AWS Compute Blog

Visualizing Sensor Data in Amazon QuickSight

This post is courtesy of Moheeb Zara, Developer Advocate, AWS Serverless

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a term used wherever physical devices are networked in some meaningful connected way. Often, this takes the form of sensor data collection and analysis. As the number of devices and size of data scales, it can become costly and difficult to keep up with demand.

Using AWS Serverless Application Model (AWS SAM), you can reduce the cost and time to market of an IoT solution. This guide demonstrates how to collect and visualize data from a low-cost, Wi-Fi connected IoT device using a variety of AWS services. Much of this can be accomplished within the AWS Free Usage Tier, which is necessary for the following instructions.

Services used

The following services are used in this example:

What’s covered in this post?

This post covers:

  • Connecting an Arduino MKR 1010 Wi-Fi device to AWS IoT Core.
  • Forwarding messages from an AWS IoT Core topic stream to a Lambda function.
  • Using a Kinesis Data Firehose delivery stream to store data in S3.
  • Analyzing and visualizing data stored in S3 using Amazon QuickSight.

Connect the device to AWS IoT Core using MQTT

The Arduino MKR 1010 is a low-cost, Wi-Fi enabled, IoT device, shown in the following image.

An Arduino MKR 1010 Wi-Fi microcontroller

Its analog and digital input and output pins can be used to read sensors or to write to actuators. Arduino provides a detailed guide on how to securely connect this device to AWS IoT Core. The following steps build upon it to push arbitrary sensor data to a topic stream and ultimately visualize that data using Amazon QuickSight.

  1. Start by following this comprehensive guide to using an Arduino MKR 1010 with AWS IoT Core. Upon completion, your device is connected to AWS IoT Core using MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport), a protocol for publishing and subscribing to messages using topics.
  2. In the Arduino IDE, choose File, Sketch, Include Library, and Manage Libraries.
  3. In the window that opens, search for ArduinoJson and select the library by Benoit Blanchon. Choose install.

4. Add #include <ArduinoJson.h> to the top of your sketch from the Arduino guide.

5. Modify the publishMessage() function with this code. It publishes a JSON message with two keys: time (ms) and the current value read from the first analog pin.

void publishMessage() {  
  Serial.println("Publishing message");

  // send message, the Print interface can be used to set the message contents
  mqttClient.beginMessage("arduino/outgoing");
  
  // create json message to send
  StaticJsonDocument<200> doc;
  doc["time"] = millis();
  doc["sensor_a0"] = analogRead(0);
  serializeJson(doc, mqttClient); // print to client
  
  mqttClient.endMessage();
}

6. Save and upload the sketch to your board.

Create a Kinesis Firehose delivery stream

Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose is a service that reliably loads streaming data into data stores, data lakes, and analytics tools. Amazon QuickSight requires a data store to create visualizations of the sensor data. This simple Kinesis Data Firehose delivery stream continuously uploads data to an S3 storage bucket. The next sections cover how to add records to this stream using a Lambda function.

  1. In the Kinesis Data Firehose console, create a new delivery stream, called SensorDataStream.
  2. Leave the default source as a Direct PUT or other sources and choose Next.
  3. On the next screen, leave all the default values and choose Next.
  4. Select Amazon S3 as the destination and create a new bucket with a unique name. This is where records are continuously uploaded so that they can be used by Amazon QuickSight.
  5. On the next screen, choose Create New IAM Role, Allow. This gives the Firehose delivery stream permission to upload to S3.
  6. Review and then choose Create Delivery Stream.

It can take some time to fully create the stream. In the meantime, continue on to the next section.

Invoking Lambda using AWS IoT Core rules

Using AWS IoT Core rules, you can forward messages from devices to a Lambda function, which can perform actions such as uploading to an Amazon DynamoDB table or an S3 bucket, or running data against various Amazon Machine Learning services. In this case, the function transforms and adds a message to the Kinesis Data Firehose delivery stream, which then adds that data to S3.

AWS IoT Core rules use the MQTT topic stream to trigger interactions with other AWS services. An AWS IoT Core rule is created by using an SQL statement, a topic filter, and a rule action. The Arduino example publishes messages every five seconds on the topic arduino/outgoing. The following instructions show how to consume those messages with a Lambda function.

Create a Lambda function

Before creating an AWS IoT Core rule, you need a Lambda function to consume forwarded messages.

  1. In the AWS Lambda console, choose Create function.
  2. Name the function ArduinoConsumeMessage.
  3. For Runtime, choose Author From Scratch, Node.js10.x. For Execution role, choose Create a new role with basic Lambda permissions. Choose Create.
  4. On the Execution role card, choose View the ArduinoConsumeMessage-role-xxxx on the IAM console.
  5. Choose Attach Policies. Then, search for and select AmazonKinesisFirehoseFullAccess.
  6. Choose Attach Policy. This applies the necessary permissions to add records to the Firehose delivery stream.
  7. In the Lambda console, in the Designer card, select the function name.
  8. Paste the following in the code editor, replacing SensorDataStream with the name of your own Firehose delivery stream. Choose Save.
const AWS = require('aws-sdk')

const firehose = new AWS.Firehose()
const StreamName = "SensorDataStream"

exports.handler = async (event) => {
    
    console.log('Received IoT event:', JSON.stringify(event, null, 2))
    
    let payload = {
        time: new Date(event.time),
        sensor_value: event.sensor_a0
    }
    
    let params = {
            DeliveryStreamName: StreamName,
            Record: { 
                Data: JSON.stringify(payload)
            }
        }
        
    return await firehose.putRecord(params).promise()

}

Create an AWS IoT Core rule

To create an AWS IoT Core rule, follow these steps.

  1. In the AWS IoT console, choose Act.
  2. Choose Create.
  3. For Rule query statement, copy and paste SELECT * FROM 'arduino/outgoing’. This subscribes to the outgoing message topic used in the Arduino example.
  4. Choose Add action, Send a message to a Lambda function, Configure action.
  5. Select the function created in the last set of instructions.
  6. Choose Create rule.

At this stage, any message published to the arduino/outgoing topic forwards to the ArduinoConsumeMessage Lambda function, which transforms and puts the payload on the Kinesis Data Firehose stream and also logs the message to Amazon CloudWatch. If you’ve connected an Arduino device to AWS IoT Core, it publishes to that topic every five seconds.

The following steps show how to test functionality using the AWS IoT console.

  1. In the AWS IoT console, choose Test.
  2. For Publish, enter the topic arduino/outgoing .
  3. Enter the following test payload: 
    {
  “time”: 1567023375013,  
  “sensor_a0”: 456
}
  4. Choose Publish to topic.
  5. Navigate back to your Lambda function.
  6. Choose Monitoring, View logs in CloudWatch.
  7. Select a log item to view the message contents, as shown in the following screenshot.

Visualizing data with Amazon QuickSight

To visualize data with Amazon QuickSight, follow these steps.

  1. In the Amazon QuickSight console, sign up.
  2. Choose Manage Data, New Data Set. Select S3 as the data source.
  3. A manifest file is necessary for Amazon QuickSight to be able to fetch data from your S3 bucket. Copy the following into a file named manifest.json. Replace YOUR-BUCKET-NAME with the name of the bucket created for the Firehose delivery stream.
    {
       "fileLocations":[
          {
             "URIPrefixes":[
                "s3://YOUR-BUCKET-NAME/"
             ]
          }
       ],
       "globalUploadSettings":{
          "format":"JSON"
       }
    }
  4. Upload the manifest.json file.
  5. Choose Connect, then Visualize. You may have to give Amazon QuickSight explicit permissions to your S3 bucket.
  6. Finally, design the Amazon QuickSight visualizations in the drag and drop editor. Drag the two available fields into the center card to generate a Sum of Sensor_value by Time visual.

Conclusion

This post demonstrated visualizing data from a securely connected remote IoT device. This was achieved by connecting an Arduino to AWS IoT Core using MQTT, forwarding messages from the topic stream to Lambda using IoT Core rules, putting records on an Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose delivery stream, and using Amazon QuickSight to visualize the data stored within an S3 bucket.

With these building blocks, it is possible to implement highly scalable and customizable IoT data collection, analysis, and visualization. With the use of other AWS services, you can build a full end-to-end platform for an IoT product that can reliably handle volume. To further explore how hardware and AWS Serverless can work together, visit the Amazon Web Services page on Hackster.