1.8 Amazon Web Services

Data between the Dashboard and communication board is transmitted through the MQTT Protocol, using the MQTT Server provided by Amazon IoT Core. Using this service requires an active Amazon Web Services account.

In order to connect the board to Amazon, users must create the things, certificates, and policies on the AWS IoT Core service.

The Communication Board and the Dashboard are considered two entities that, from Amazon's point of view, are called Things.

Firstly, a Policy that allows communication should be created. For testing purposes, a policy that allows all communication was used:

Figure 1-2. Policy Example

Secondly, the user can create the certificates separately, or when creating Things, the default option is to create a certificate for it. To simplify the steps, choose to create a thing and when asked about a certificate, ensure the default option is selected:

Figure 1-3. Thing with Auto-Generated Certificate

Also, the Certificates may be connected to Things afterward if necessary, so one may choose to skip creating a certificate at this time.

Once a certificate is created, download the Device Certificate, Private Key, and Amazon Trust Service Endpoint. These will be needed by the Communication Board Firmware and by the Dashboard Node-Red flow.

Figure 1-4. Download Certificate and Keys

Amazon IoT Core offers a MQTT test client which can be used for debugging reasons:

Figure 1-5. MQTT Test Client