Connectivity overview

Device Management provides a connectivity solution between constrained IoT devices and enterprise software or web apps, reducing the complexity and time to market. This chapter describes how you can establish an end-to-end connection from your web application to a device application, seen from both ends:

• Your devices, connecting to an application through Device Management.
• Your web application, connecting to a device through Device Management. Web applications are covered in their own section.

Tip: A general introduction to Device Management Connect is available in the Introduction section.

This chapter includes information about using your device with Device Management services. It also covers other Pelion-related products, such as Device Management Client and Client Lite, and Device Management Edge. At the end of the chapter are tutorials teaching you how to apply this information to your devices and projects.

Establishing a connection

This section introduces you to device identity. Devices are identified by two important pieces of information: a globally unique device ID generated by Device Management that is used to refer to the device when using APIs, and an endpoint name that you give to your device in the factory. Device Management uses this information to connect and interact with the device. The section then discusses device onboarding and connection options. It explains how devices establish a connection to your Device Management account for the first time (onboarding) and how that connection is maintained. It then shows you how to set up and register your client with Device Management, update your device’s registration and deregister your device. The section concludes by discussing device ownership, both pre-assigned and first-to-claim by enrollment list. A device can be pre-assigned to an account during the manufacturing phase. If it is not provisioned with account identification on the factory floor, it is given an enrollment identity that can be used in the onboarding phase to associate it with any account (the "claiming account").

Optimizations for device use and server communication

This section explains how to optimize the device’s resources and battery life. It discusses device guidelines, such as those for energy-efficient devices, memory use and minimizing power consumption, and presubscription features that help you reduce traffic between your application and the LwM2M server.

Collecting data from devices

This section explores device resource management and the LwM2M resource model that Device Management Connect uses. It also teaches you how to use APIs to create, configure, access and use Objects, Object Instances, and Resources, observe Resource values, and manage Resources. These resources can then be communicated to Device Management Connect.

Provisioning development devices

Certificates allow you to connect devices to your Device Management account. Device Management provides a developer mode that relies on developer certificates, so that you don't need to go through the full factory process every time you want to test a device or software version. This section explains how to create and download a developer certificate and add the developer certificate to your application, which allows you to connect your test device to your Device Management account.

Device Management Client Lite

Device Management Client Lite is Arm’s solution for restricted Device Management devices, allowing you to fit your product into minimal resources. A low memory footprint is a key feature and this section explains how we achieve this. It introduces you to Device Management Client Lite’s features and the differences between Device Management Client and Client Lite. It also reviews security considerations and discusses memory figures.

Device Management Client tutorials

This section provides tutorials for connecting a number of devices to Device Management: devices running Mbed OS, PCs running Linux, and Raspberry PI 3 devices running Linux. It also provides information on connecting to Device Management with Device Management Client Lite. The section concludes by giving registration options for the tutorial, as well as advice about troubleshooting and debugging devices running Device Management Client.

End to end tutorials

The tutorials in this section demonstrate how to use Device Management in end to end projects.

• The connected lights tutorial shows how to use Device Management to control LED lights in a home or office.

• The Wi-SUN tutorial explains how to create your own Wi-SUN Field Area Network (FAN) mesh network and register your devices to Pelion Device Management.

• The Device Management time series database tutorial explains how to build an example service for analyzing customer interaction with products on store shelves. It shows you how to simulate a smart shelf by using Device Management Client running on Linux, write a simple proxy application for pulling values from Device Management and pushing them into a time series database, and configure a visualization platform for analytics.

The Device Management Edge tutorial is now on the Edge documentation site.