Zigbee Dongle vs. Dedicated Gateway for Azure IoT: An Architecture Choice
Hello Azure IoT Community, I'm deep into the architecture phase of a large-scale smart building project, using Azure IoT Hub as our central command. We're incorporating numerous Zigbee-based sensors and actuators for energy and environment monitoring. A critical debate has emerged: should we rely on a centralized Zigbee USB dongle, or deploy distributed, dedicated Zigbee gateways like the OWON SEG-X5? This decision impacts system resilience, cloud integration efficiency, and long-term operational stability. The Core Trade-off: Simplicity vs. Resilience Option A: The Centralized Dongle Approach This model uses a USB dongle connected to a gateway server, which becomes the sole coordinator for the Zigbee network before relaying data to IoT Hub. The Appeal: Low initial cost and simplicity for prototyping. The Scalability Risk: This creates a Single Point of Failure (SPOF). If the host server needs maintenance or encounters an issue, the entire Zigbee network—and all dependent automations—go offline. For a commercial building, this is a critical operational risk. Option B: The Distributed Gateway Architecture This model employs dedicated, standalone Zigbee gateways (e.g., https://www.owon-smart.com/zigbee-gateway-zigbeeethernetble-seg-x5-product/) deployed across different zones or floors. Each forms its own robust mesh and connects directly to Azure IoT Hub. The Resilience Gain: Faults are isolated. One gateway’s maintenance affects only its zone. The Edge Intelligence Advantage: Modern gateways can process data and execute rules locally. For instance, a gateway can directly process inputs from a Zigbee Door/Window Sensor (DWS 312) and a Multi-Sensor (PIR 323) to trigger a local light switch, all without a round-trip to the cloud. This aligns perfectly with the Azure IoT Edge paradigm, ensuring responsiveness and offline operation. Streamlined Cloud Integration: Gateways like the SEG-X5 come with integrated MQTT API support, allowing them to send structured data directly to IoT Hub, simplifying device management and message routing in the cloud. A Practical Insight from an ODM Case Study Our experience as an IoT ODM manufacturer has shown this shift in practice. In a project akin to the Hotel Room Management case in our portfolio, the initial design using a central server with dongles presented reliability concerns. The final solution utilized distributed OWON SEG-X5 Zigbee Gateways in each hotel wing. These gateways managed all in-room devices—from Smart Sockets (WSP 406 series) and Light Switches (SLC series) to Thermostats (PCT 504)—locally. They used their MQTT API to send consolidated occupancy and energy data to the building's cloud platform (integrated with IoT Hub). The result was a system where guest room automation remained functional despite network fluctuations, and maintenance could be performed per wing without building-wide impact. Conclusion and Discussion For proof-of-concepts, dongles are sufficient. For production-grade, scalable deployments where uptime is critical, dedicated gateways provide the necessary architectural foundation. I'm keen to hear from the community: In your Azure IoT solutions, how have you integrated non-IP protocol devices like Zigbee? What strategies do you employ to balance edge processing with cloud analytics? For those using gateway architectures, how do you handle device provisioning and security at scale? If you're interested in the technical specifics of how Zigbee gateways interface with cloud platforms, including API structures and network design considerations, we've elaborated on these topics in a technical overview on our site: [https://www.owon-smart.com/news/zigbee-dongles-vs-gateways-how-to-choose-the-right-network-coordinator/ ]. Looking forward to a fruitful discussion.How Internet of Things is improving the Hotel Guest Experience
With the changing times, one thing that is constantly evolving and getting better with time is technology. One of the sectors that it is helping the most is the hotel sector. It is helping the hotel owners and the operators by increasing guest satisfaction, and at the same time meeting their business needs and sustainability goals. In the article below, we will discuss in-depth how the https://www.se.com/in/en/work/campaign/innovation/overview.jsp (IoT) is empowering hotel brands to curate stronger relationships with their guests when the guests arrive at a pre-personalized experience. 1. When all of it comes together For a lot of hotel brands, they focus majorly on millennials, where Gen-Z is increasing in importance. A report mentioned how 54% of parents agreed that their children have some influence over their travel planning and for gen-z, travel is all about the experience. A crucial part of the experience is convenience, connectivity, and control. It is fairly obvious that Gen-Z and millennials are expecting to take full advantage of IoT-enables amenities. Iot-based connectivity has begun to pervade almost every industry and infrastructure. Not just industries but they have also enhanced various aspects of our lifestyle with the help of mobile devices and apps. The more connection it enables, the more power will be unleashed in terms of visibility, convenience, and control. This is why hotels are a perfect example, their entire infrastructure, starting from electrical https://www.se.com/in/en/product-range-presentation/2562-power-distribution/ to HVAC, to security, all of it is progressively becoming more and more connected. The smart devices that are present across each building system share data with centralized applications, which enables advanced capabilities for hotel management, staff, and guests. With the help of the newest room controllers, you can easily manage HVAC in each guest room on the basis of room occupancy. Not just that, they also connect to all other controllable features of the room, which includes lighting and curtains, and guest-facing features such as bedside panels and tablets. Moreover, hotel software applications are now converging, and with the help of it the newest guest room management systems can be smoothly integrated with https://www.se.com/in/en/product-subcategory/5430-power-management-system/, building management, property management, and door lock systems. All of these apps are now hosted in the cloud, enabling access by personnel across teams, wherever they are. Now with the help of these advances, you can enjoy new and improved levels of functionality and control that are enhancing the guest experience in various ways. 2. A Personalized Stay, Right from Check-In Connectivity plays a crucial role in personalizations, and it begins at check-in. The hotel staff can remotely prepare room settings while your guests are still at the front desk. If you have a loyal base of customers, then you already know their preferences and automatically activate them upon check-in, even if that's done with the help of a mobile device. All thanks to integration with door lock systems, your guests can use their own device for room access with the help of the hotel's loyalty app. You can even personalize things by sending your customers a welcome message that can be sent to be displayed in the room, in the guest's own language. Welcome to Your Connectivity Hub The next step in this whole process is, the guests are greeted with their preferred room temperature, and their native language on in-room devices, so that they feel at home, no matter where they are from. You can adapt an array of engaging options to improve your interactions with your guests. Some things being IoT-enabled bedside panels, tablet, the room's Tv, or their own smart device can be used to provide convenient control over almost every aspect of their comfort and entertainment. Your customers can personalize their rooms by adjusting temperature, controlling the curtains, dimming lights, or even by selecting "room scenes" to create the perfect setting according to their mood. 4. Need something? Just Say It Some solutions are just a command away, as some solutions may offer integration with voice control options. For instance, Marriott international started taking the help of Amazon Alexa in the field of hospitality to select hotels (their franchise). This is giving guests a choice to use voice commands to control the room according to their needs. Another option that hoteliers can explore is chatbots, it will give the guests the ability to make a request to the front desk using their mobile devices, no matter where they are. 5. A Closer Connection with Needs … and Values With the help of this evolution in the realm of hotel connectivity, it will also keep the staff aware of a guest's needs. The people working in the guest room management system will immediately inform the hotel personnel when any request comes in, from do-not-disturb to maid service, or when a maintenance issue arises—such as a low battery status on the door lock. However, with the help of deep integration between power management, https://www.se.com/in/en/product-category/1200-building-management/, and guest room management systems, the hotel's maintenance team, will always be on their feet and aware of the issue and how to solve them. Conclusion For the customers who are worried about sustainability, with the help of https://www.se.com/in/en/work/campaign/innovation/overview.jsp connectivity offers the opportunity to collaborate with the hotel on energy efficiency goals and be awarded for the same. The integration of power, building, and guest room management systems will allow your customer's room energy usage to be automatically tracked and be reported during their stay, with positive results converted to loyalty program points.
Storing IOT Data in Azure: SQL vs Cosmos vs Other Methods
Hello Team, The project I am working on as an architect has got an IOT setup where lots of sensors are sending data like water pressure, temperature etc. to an FTP(cant change it as no control over it due to security). From here few windows service on Azure pull the data and store it into an Azure SQL Database. Here is my observation with respect to this architecture: Problems: 1 TB limit in Azure SQL. With higher tier it can go to 4 TB but that's the max. So it does not appear to be infinitely scalable plus with size, the query issues could be a problem. Columnstore index and partitioning seem to be options but size limitation and DTUs is a deal breaker. Problem-2- IOT data and SQL Database(downstream storage) seem to be tightly coupled. If some customer wants to extract few months of data or even more with millions of rows, DB will get busy and possibly throttle other customers due to DTU exhaustion. I would like to have some ideas on possibly scaling this further. SQL DB is great and with JSON support it is awesome but a it is not horizontally scalable solution. Here is what I am thinking: 1) All the messages should be consumed from FTP by Azure IOT hub by some means. 2) From the central hub, I want to push all messages to Azure Blob Storage in 128 MB files for later analysis at cheap cost. 3) At the same time, I would like all messages to go to IOT hub and from there to Azure CosmosDB(for long term storage)\Azure SQL DB(Long term but not sure due to size restriction). I am keeping data in blob storage because if client wants or hires a Machine learning team to create some models, I would prefer them to pull data from Blob storage rather than hitting my DB. Kindly suggest few ideas on this. Thanks in advance!! Chandan Jha.Net Core on IoT: Some .Net Core Deployment Points
Just published http://www.sportronics.com.au/dotnetcoreiot/Net_Core_on_IoT-Usability-dotnetcoreiot.html Six points discussed; 1. Should I build and deploy Self-Contained or Framework Dependant .Net Core apps? 2.Is a File Share better for downloads than FTP 3. When I rebuild/republish, after some changes to project code do I need to recopy all of the publish folder? 4. What is the best/simplest test for a .Net Core Installation 5. If manually setting up .Net Core what environment variables do I need? 6. If using a File Share, what direction should it be? Plus a short discussion wrt building on the Target v on the desktop.IoT Plug and Play bridge, connect devices to Azure even easier now
Hi all, For those working on the device side (provisioning, connectivity, integration), Microsoft has published a new open source project to ease even more the process of connecting a device to Azure: IoT Plug and Play bridge (preview). IoT Plug and Play bridge is built on top of IoT Plug and Play. More information and sources https://github.com/Azure/AzurePnPBridgePreview. Get started, https://github.com/Azure/AzurePnPBridgePreview/blob/master/pnpbridge/ReadMe.md.
