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AWS IoT Core

AWS IoT Core features

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Key features
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Key features

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The AWS IoT Device SDK lets you more easily and more quickly connect your hardware device or mobile application to AWS IoT Core. The AWS IoT Device SDK helps your devices connect, authenticate, and exchange messages with AWS IoT Core using the MQTT, HTTP, or WebSockets protocols. The AWS IoT Device SDK supports C, JavaScript, and Arduino, and includes the client libraries, the developer guide, and the porting guide for manufacturers. You can also use an open-source alternative or write your own SDK.
Device Advisor is a fully managed cloud-based test capability for validating IoT devices during development. It provides pre-built tests that help developers validate their IoT devices for reliable and secure connectivity with AWS IoT Core. By using Device Advisor, developers can test if their IoT devices can reliably interoperate with AWS IoT Core and follow security best practices. Developers can identify and resolve the most common device software issues during development before they deploy their devices in production. Device Advisor also provides a signed qualification report that can be used by hardware partners to qualify their devices for inclusion in the AWS Partner Device Catalog. Learn more and get started, in the Device Advisor’s overview page, technical documentation, and blog.
The Device Gateway serves as the entry point for IoT devices connecting to AWS. The Device Gateway manages all active device connections and implements semantics for multiple protocols to verify that devices can securely and efficiently communicate with AWS IoT Core. Currently the Device Gateway supports the MQTT, WebSockets, and HTTPS protocols. For devices that connect using MQTT or WebSockets the Device Gateway will maintain long lived, bidirectional connections, helping these devices send and receive messages at any time with low latency. The Device Gateway is fully managed and scales automatically to support over a billion devices without requiring you to manage any infrastructure. If you are migrating to AWS IoT, the Device Gateway offers capabilities to transition infrastructures with minimal impact to existing architectures and IoT devices. To learn more about Configurable endpoints, read the documentation here.
The Message Broker is a high throughput Pub/Sub messaging agent that securely transmits messages to and from all of your IoT devices and applications with low latency based on the MQTT Version 5.0 Message Standard. The flexible nature of the Message Broker’s topic structure helps you send messages to, or receive messages from, a number of devices. It supports messaging patterns ranging from one-to-one command and control messaging, to one-to-one million (or more) broadcast notification systems and everything in between. Also, you can set up fine-grained access controls that help you manage the permissions of individual connections at the topic level. This verifies that your devices and applications will send and receive only the data that you want them to. The Message Broker is a fully managed service, so no matter how you choose to use it, it will scale automatically with your message volume without requiring you to run any infrastructure.
Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) is a specialized Internet application layer protocol that is purpose built for constrained devices like battery powered IoT sensors. CoAP offers familiar HTTP-style request/response messaging in a lightweight User Datagram Protocol (UDP) protocol, making it a suitable protocol choice for IoT use-cases where devices communicate infrequently to the cloud and spend most of their time offline in a low power state. AWS IoT Core offers CoAP/UDP support for cellular devices, such as those using Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) technology, through partner-developed IoT platforms built on AWS. Our partners like 1NCE, Aeris and Telefonica have built dedicated services on AWS IoT Core to support CoAP protocol, so that customers can directly connect their devices to the cloud without building their own broker or managing dedicated cloud resources.
AWS IoT Core provides mutual authentication and encryption at all points of connection, so that data is never exchanged between devices and AWS IoT Core without a proven identity. AWS IoT Core supports the AWS method of authentication (called SigV4), X.509 certificate-based authentication, and customer created token-based authentication (through custom authorizers.) Connections using HTTP can use any of these methods, while connections using MQTT use certificate-based authentication, and connections using WebSockets can use SigV4 or custom authorizers. With AWS IoT Core you can use AWS IoT Core generated certificates and those signed by your preferred Certificate Authority (CA). You can map your choice of policies to each certificate, so that you can give devices or applications access, or instead revoke access without ever touching the device.
The registry establishes an identity for devices and tracks metadata, such as the devices’ attributes and capabilities. The registry assigns an identity to each device that is consistently formatted regardless of the type of device or how it connects. It also supports metadata that describes the capabilities of a device (such as whether a sensor reports temperature and if the data are Fahrenheit or Celsius).
With AWS IoT Core, you can create a persistent, virtual version, or Device Shadow, of each device. This includes the device’s latest state so that applications or other devices can read messages and interact with the device. The Device Shadow persists the last reported state and desired future state of each device even when the device is offline. You can retrieve the last reported state of a device or set a desired future state through the API or use the rules engine.
The Rules Engine helps you build IoT applications that gather, process, analyze, and act on data generated by connected devices at a global scale without having to manage any infrastructure. The Rules Engine evaluates inbound messages published on AWS IoT Core and transforms and delivers them to another device or a cloud service, based on business rules you define. A rule can apply to data from one or many devices, and it can take one or many actions in parallel.
AWS IoT Core for LoRaWAN helps customers connect wireless devices that use low-power, long-range wide area network (LoRaWAN) technology. Using AWS IoT Core, you can now set up a private LoRaWAN network by connecting your own LoRaWAN devices and gateways to AWS  without developing or operating a LoRaWAN Network Server (LNS). This reduces the undifferentiated development work and operational burden of managing an LNS and associated infrastructure, accelerating the network set-up time.
AWS IoT Core Device Location helps you track and manage your fleet of IoT devices using their location data, such as latitude and longitude coordinates, without traditional Global Positioning Service (GPS) hardware. When you use the Device Location feature, you don’t have to rely on high-power consuming GPS hardware, and can choose an appropriate location technology that works within your engineering constraints. With Device Location, you can enhance business processes, simplify and automate maintenance efforts, and unlock new use cases. For example, your field service team can stay informed and quickly identify the location of devices that require maintenance action. You can also support location-based security enhancements, such as restricting access to a specific Region and improve the security posture of your IoT solution.
Amazon Sidewalk is a shared network that helps connected devices work better through improved connectivity options. Operated by Amazon at no charge to customers, Sidewalk can help simplify new device setup. It can also extend the low-bandwidth working range of devices, and help devices stay online even if they are outside the range of their home Wi-Fi.

AWS IoT Core for Amazon Sidewalk makes it easier for you to onboard your Sidewalk-enabled device fleets to AWS IoT Core and build scalable IoT solutions.