An appropriate Azure Service for IoT devices using UDP protocol

[dstankovic]

Hello everyone,

A brief introduction - my team and I are developing a Telematics solution for Trucking Industry in the US. Devices that are connected to the trucks, unfortunately, are capable of sending data only over UDP protocol.

Regarding software and OS, I've found that FoTA Client Type is LWM2M, taking that into an account, I'm not sure whether can we rely on some of the bridges proposed here - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/internet-of-things-blog/connecting-iot-devices-to-azure-lever....

The device types we're using are:

• https://opendevelopment.verizonwireless.com/device-showcase/device/11365
• https://opendevelopment.verizonwireless.com/device-showcase/device/9956

VMs are for sure a way to go, but we're curious whether is there a native Azure PaaS offering (discluding bridges) that could help us receive data from devices, and transform them into an appropriate format using programs that device providers have given us. Any idea would be far more than welcome. 

Cheers! :)

[#2]

@dstankovic 

Let me first say that it does look like the Bridge services you mentioned will be able to provide connectivity to Azure IoT services for those devices you mentioned.

In which case, you might be able to get rid of VM's completely and make use of our PaaS Service for processing this data.

Here is a link you can follow to get more information for the Vodafone bridge.

If not, you might wrap the more native IoT services in Azure like the IoT Hub (currently supports AMQP, MQTT and HTTPS only) or even the Kafka compatible Event Hub (currently supports AMQP, HTTPS and Kafka only).

Both these services are PaaS services but there is also a SaaS IoT service (IoT Central), but that provides less flexibility in terms of development, but also does not support UDP primarily because it makes use of the IoT hub behind the scenes. IoT Central is an off-the-shelf, plug-and-play solution and has some certified IoT device that can be connected natively with instructions from the hardware vendor.

To delve a bit deeper into the IoT hub and its capabilities, you and your team can work through this learning path on Microsoft Learn. You might find the benefits of wrapping these services with a type of UDP capable facade as outlined below provides a massive amount of benefits and gives you great integration capabilities with other Azure services for analytics, etc. 

You should, however, be able to wrap any of those services or your logic with a container application hosted in Azure Container Instances (ACI) that does support UDP if you cannot make us of the bridge service directly.

If ACI does not scale enough for your liking (up to 16GB of RAM and 4 V-CPU's with some GPU options in certain regions) or requirements, you can also implement Azure Kubernetes (AKS) for massive scale and orchestration of your containerized application that interfaces with these devices.

I also to include a link to the Architecture centre where you can see some high-level architectures / Designs around our IoT stack.

Hope this helps.

 - Johan

#skillingexpert

[#3]

Hi Johan,

Thank you a lot for the comprehensive overview, suggestions, and useful links!
Considering everything previously stated, I think VM would be the best way to go for our use case.

Kind regards, Dusan!

[#4]

@dstankovic

According to your description, I think you need a kind of translation of the UDP protocol to a protocol that is supported by the IoT Hub Service (MQTT, AMQP). You could use an intermediate IoT Edge device acting as a translation gateway; more information via this link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/iot-edge/iot-edge-as-gateway?view=iotedge-1.4