Sending Events from IoT Devices to Azure IoT Hub using HTTPS and REST

Overview

Different IoT Devices have different capabilities. Whether it is a Micro-controller or Single Board Computer your options will vary. In this post I detailed using MQTT to send messages from an IoT Device to an Azure IoT Hub as well as using the AzureIoT PowerShell Module.

For a current project I needed to send the events from an IoT Device that runs Linux and had Python support. The Azure IoT Hub includes an HTTPS REST endpoint. For this particular application using the HTTPS REST endpoint is going to be much easier than compiling the Azure SDK for the particular flavour of Linux running on my device.

Python isn’t my language of choice so first I got it working in PowerShell then converted it to Python. I detail both scripts here as a guide for anyone else trying to do something similar but also for myself as I know I’m going to need these snippets in the future.

Prerequisites

You’ll need to have configured an;

• IoT Hub
• IoT Device
• Device Explorer

Follow this post to get started.

PowerShell Device to Cloud Events using HTTPS and REST Script

Here is the PowerShell version of the script. Update Line 3 for your DeviceID, Line 5 for your IoT Hub Name and LIne 11 for your SAS Token.

See the gist on github.

Using Device Explorer to Monitor the Device on the associated IoT Hub I can see that the message is received.

Python Device to Cloud Events using HTTPS and REST Script

Here is my Python version of the same script. Again update Line 5 for your IoT DeviceID, Line 7 for your IoT Hub and Line 12 for the SAS Token.

See the gist on github.

And in Device Explorer we can see the message is received.

Summary

When you have a device that has the ability to run Python you can use the IoT Hub HTTPS REST API to send messages from the Client to Cloud negating the need to build and compile the Azure IoT SDK to generate client libraries.