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Mbed OS example to connect to Azure IoT Hub


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Azure IoT Hub example for Mbed OS

The example project is part of the Arm Mbed OS Official Examples. It contains an application that uses the Microsoft Azure SDK to connect to an IoT Hub instance using the MQTT protocol.

You can build the project with all supported Mbed OS build tools. However, this example project specifically refers to the command-line interface tool Arm Mbed CLI.
(Note: To see a rendered example you can import into the Arm Online Compiler, please see our import quick start.)

It has been tested on K64F with Ethernet and DISCO_L475VG_IOT01A with WiFi, but any Mbed OS 6 targets with Internet access should work.

Mbed OS build tools

Mbed CLI 2

Starting with version 6.5, Mbed OS uses Mbed CLI 2. It uses Ninja as a build system, and CMake to generate the build environment and manage the build process in a compiler-independent manner. If you are working with Mbed OS version prior to 6.5 then check the section Mbed CLI 1.
1. Install Mbed CLI 2.
1. From the command-line, import the example: mbed-tools import mbed-os-example-for-azure
1. Change the current directory to where the project was imported.

Mbed CLI 1

  1. Install Mbed CLI 1.
  2. From the command-line, import the example: mbed import mbed-os-example-for-azure
  3. Change the current directory to where the project was imported.

Setting up an Azure IoT Hub account

Follow Azure IoT Hub’s official documentation to

  1. Create a new hub on the Azure portal (documentation). You will need a Standard tier hub to enable cloud-to-device messages for this example, and a free option is available in this tier.
  2. Register a new device to the hub you have created (documentation). Make a copy of the “Primary Connection String” of the device.

Now the IoT Hub is ready for use in this example.

Building this example

To fetch the example,

  1. Fetch the project and its dependencies
    mbed import mbed-os-example-for-azure
    Or if you fetched this example repository with git clone, run mbed deploy inside the cloned repository.

    Note: Please ignore warnings like Could not access submodule ... and [mbed] WARNING: File "package.bld" in .... They are caused by different dependency control systems used by the Azure SDK and Mbed CLI.

  2. In the example repository you fetched, open azure_cloud_credentials.h and place Primary Connection String which you have previously copied into iothub_connection_string array.

  3. (If you want to use WiFi) set nsapi.default-wifi-ssid to your WiFi name and nsapi.default-wifi-password to your WiFi password, keeping any escaped quotes (\"). If you use a different target, replace "DISCO_L475VG_IOT01A" with your target and remove "target.components_add": ["wifi_ism43362"] (unless it use the same ISM43362 WiFi module).
    For example, to use NUCLEO-F429ZI:
    json "NUCLEO-F429ZI": { "target.network-default-interface-type": "WIFI", "nsapi.default-wifi-security": "WPA_WPA2", "nsapi.default-wifi-ssid": "\"SSID\"", "nsapi.default-wifi-password": "\"PASSWORD\"" }
  4. (If you want to use Cellular) set nsapi.default-cellular-apn to the appropriate value based on your carrier and SIM card. Depending on your SIM and cellular carrier, you may also have to configure nsapi.default-cellular-sim-pin, nsapi.default-cellular-username, and nsapi.default-cellular-password as well. Make sure to keep any escaped quotes (\"). If you use a different target, replace "EP_AGORA" with your target.
    For example, to use EP_AGORA:
    "EP_AGORA": { "nsapi.default-cellular-apn" : "\"APN\"", "nsapi.default-cellular-sim-pin" : null, "nsapi.default-cellular-username" : null, "nsapi.default-cellular-password" : null, ...

To compile and run the example,

  1. Connect your development board to your PC with a USB cable.
  2. (If you want to use Ethernet) connect the board to an Ethernet cable of your network.

  3. Compile, flash and run the example

    • Mbed CLI 2

    bash $ mbed-tools compile -m <TARGET> -t <TOOLCHAIN> --flash --sterm --baudrate=115200

    • Mbed CLI 1

    bash $ mbed compile -m <TARGET> -t <TOOLCHAIN> --flash --sterm --baudrate=115200

    For example, <TARGET> can be DISCO_L475VG_IOT01A and <TOOLCHAIN> can be GCC_ARM if you want to use this combination.

Expected output

The example starts by connecting your network interface:

Info: Connecting to the network
Info: Connection success, MAC: <your MAC>

Then it fetches time from an NTP server, because Azure IoT Hub’s Share Access Key requires correct timestamps for connections:

Info: Getting time from the NTP server
Info: Time: Wed Jul22 15:9:41 2020

Info: RTC reports Wed Jul22 15:9:41 2020

Note: If it fails to fetch time or the reported time makes no sense (e.g. year 2100), the NTP server might be unreachable for a moment. It is usually enough to reset the board to rerun the example.

Now it initializes the Azure SDK and starts sending one message every second:

Info: Sending: "10 messages left to send, or until we receive a reply"
Info: Connected to IoT Hub
Info: Message sent successfully
Info: Sending: "9 messages left to send, or until we receive a reply"
Info: Message sent successfully
...

Sending cloud-to-device messages

On the Azure portal, go to the page of your device (i.e. where you copied the Primary Connection String), you can send a message to your device using “Message to Device”.

Once the message is received by your device, it prints:

Info: Message received from IoT Hub
Info: Message body: <YOUR MESSAGE>

Tracing the IoT Hub client

To monitor incoming/outgoing IoT Hub events, you can enable tracing by setting iothub_client_trace in mbed_app.json to true. This can be useful for debugging issues related to connections or credentials.

Sample trace for the first message sent:

Info: Sending: "10 messages left to send, or until we receive a reply"
-> 15:9:43 CONNECT | VER: 4 | KEEPALIVE: 240 | FLAGS: 192 | USERNAME: <your Hub>.azure-devices.net/<your device>/?api-version=2017-11-08-preview&DeviceClientType=iothubclient%2f1.3.8%20(native%3b%20mbedOS5%3b%20undefined) | PWD: XXXX | CLEAN: 0
<- 15:9:43 CONNACK | SESSION_PRESENT: true | RETURN_CODE: 0x0
Info: Connected to IoT Hub
-> 15:9:43 SUBSCRIBE | PACKET_ID: 2 | TOPIC_NAME: devices/<your device>/messages/devicebound/# | QOS: 1
-> 15:9:43 PUBLISH | IS_DUP: false | RETAIN: 0 | QOS: DELIVER_AT_LEAST_ONCE | TOPIC_NAME: devices/<your device>/messages/events/ | PACKET_ID: 3 | PAYLOAD_LEN: 53
<- 15:9:43 SUBACK | PACKET_ID: 2 | RETURN_CODE: 1
<- 15:9:43 PUBACK | PACKET_ID: 3
Info: Message sent successfully

Troubleshooting

If you have problems, you can review the documentation for suggestions on what could be wrong and how to fix it.

Related links

License and contributions

The software is provided under Apache-2.0 license. Contributions to this project are accepted under the same license.

This project contains code from other projects. The original license text is included in those source files. They must comply with our license guide.