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In this article, we will learn about today's most trending word, IoT (Internet of Things). My motive is to explain IoT concepts in simple language so everyone can understand and clear up the confusion about what really IoT means. Let's start now.

What is IoT?

IoT stands for the Internet of Things, which is a network of internet-connected hardware devices that give some insightful information about things such as a car, bike, truck, factory, etc.

What is the Use of IoT?

So, what means digital? Digital is nothing but the access of services to the individual over the internet in the form of a web application, mobile application, etc., which helps to minimise the presence of humans at a particular facility centre to avail the service and get work done from the location where the person resides with the help of a mobile app or web application. The example of digital payment platforms such as BHIM UPI by prime minister Narendra Modi's Indian government, Phone Pay, Google Pay, Amazon Pay, etc.

A smart city is also a part of a digital service in which citizens can see the temperature and humidity of their cities and it automatically generates alerts to their citizens regarding sudden changes in the environment and to take specific precautions. Citizens can even track the live location of specific bus routes so they can plan accordingly. Streetlight management is another example of smart city service in which streetlights are automatically managed by a digital service which is responsible for turning on or off lights based on surrounding visibility and generates alerts if any light bulb has a problem, so servicemen can fix it immediately.

The scenarios described above are just a few examples of how to facilitate and improve digital and smart services. IoT plays an important role in giving meaning to the services that collect the data and generate meaningful and actionable alerts.

Benefits of IoT

Consider just one of the scenarios which I have explained in the preceding paragraphs. Let’s assume we have implemented smart streetlight management using IoT. The benefits are

• Monitor the network of streetlights at one place using the web application or mobile application
• Turn on or off the lights automatically based on the surrounding visibility such as sunrise and sunset which help to save the huge amount of electricity consummation
• Consider some lights are got off due to some problem then IoT generates the alert with detailed reasoning which help servicemen to fix it immediately without going in person at the site

By considering the preceding few examples, you can imagine how IoT helps to give meaning to these things, which saves time, cost, and effort. The IoT will play a very important role in shaping the future of the world. In the coming few years, we will see the IoT in everything, which will make human life much easier and faster. A typical raw IoT device will look like this:

How IoT works?

To understand how IoT works, understand the following basic terminology of IoT

• Things
• Device
• Sensor
• Network
• IoT Gateway
• Communication Protocol
• Things

Things

Any surrounding objects around us which we use in our daily life, such as cars, trucks, or any vehicle, water taps, pumps, machines, houses, factories, or rooms, ac, fans, etc.

Device

The device is the hardware that is installed on the things to get the data.

Sensor

The sensor is situated on the device to monitor the intended information, such as temperature, speed, humidity, visibility, etc.

Examples

• Temperature and humidity sensor
• Pressure sensor
• Visibility sensor
• Magnetometer sensor
• Accelerometer sensor
• Network

Implementing the IoT devices for business solution might be easy but managing the millions of devices including their data and entire device life cycle including deployment, upgradation and securing the IoT devices is much difficult to overcomes these limitations Microsoft introduces the services azure IoT hub device provisioning service which formally known as azure DPS, Let's learn about the IoT hub device provisioning service.

After successful login page will be redirected to the azure portal default dashboard page as shown in the following image

Step 2: Create IoT Hub Device Provisioning Service on Portal

• Name: Name of the IoT hub device provisioning service which must be contain only alphanumeric characters or hyphen

• Subscription: Choose the available azure subscription which you want to use for creating service from drop down list
• Resource Group: Choose existing resource group or create a new resource group which you may want to use.
• Location: Choose the deployment location for IoT hub device provisioning from given list, however the device provisioning service is global and associated with any specific location but you must specify a location for the resource group where the metadata associated with the service profile will reside.

• Resource Group: The name of the resource group in which IoT hub device provisioning resides.
• Service Endpoint: Unique URI to connect to the IoT hub device provisioning for device enrollment related operations
• Status: IoT hub device provisioning working status
• Global Device Endpoint:  Global endpoint of IoT hub device provisioning service to perform the device provisioning related operation.
• ID Scope: Unique Id for identifying your specific IoT hub device provisioning service for device related operation since device operation related endpoint is global to all device provisioning services
• Subscription ID: Name of the subscription id in which your IoT hub device provisioning service resides
• Pricing & Scale Tier: Each IoT hub device provisioning service has pricing tier which can be decided to use based on the what scalability and performance required for an application. Currently IoT hub DPS support S1 tier which cost $ 0.10 that is INR 6.610 for 1000 operations
•  Shared Access Policies: Shared access policies section reside the different keys & connection string to connect with IoT hub device provisioning service programmatically using SDK’s & REST services
• Linked IoT Hub: This property allows to link upto ten IoT hub to the device provisioning service as well to see the list of linked IoT hubs. All the enrolled devices after provisioning registered into respective IoT hubs
• Certificates: This Section allows to add the device certificates which can be assigned to the devices during enrollment.
• Manage Enrollments: This section allows to enroll the various types of security feature devices such as TPM (Trusted Platform Module) and X.509. Device enrollment can be enrolled using the following two concepts

• Manage Allocation Policy: Device provisioning service allows to link the multiple IoT hub & using manage allocation policy we can set the IoT hub allocation policy for enrolled devices which automatically decides on which IoT hub device should belong when the device is connected or registered.

• Lowest latency: This policy automatically assigns device to the closest IoT hub ((Datacenter) of device location which will make faster communication between devices and IoT hub.

• Evenly weighted distribution: This is the default policy and recommended by Microsoft which will equally distributes devices to the linked IoT hubs, Let’s say we have ten IoT devices and two linked IoT hubs then five devices will be assigned to one IoT hub and five devices to another IoT hub
• Static configuration: This policy assigns the devices to the specific IoT which is selected during the device enrollment.