AWS IoT Basics – Persisting IoT Data to DynamoDB

Introduction

AWS IoT is a managed cloud platform that lets connected devices – cars, light bulbs, sensor grids, and more – easily and securely interact with cloud applications and other devices.

These devices generates data and we can use AWS IoT services to collect this data. Once data is collected, a typical requirement is to persist it for analysis, reporting or for some other usages.

AWS DynamoDB is the leading fully managed, NoSQL database service in the world all managed by AWS. It is a fully managed, serverless, key-value NoSQL database designed to run high-performance applications at any scale. DynamoDB offers built-in security, continuous backups, automated multi-region replication, in-memory caching, and data export tools.

In this post, we will learn how to persist AWS IoT data to DynamoDB with some simple examples.

Setting The Scene

Following diagram shows the main components and data flow. It represents a very basic IoT setup. A typical IoT setup normally have field devices, these field devices have data or they collect from their environment.

For our demo purposes we will be simulating these devices using .NET Core and NodeJS applications. We will generate some simulate data and sent it to AWS IoT Core Topic . Then we will setup an IoT rule to persist the data to DynamoDB table.

You can use .NET Core, NodeJS, Java or python for device simulation purposes.

You will also need to do some basic setup to connect the application to AWS IoT Core.

I’ve already covered connection to AWS IoT part in following two posts. Check the NodeJS or .NET Core examples as per your choice:

• AWS IoT – Basics (NodeJS Example)
• AWS IoT With .NET Core (MQTT)

Furthermore, if you are new to Document (NoSQL) databases, you can check following post for some basics:

.NET Core, PostgreSQL and Document Database

Next, lets see how data is generated for our demo.