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Comment by speedgoose | Hacker News Reader

I see that AWS IoT Greengrass is missing. https://aws.amazon.com/greengrass/

I may be wrong but from what I understood, it's more or less a way to manage AWS Lambda functions (cgi-bin scripts), Docker, and a MQTT client connected to AWS on your GNU/Linux devices (raspbian on a raspberry pi for example, or a x86 pc).

However you still need Ansible or similar to manage the device so the actual value is kinda low because if you have a setup to manage the device, it's not much more work to manage docker and a mqtt client yourself. About running AWS Lambda functions on a the device, I think it makes sense for AWS to check the box "IoT edge computing with AWS Lambda" but unless you have a huge codebase in AWS lambda, it seems to be a bad idea.

In one sentence : "vendor locked half baked IoT platform".

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Aurora doesn't get a mention either. It's covered under RDS, but still, it seems worth an entry as a service they offer.

The whole lot of IOT services are pretty confusing. Mostly because I have no experience with IOT/MQTT in general and it took a few days to actually figure out how to create and connect things (emulated). I actually bought some IOT devices (lamps, sensors) to try it out, but this turned out to be vendor-locked without any possibilities for MQTT. I reckon somebody with more experience in the IOT field could provide more insight in these things.

Do your sensors/lamps use Zigbee? I use the excellent Zigbee2MQTT library and a DIY Zigbee sniffer. Now I can use most vendor-locked IOT-devices (Hue, Ikea Tradfri, cheapo Chinese stuff) in my Home Assistant without the need of a separate bridge.

Check if your devices are supported here: https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/information/supported_devices.htm...

The devices have a ESP8266, and they should be easily flashed with custom firmware to connect to MQTT. But I found that OTA flashing did not work, and the only viable option is to solder apparently. I'm dangerous enough without a soldering iron in my vicinity.

The IoT world is full of vendor locked solutions and platforms that you must avoid. And the joke "the S in IoT stands for Security" is very very true, though AWS Greengrass is actually pretty good for security, if you don't mind sending all your data to a USA company of course.

I would recommend to go opensource and skip the platforms that try to lock you in. There is a lot of solutions depending on how low-level you want to be. Like HomeAssistant if you want high level, or a Mosquitto MQTT broker and NodeRed and some dongles on a Raspberry pi if you want to be lower level.

Disclaimer: I'm VP of Engineering for software consultancy focused on IoT. We work with startups, midcap and several fortune 500s.

I agree vendor lock in must be avoided. I also disagree that Open Source is the best approach in all situations. Mosquito and Raspberry Pi are fine for smaller projects, but if you're going to push 100M or a billion messages, you're better off leveraging a IaaS solution like AWS IoT Core. At least, until you have a dedicated 24/7 opps team that can triage and support the solution.

The trick is to create the right abstractions and architectures to migrate your solutions off of AWS and onto another solution: Azure, your own, etc.

I'll give it a go:

IoT Core: Managed MQTT broker, and state management for devices with intermittent connectivity

FreeRTOS: RTOS operating system for microcontrollers to automatically connect to IOT-Core or greengrass.

IoT 1-Click: Manage 1-click buttons that can be connected to other systems like Lambda

IoT Analytics: Clean up and save messages from topics into a data-store for analytics

IoT Device Defender: Automated detection of misbehaving devices

IoT Device Management: Firmware release management

IoT Events: Visually build automation rules based on device data

IoT Greengrass: Run Lambda functions on remote devices, and manage release of new versions.

IoT SiteWise: Turnkey industrial automation platform

IoT Things Graph: Represent IoT devices in terms of connectivity - for example a door sensors connects to a hub, which has an internet connection.

And one bonus definition:

AWS Sumerian - A 3D game engine integrated with AWS services.

This is a great list. I'd add a few things:

IoT Greengrass - Edge computing that can run Lambda functions and ML models on prem.

IoT Core - Managed MQTT broker, state management and rules engine for devices with intermittent connectivity

I'm not sure I'd call SiteWise a "automation platform" I think it's more of a data collection and visualization platform?

Close, greengrass is about pushing real aws lambas down to intermediate site gateways (with certs and crypto and management), and then you can have very lightweight clients with almost no brain talk to that thing. My blurb would read, "vendor locked lambdas at the edge to proxy IoT widgets".

Do you use Greengrass ? I think not many people do but I really like it.

Yes, in anger at last $work. It fit our usecase but it's definitely not for everyone. Happy to chat.

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