Azure IoT Hub is a managed cloud service which provides bi-directional communication between the cloud and IoT devices. It is a platform as a service for building IoT solutions. Being an azure offering, it has security and scalability built-in as well as making it easy to integrate with other Azure services.
This blog post is an introduction to Azure IoT Hub and how to get one up and running.
What we will need:
Creating an IoT Hub
We will be using Azure Powershell to create an Azure IoT Hub. Below are some Powershell commandlets that we can use to check that we are signed in and using the correct Azure subscription.
PS D:\Workspace\IoTHub> Get-AzContext
PS D:\Workspace\IoTHub> Connect-AzAccount
WARNING: To sign in, use a web browser to open the page https://microsoft.com/devicelogin and enter the code ABCDEFGHIJ to authenticate.
PS D:\Workspace\IoTHub> Get-AzContext
Name
----
Free Trial (abc12345-1234-abcd-1234-abc…
PS D:\Workspace\IoTHub>
Note that Get-AzContext returns nothing if we are not signed in (i.e. no context). But after signing in, Get-AzContext should return our subscription details.
Once we are logged in, we will need to create a resource group (basically a logical container). Every resource we create in Azure needs to be associated with a resource group.
PS D:\Workspace\IoTHub> New-AzResourceGroup -Name 'rg-sea-aniotodyssey' -Location 'southeastasia' -Verbose -Force -ErrorAction Stop
VERBOSE: Performing the operation "Replacing resource group ..." on target "rg-sea-aniotodyssey".
VERBOSE: 8:50:49 pm - Created resource group 'rg-sea-aniotodyssey' in location 'southeastasia'
ResourceGroupName : rg-sea-aniotodyssey
Location : southeastasia
ProvisioningState : Succeeded
Tags :
ResourceId : /subscriptions/abc12345-1234-abcd-1234-abcdef123456/resourceGroups/rg-sea-aniotodyssey
PS D:\Workspace\IoTHub>
We can now proceed to creating an Iot Hub. One thing I want to point out is the SkuName parameter. Depending on our needs, I am inclined to use the F1 (which is the free tier) for prototyping purposes and basic usage. This should help avoiding unexpected bills.
PS D:\Workspace\IoTHub> New-AzIotHub -ResourceGroupName 'rg-sea-aniotodyssey' -Name 'ih-sea-aniotodyssey' -SkuName 'F1' -Units 1 -Location 'southeastasia'
Id : /subscriptions/abc12345-1234-abcd-1234-abcdef123456/resourceGroups/rg-sea-aniotodyssey/providers/Microsoft.Devices/IotHubs/ih-sea-aniotodyssey
Name : ih-sea-aniotodyssey
Type : Microsoft.Devices/IotHubs
Location : southeastasia
Tags : {}
Subscriptionid : abc12345-1234-abcd-1234-abcdef123456
Resourcegroup : rg-sea-aniotodyssey
Properties : Microsoft.Azure.Commands.Management.IotHub.Models.PSIotHubProperties
Sku : Microsoft.Azure.Commands.Management.IotHub.Models.PSIotHubSkuInfo
PS D:\Workspace\IoTHub>
There we have it, we have just created an Azure IoT Hub hosted in a data center in South East Asia.
New IoT Hub created