Internet of things

People are able to access more information than ever before. Personal digital assistants led to smartphones, and now there are smartwatches, smart thermostats, and even smart refrigerators. Now the internet allows any item that's online to access valuable information. This ability for devices to garner and then relay information for data analysis is referred to as IoT.

Many services can assist and drive end-to-end solutions for IoT on Azure.

Service name	Description
IoT Central	Fully managed global IoT software as a service (SaaS) solution that makes it easy to connect, monitor, and manage IoT assets at scale.
Azure IoT Hub	Messaging hub that provides secure communications between and monitoring of millions of IoT devices.
IoT Edge	Fully managed service that allows data analysis models to be pushed directly onto IoT devices, which allows them to react quickly to state changes without needing to consult cloud-based AI models.

Azure IoT Hub

Azure IoT Hub is a managed service that's hosted in the cloud and that acts as a central message hub for bi-directional communication between your IoT application and the devices it manages.

The IoT Hub service supports communications both from the device to the cloud and from the cloud to the device. It also supports multiple messaging patterns, such as device-to-cloud telemetry, file upload from devices, and request-reply methods to control your devices from the cloud. After an IoT hub receives messages from a device, it can route that message to other Azure services.

From a cloud-to-device perspective, IoT Hub allows for command and control. That is, you can have either manual or automated remote control of connected devices, so you can instruct the device to open valves, set target temperatures, restart stuck devices, and so on.

Azure IoT Central

Azure IoT Central builds on top of IoT Hub by adding a dashboard that allows you to connect, monitor, and manage your IoT devices.

A key part of IoT Central is the use of device templates. By using a device template, you can connect a device without any service-side coding. IoT Central uses the templates to construct the dashboards, alerts, and so on. Device developers still need to create code to run on the devices, and that code must match the device template specification.

Azure Sphere

Azure Sphere creates an end-to-end, highly secure IoT solution for customers that encompasses everything from the hardware and operating system on the device to the secure method of sending messages from the device to the message hub. Azure Sphere has built-in communication and security features for internet-connected devices.

Azure Sphere comes in three parts:

• The first part is the Azure Sphere micro-controller unit (MCU), which is responsible for processing the operating system and signals from attached sensors. The following image displays the Seeed Azure Sphere MT3620 Development Kit MCU, one of several different starter kits that are available for prototyping and developing Azure Sphere applications.

  
• The second part is a customized Linux operating system (OS) that handles communication with the security service and can run the vendor's software.

• The third part is Azure Sphere Security Service, also known as AS3. Its job is to make sure that the device has not been maliciously compromised. When the device attempts to connect to Azure, it first must authenticate itself, per device, which it does by using certificate-based authentication. If it authenticates successfully, AS3 checks to ensure that the device hasn't been tampered with. After it has established a secure channel of communication, AS3 pushes any OS or approved customer-developed software updates to the device.