Edit

Extend your IoT solution

  • Article

This overview introduces the key concepts around the options to extend an Azure IoT solution. Each section includes links to content that provides further detail and guidance.

The following diagram shows a high-level view of the components in a typical IoT solution. This article focuses on the areas relevant to extending an IoT solution.

Diagram that shows the high-level IoT solution architecture highlighting solution extensibility areas.

In Azure IoT, solution extensibility refers to the ways you can add to the built-in functionality of the IoT cloud services and build integrations with other services.

Extensibility scenarios

Extensibility scenarios for IoT solutions include:

Analysis and visualization

A typical IoT solution includes the analysis and visualization of the data from your devices to enable business insights. To learn more, see Analyze and visualize your IoT data.

Integration with other services

An IoT solution might include other systems such as asset management, work scheduling, and control automation systems. Such systems might:

  • Use data from your IoT devices as input to predictive maintenance systems that generate entries in a work scheduling system.
  • Update the device registry to ensure it has up to date data from your asset management system.
  • Send messages to your devices to control their behavior based on rules in a control automation system.

Azure Data Health Services

Azure Health Data Services is a set of managed API services based on open standards and frameworks that enable workflows to improve healthcare and offer scalable and secure healthcare solutions. An IoT solution can use these services to integrate IoT data into a healthcare solution.

Extensibility mechanisms

The following sections describe the key mechanisms available to extend your IoT solution.

Service APIs (IoT Hub)

IoT Hub and the Device Provisioning Service (DPS) provide a set of service APIs that you can use to manage and interact with your hub and devices. These APIs include:

  • Registry management
  • Interacting with device twins and digital twins
  • Sending cloud-to-device messages and calling commands
  • Managing enrollment groups (DPS)
  • Managing initial device twin state (DPS)

For a list of the available service APIs, see Service SDKs.

REST APIs (IoT Central)

The IoT Central REST API provides the following capabilities that are useful for extending your IoT solution:

  • Query the devices connected to your application
  • Manage device templates and deployment manifests
  • Manage devices and device groups
  • Control devices by interacting with device properties and calling commands

To learn more, see IoT Central REST API.

Routing and data export

IoT Hub and IoT Central both let you route device telemetry to different endpoints. Routing telemetry enables you to build integrations with other services and to export data for analysis and visualization.

In addition to device telemetry, both IoT Hub and IoT Central can send property update and device connection status messages to other endpoints. Routing these messages enables you to build integrations with other services that need device status information:

IoT Central application templates

The IoT Central application templates provide a starting point for building IoT solutions that include integrations with other services. You can use the templates to create an application that includes resources that are relevant to your solution. To learn more, see IoT Central application templates.

Next steps

Now that you've seen an overview of the extensibility options available to your IoT solution, some suggested next steps include: