Tencent Cloud | IoT Hub

SDK Access

IoT Hub supports SDKs for operating systems such as Linux and Android.

RTOS Portability

IoT Hub's SDK supports cross-platform porting with the hardware abstraction layer detached from the framework, making access to IoT Hub from different platforms fast and easy.

Transfer Protocols

IoT Hub supports the MQTT, CoAP, HTTP and WebSocket protocols so that appropriate protocol channels can be selected for different device resources and application scenarios.

Security Protocols

IoT Hub performs two-way authentication and encrypted data transfer between the client and server based on security protocols such as TLS and DTLS to prevent risks like unauthorized access, data theft and tampering. Either the symmetric or asymmetric encryption mode can be appropriately selected for different security risks that device resources and application scenarios face.

Device Firmware Upgrade

IoT Hub supports OTA firmware upgrades, making it possible to perform OTA upgrades on IoT servers in case of security risks or functional vulnerabilities with device firmware.

NB-IoT Access

Compatible with the NB-IoT platforms of China Telecom and China Mobile, IoT Hub supports access to devices under NB-IoT and cross-platform data intercommunications.

Lifecycle Management

Devices can be registered, added, deleted or terminated within the console. This can also be done using the SDK toolkit for improved efficiency.

Device Status

The device status can be monitored throughout the entire process, with instant notifications for any status changes. IoT Hub supports data visualization and historical data review for the key metrics of device operations such as the number of online products, uplink and downlink messages, messages with exceptions and rule engine hits.

Management Tools

In terms of the device management capabilities in IoT scenarios, IoT Hub provides convenient SDK tools for quickly creating, querying and operating devices in batches in the backend to improve efficiency. Currently, it supports the Python, PHP and JAVA toolkits.

The publishing and subscription capabilities of message communications between devices are strictly and securely controlled. For the MQTT protocol, message features such as QoS=0 and QoS=1 are supported. Offline storage is also supported. Fast message communications between devices are enabled based on the rule engine.

Essentially a copy of device data in JSON format cached on the server, a device shadow is mainly used to save:

• The configuration of the device.
• The current status of the device.

As an intermediary, the device shadow can effectively achieve bilateral data synchronization between the device and the user application:

• For device configuration, the user application does not need to directly modify the device. Instead, it can modify the device shadow on the server, which will sync modifications to the device. If the device is offline at the time of modification, it will be synced with the latest configuration from the shadow once it comes back online.
• For device status, the device reports the status to the device shadow, and when users initiate queries, they can simply query the shadow. This can effectively reduce the network interactions between the device and the server, especially for low-power devices.

Syntax Rules

IoT Hub supports SQL-like syntax and basic semantic operations. The contents of device messages can be parsed, filtered, extracted and re-integrated through simple syntax, with the results forwarded to Tencent Cloud's backend services such as storage, function computing and Tencent Big Data Suite (TBDS) for seamless access.

Device-to-device Interconnection

In order to isolate device data and ensure secure communications, the device can only publish and subscribe to messages in its own topics. Interconnection can be achieved through the rule engine-based repub function.

Importing Device Messages into Message Queue

As the only accessor to the device, IoT Hub can easily configure and write device messages and status change behaviors to Tencent Cloud Message Queue services such as CMQ and CKafka. From there, a third-party service can obtain and consume the data through the Message Queue SDK interface, enabling async message communications between the device and the third-party service. Device messages can be analyzed and studied with the aid of TBDS.

Importing Device Messages into Cloud Database

Through the convenient configuration of the rule engine, IoT Hub can quickly write device messages to various Tencent Cloud storage services such as TencentDB for MySQL, TencentDB for MongoDB and TencentDB for CTSDB, eliminating the logic development work for intermediate data acquisition and transfer and in turn reducing costs. Device messages can be analyzed and learned on with the aid of TBDS.

Device-cloud Interconnection

Tencent Cloud offers corresponding products (such as TBDS, RayData, etc.) for scenarios where users require the further processing of device data (big data analytics). The direct connection between IoT Hub and these cloud products will be made available soon.

Forwarding Device Messages to Third-party Services

The rule engine supports configuring the direct forwarding of device messages to third-party services, quickly making available the communications between the device and the accessor's backend services.

Real-time Computation

In the IoT industry, massive amounts of data must be reported in real time, and core businesses have high requirements for the timeliness of data monitoring, making stream computing and real-time computing significant for such application scenarios. The rule engine forwards device data in real time to CKafka, which is connected to Storm/SparkStreaming stream computing, helping enable the real-time computation of device data.

Intelligent Processing

IoT Hub is capable of connecting to TBDS. Leveraging TBDS's powerful data discovery, analysis and mining capabilities, data from billions of IoT devices can be quickly and intelligently processed to tap into the value of data, improve efficiency and seize market opportunities.

Visualization

IoT Hub is capable of accessing big data visualization service Tencent Cloud RayData. This feature enables you to visualize, contextualize and interact with high volumes of data reported by the devices with the aid of real-time data rendering technology, facilitating personalized data management and usage.

Access Management and Resource Collaboration

IoT Hub supports the secure access, use and management of cloud account resources through CAM. The isolation and collaboration of IoT cloud resources are realized through the identity and policy management of sub-accounts and collaborators.