The size of the packets sent and the total device data appeared to map pretty well but I was also interested in the Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Messaging Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) overheads.
Azure IoT Hub Metrics
To get an idea of the overheads I fired up LiveTcpUdpWatch by Nirsoft and noted down the traffic measure on port 8883.
Conenction LiveTcpUdpWatch main screen
Launching the MQTTNet client sending every 30 seconds resulted in traffic like this
So it looks like my very rough numbers are close to the numbers discussed in the above article. I need to explore the impact of keep-alive messages and other background operations.
I did notice that the .DeviceConnected and .DeviceDisconnected events did take a while to arrive. When I started the field gateway application on the Windows 10 IoT Core device I would get several DeviceTelemetry events before the DeviceConnected event arrived.
I was using Advanced Message Queueing Protocol (AMQP) so I modified the configuration file so I could try all the available options.
C# TransportType enumeration
namespace Microsoft.Azure.Devices.Client
{
//
// Summary:
// Transport types supported by DeviceClient - AMQP/TCP, HTTP 1.1, MQTT/TCP, AMQP/WS,
// MQTT/WS
public enum TransportType
{
//
// Summary:
// Advanced Message Queuing Protocol transport. Try Amqp over TCP first and fallback
// to Amqp over WebSocket if that fails
Amqp = 0,
//
// Summary:
// HyperText Transfer Protocol version 1 transport.
Http1 = 1,
//
// Summary:
// Advanced Message Queuing Protocol transport over WebSocket only.
Amqp_WebSocket_Only = 2,
//
// Summary:
// Advanced Message Queuing Protocol transport over native TCP only
Amqp_Tcp_Only = 3,
//
// Summary:
// Message Queuing Telemetry Transport. Try Mqtt over TCP first and fallback to
// Mqtt over WebSocket if that fails
Mqtt = 4,
//
// Summary:
// Message Queuing Telemetry Transport over Websocket only.
Mqtt_WebSocket_Only = 5,
//
// Summary:
// Message Queuing Telemetry Transport over native TCP only
Mqtt_Tcp_Only = 6
}
}
The first telemetry data arrived 00:57:18, the DeviceConnected arrived 01:01:28 so approximately a 4 minute delay, the DeviceDisconnected arrived within a minute of me shutting the device down.
The first telemetry data arrived 04:16:48, the DeviceConnected arrived 04:20:39 so approximately a 4 minute delay, the DeviceDisconnected arrived within a minute of me shutting the device down.
The first telemetry data arrived 04:05:36, DeviceConnected arrived 04:09:52 so approximately a 4 minute delay, the DeviceDisconnected arrived within a minute of me shutting the device down.
HTTP
I waited for 20 minutes and there wasn’t a DeviceConnected message which I sort of expected as HTTP is a connectionless protocol.
The first telemetry data arrived 01:11:33, the DeviceConnected arrived 01:11:25 so they arrived in order and within 10 seconds, the DeviceDisconnected arrived within a 15 seconds of me shutting the device down.
The first telemetry data arrived 04:42:15, the DeviceConnected arrived 04:42:06 so they arrived in order and within 10 seconds, the DeviceDisconnected arrived within a 20 seconds of me shutting device down.
The first telemetry data arrived 04:36:08, the DeviceConnected arrived 04:36:03 so they arrived in order and within 10 seconds, the DeviceDisconnected arrived within a 30 seconds of me shutting device down.
Summary
My LoRa sensors nodes are sending data roughly every minute which reduces the precision of the times.
It looks like for AMQP based messaging it can take 4-5 minutes for a Devices.DeviceConnected message to arrive, for based MQTT messaging it’s 5-10 seconds.
I have one an Azure IoT HubLoRa Telemetry Field Gateway running in my office and I wanted to process the data collected by the sensors around my property without using a Software as a Service(SaaS) Internet of Things (IoT) package.
Rather than lots of screen grabs of my configuration steps I figured people reading this series of posts would be able to figure the details out themselves.
I downloaded the JSON configuration file template from my Windows 10 device (which is created on first startup after installation) and configured the Azure IoT Hub connection string.
I then uploaded this to my Windows 10 IoT Core device and restarted the Azure IoT Hub Field gateway so it picked up the new settings.
I could then see on the device messages from sensor nodes being unpacked and uploaded to my Azure IoT Hub.
ETW logging on device
In the Azure IoT Hub metrics I graphed the number of devices connected and the number of telemetry messages sent and could see my device connect then start uploading telemetry.
Azure IoT Hub metrics
One of my customers uses Azure Event Grid for application integration and I wanted to explore using it in an IoT solution. The first step was to create an Event Grid Domain.
To confirm my event subscriptions were successful I previously found the “simplest” approach was to use an Azure storage queue endpoint. I had to create an Azure Storage Account with two Azure Storage Queues one for device connectivity (.DeviceConnected & .DeviceDisconnected) events and the other for device telemetry (.DeviceTelemetry) events.
I created a couple of other subscriptions so I could compare the different Event schemas (Event Grid Schema & Cloud Event Schema v1.0). At this stage I didn’t configure any Filters or Additional Features.
Azure IoT Hub Telemetry Event Metrics
I use Cerebrate Cerculean for monitoring and managing a couple of other customer projects so I used it to inspect the messages in the storage queues.
Without writing any code (I will script the configuration) I could upload sensor data to an Azure IoT Hub, subscribe to a selection of events the Azure IoT Hub publishes and then inspect them in an Azure Storage Queue.
I did notice that the .DeviceConnected and .DeviceDisconnected events did take a while to arrive. When I started the field gateway application on the device I would get several DeviceTelemetry events before the DeviceConnected event arrived.
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Copyright (c) January 2020, devMobile Software
//
// Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
// you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
// You may obtain a copy of the License at
//
// http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
//
// Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
// distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
// WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
// See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
// limitations under the License.
//
//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
namespace devMobile.IoT.FieldGateway.Client
{
using System;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading;
using devMobile.IoT.Rfm9x;
using Meadow;
using Meadow.Devices;
using Meadow.Foundation.Leds;
using Meadow.Foundation.Sensors.Atmospheric;
using Meadow.Hardware;
using Meadow.Peripherals.Leds;
public class MeadowClient : App<F7Micro, MeadowClient>
{
private const double Frequency = 915000000.0;
private readonly byte[] fieldGatewayAddress = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes("LoRaIoT1");
private readonly byte[] deviceAddress = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes("Meadow");
private readonly Rfm9XDevice rfm9XDevice;
private readonly TimeSpan periodTime = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 60);
private readonly Sht31D sensor;
private readonly ILed Led;
public MeadowClient()
{
Led = new Led(Device, Device.Pins.OnboardLedGreen);
try
{
sensor = new Sht31D(Device.CreateI2cBus());
ISpiBus spiBus = Device.CreateSpiBus(500);
rfm9XDevice = new Rfm9XDevice(Device, spiBus, Device.Pins.D09, Device.Pins.D10, Device.Pins.D12);
rfm9XDevice.Initialise(Frequency, paBoost: true, rxPayloadCrcOn: true);
#if DEBUG
rfm9XDevice.RegisterDump();
#endif
rfm9XDevice.OnReceive += Rfm9XDevice_OnReceive;
rfm9XDevice.Receive(deviceAddress);
rfm9XDevice.OnTransmit += Rfm9XDevice_OnTransmit;
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
}
while (true)
{
sensor.Update();
Console.WriteLine($"{DateTime.UtcNow:HH:mm:ss}-TX T:{sensor.Temperature:0.0}C H:{sensor.Humidity:0}%");
string payload = $"t {sensor.Temperature:0.0},h {sensor.Humidity:0}";
Led.IsOn = true;
rfm9XDevice.Send(fieldGatewayAddress, Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(payload));
Thread.Sleep(periodTime);
}
}
private void Rfm9XDevice_OnReceive(object sender, Rfm9XDevice.OnDataReceivedEventArgs e)
{
try
{
string addressText = UTF8Encoding.UTF8.GetString(e.Address);
string addressHex = BitConverter.ToString(e.Address);
string messageText = UTF8Encoding.UTF8.GetString(e.Data);
Console.WriteLine($"{DateTime.UtcNow:HH:mm:ss}-RX PacketSnr {e.PacketSnr:0.0} Packet RSSI {e.PacketRssi}dBm RSSI {e.Rssi}dBm = {e.Data.Length} byte message {messageText}");
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
}
}
private void Rfm9XDevice_OnTransmit(object sender, Rfm9XDevice.OnDataTransmitedEventArgs e)
{
Led.IsOn = false;
Console.WriteLine("{0:HH:mm:ss}-TX Done", DateTime.Now);
}
}
}
The Meadow platform is a work in progress (Jan 2020) so I haven’t put any effort into minimising power consumption but will revisit this in a future post.
Meadow device with Seeedstudio SHT31 temperature & humidity sensorMeadow sensor data in Field Gateway ETW loggingMeadow Sensor data in Azure IoT Central
After a month or so of posts the source code of V1.0 of my Wilderness LabsMeadowRFM9X/SX127X library is on GitHub. I included all of the source for my test harness and proof of concept(PoC) application so other people can follow along with “my meadow learning experience”.
I initially started with a DraginoLoRa Shield for Arduino and jumper cables. I did this so only the pins I was using on the shield were connected to the Meadow.
Dragino LoRa Shield for Arduino based test harness
For the final iteration of the “nasty” test harness I got the interrupts working for the transmitting and receiving of messages. It’s not quite simultaneous, the code sends a message every 10 seconds then goes back to receive continuous mode after each message has been sent.
The RegIrqFlags 01011000 indicates the RxDone, ValidHeader, and TxDone flags were set which was what I was expecting. Note the interference, the 46 byte packet
