Device Connectivity & Management Service¶

The Device Connectivity & Management Service helps you quickly and securely connect physical devices to EnOS Cloud and start to transfer data, manage device lifecycle, and map the physical asset structure to the digital world.

Connectivity Service¶

Bi-directional Connectivity to Devices¶

The Device Connectivity & Management Service enables you to quickly establish bi-directional communication between the device and the cloud:

Data ingestion from device to cloud
Remote control from cloud to device

For the message flow and an overview of the technical components, see Device Connectivity Overview.

Communication Protocols¶

The Device Connectivity & Management Service supports mainstream protocols for messages to be transmitted between devices and the IoT Hub itself.

MQTT protocol: to meet the real-time requirements for devices that can sustain long connections. For more information, see MQTT-based Connection.
CoAP protocol: to meet the requirements of resource-constrained internet devices, such as smart meter devices. For more information, see CoAP-based Connection.
HTTP protocol: for devices that are unable to sustain long connections due to the network or restricted bandwidth, and devices that need to constantly upload file-type data, such as a camera that sends video files. For more information, see HTTP-based Connection.

Device SDKs¶

Simple device-end development is needed to enable the device to communicate with EnOS by following the EnOS stardard device protocol. EnOS provides SDKs for C, Java, Node.js, and Python programming languages for the device-end development.

For more information, see Using the EnOS Device SDK.

Connectivity to Third-party Systems¶

In addition to direct device connectivity, the Device Connectivity & Management Service also allows you to ingest device data through integrating messages forwarded from third-party cloud or systems. For more information, see Message Integration.

Device Connectivity Solutions¶

The Device Connectivity & Management Service supports various connection schemes and provides solutions to meet the requirements of various scenarios for the heterogeneous network enterprise devices. For more information, see Device Connectivity.

Device and Cloud Security¶

A device needs to be authenticated before exchanging data with the EnOS IoT Hub. The authentication mechanisms that EnOS supports are as per the below.

secret-per-device authentication: reduces the security risk of the device being hacked. This mechanism is suitable for devices that can be burned with the pre-allocated device key into each chip in batches. Each device carries a unique key-secret pair as the device leaves the factory.
secret-per-product authentication: where devices of the same product model are pre-burned with the key-secret pair (the product key-secret pair). The device can dynamically acquire the device secret during authentication. This mechanism is suitable for situations where unique key-secret pairs cannot be burned into each device in mass production.
certificate-based authentication: where data is encrypted and decrypted through the CA certificate to ensure secure communication between the device and the cloud.

For more information, see Device and Cloud Security.

Asset Management Service¶

EnOS supports rich asset management capabilities, which includes but is not limited to:

Device modelling
Device registration
Device configuration
Asset tree managment
Device and message statistics dashboard
Firmware upgrade over-the-air (OTA)
Real-time monitoring
Device decommissioning

For more information, see Device Lifecycle Management.

Target Users¶

The Device Connectivity & Management Service primarily serves the following roles:

IoT Engineer¶

The IoT Engineer, who performs the on-site installation (including installing the edge gateway devices and connecting the cables between edge gateways and devices) sets up device connections and debugs the communication between the devices and the cloud.

Edge Developer¶

The Edge Developer is responsible for developing the MQTT client applications in accordance with the EnOS standard device protocols. The goal of such applications is to collect the telemetry data of the edge and transfer the data through supported protocols to the EnOS Cloud in the supported formats.

Asset Manager¶

The Assets Manager creates and manages the asset hierarchy (asset tree) based on the business case scenarios.

Application Developer¶

The Application Developer develops applications to acquire device telemetry and configuration information via EnOS APIs and SDKs to meet the requirements of specific business case scenarios.

Quick Start¶

Learn how to quickly connect a typical smart IoT device or an edge device to EnOS Cloud and start sending telemetries between the device and the cloud: