Selecting an IoT device

The next step is to select your IoT device. Each IoT device has unique capabilities. I suggest that you use the IoT device platform that is recommended by Amazon to minimize problems while developing and deploying. You can use one of the listed devices from https://aws.amazon.com/iot-platform/getting-started/#kits. Based on my experience, the Raspberry Pi board or IoT board with the Linux platform is easier, because most AWS IoT Device SDKs are supported.

I will show how various IoT device platforms access AWS IoT, with specific scenarios in this book. Register an IoT device for AWS IoT after you have decided what IoT device model is to be implemented. You should register it in order to obtain access rights in AWS IoT. You can register your IoT device on AWS IoT Management Console with the following steps:

1. Navigate to https://console.aws.amazon.com/iot. You should see a form as shown in the following screenshot:

1. Select the Onboard option from the left-hand menu. You can click on the Get started button within the Configuring a device section, which is shown by an arrow in the preceding screenshot.

Then, you will get information about connecting IoT device to AWS IoT, as shown       in the following screenshot:

1. Select the development platform of the IoT device and AWS IoT SDK. In this scenario, I use Linux/OSX with Node.js for AWS IoT SDK:

1. Now we create our IoT device name. You should define the IoT device type. To do so, you click on the Create a type button:

1. Fill out the IoT device type and its description. You may define IoT device attributes. For a demo, we define the following two attributes as shown in the following screenshot:
   • name
   • device-value

If done, save this IoT device type.

1. Then, go back to your IoT device registering. Fill out the IoT device name and its type. I filled macos-computer in the Name field, as shown in the following screenshot:

1. If done, you should see your IoT device on the Manage | Things menu:

You can add additional IoT devices to simulate the AWS IoT scenario.