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Ashish Follow

May 25, 2018 · 6 min read · Listen

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Understanding Amazon’s Internet of Things (AWS

IoT) Services

Introduction:
The Internet of Things is changing much about the world we live in, from the way we drive to
how we make purchases and even how we get energy for our homes. Sophisticated chips and
chips are embedded in the physical things that surround us each transmitting valuable data.
Data that lets us better understand how these things work and work together but how exactly
do all these devices share such large quantities of data and how do we put that information to
work ? 78
What is AWS IoT ?
AWS IoT is helping lot of customers solve their business problems. AWS IoT helps customers
by providing edged based software including Amazon FreeRTOS and Amazon Greengrass that
allows customers to securely connect their assets, gather data and take intelligent actions
locally even when the internet connectivity is down.

AWS IoT also helps customers with Cloud based operations including AWS IoT core, IoT
Device Management and IoT Device Defender that allows customers to quickly onboard the
large and diverse fleets of devices, Maintain fleet health and Keep their fleets secure.
Using AWS IoT customers can also reason on top of their IoT data with services like AWS IoT
Analytics that allows customers to easily analyze their IoT data. It also integrates seamlessly
with Amazon QuickSight for visualization and Amazon SageMaker for hosted machine
learning.

Also, all AWS IoT services are build AWS Serverless, means all AWS customers get full benefit
of the elasticity of the AWS cloud to build their enterprise applications and they don’t have to
worry about scalability or utilisation. Customers only pay for what they use.This means no
matter what business you are in, AWS IoT can help you extract value from your connected
devices.

To understand this better, let’s take a deeper look at all the IoT services one by one.

1. Amazon FreeRTOS:

Amazon FreeRTOS (Image Source)

Amazon FreeRTOS, a free open source IoT connected Operating System for micro-controller
based edge devices. It is where most of the IoT data is generated. It extends the market
leading FreeRTOS kernel with software libraries that make it easy to securely connect your
small low power devices on a local network to more powerful devices running AWS
Greengrass or connect via the internet to AWS IoT Core in the cloud for analysis and action. It
also keeps edge devices secure with security credentials and key management, and it keeps
your data secure with transport layer encryption. It also provides firmware services for
Amazon FreeRTOS with integrated code signing that keeps your devices up to date.

2. AWS GreenGrass:
 AWS Greengrass (Image Source)

AWS Greengrass is a software runtime that extends AWS IoT functionality to the edge and
installs on your local devices, so that they can take local actions quickly at the edge. Using the
serverless programming model, you can easily write and test lambda functions in the cloud
and deploy them onto a Greengrass core device, taking benefits from local resources. A
Greengrass enabled devices continue to route local messages even when they lose internet
connectivity and when the connectivity is reestablished they dynamically sync data and
device state securely with the AWS cloud. AWS Greengrass does this utilising the very same
security mechanisms and encryptions used with the cloud AWS IoT and it is updatable so you
get access to new features and security enhancements in the future.

3. AWS IoT Core:

AWS IoT Core :Image Source

AWS IoT Core forms the backbone for IoT deployments to securely connect all your devices
and handle the data at scale. AWS IoT Core allows you to securely connect devices to the AWS
cloud and with each other. It allows you to Route, process and act on the data and messages
coming from those devices and it also allows you to deploy and develop applications that can
interact with your devices even when they are offline.

4. AWS IoT Device Management:

AWS IoT Device Management: Image Source

AWS IoT Device Management helps you in on-boarding new device types, and provisioning
them in bulk. It maintains a catalogue of device information and configuration like serial
numbers and policies. It also indexes dynamic state information such as temperature or
RPM. It lets you to query devices based on both static attributes including firmware versions
as well as dynamic state such as temperature in real time. AWS IoT device management
monitors your devices to diagnose and troubleshoot issues and then allows you to remotely
perform over-the-air updates to your entire fleet of devices or even to individual devices.

5. AWS IoT Device Defender:

 AWS IoT Device Defender : Image Source

AWS IoT Device Defender continuously audit the policies associated with your devices. It also
monitors your devices fleet for abnormal behaviour that might indicate a potential security
issue and it alerts you if something doesn’t look right, like traffic from device to an
unauthorised IP Address, or spikes in outbound traffic that might indicate that the device is
participating in a DDoS attack. And, finally through its integration with IoT Device
Management IoT Device Defender lets you take corrective actions to keep your devices
secure.

6. AWS IoT Analytics:

AWS IoT Analytics: Image Source

AWS IoT Analytics is a fully managed analytics service to easily analyse IoT data. It can run
analytics on massive volumes of IoT data without having to worry about all the cost and
complexity typically required to build your own IoT Analytics platform. It filters, transforms
and enriches IoT data before storing it in an IoT optimised data store. That way you can easily
query your data using the built-in SQL query engine and visualize your outcome using
Amazon QuickSight. AWS IoT Analytics also supports more sophisticated analytics by
preparing your data from Machine Learning using pre-build Jupyter notebook templates of
machine learning models that can be trained and run using Amazon SageMaker.

7. AWS IoT 1-Click:

AWS IoT 1-Click: Image Source

AWS IoT 1-Click enables one click creation of a trigger of an AWS Lambda function for pre-
configured simple devices like a sensor or a button. With AWS IoT 1-click you can select and
order devices that ship fully provisioned to securely connect to AWS IoT. You can create
action using Lambda functions with 1-click and deploy those devices with just 1-click via a
simple mobile app to take dedicated actions. You can easily define attributes and extract
reports on your devices from the very same mobile app.

With the help of AWS IoT, you can know the state of every thing and you can reason on top of
data.

Summary:

Whatever be the use case in a modern smart city, it is the Internet Of Things platform that
brings us diverse information together and provides the common language for the devices
and apps to communicate with each other. With the help of AWS IoT, you can know the state
of every thing and you can reason on top of data. AWS IoT platform integrates the data from
many devices and applies analytics to share the most valuable data with applications that
address industry specific needs.