydney, Australia. LX services include full turnkey design, electronics, hardware, software and firmware design. LX specialises in IoT embedded systems and wireless technologies design.

Published by LX Pty Ltd for itself and the LX Group of companies, including LX Design House, LX Solutions and LX Consulting, LX Innovations.