Introduction

The main Azure portal is https://portal.azure.com.

Login using the account for your Azure subscription.

Pre-Requisites

You should have the IoT Hub instance, if not please follow instructions in below link; IoT Hub Lab
This document assumes you have a working connected Raspberry PI and that you are running Raspbian OS on it and have installed Python on the RaspberryPI.

Create Azure Storage

  • Click on + create a resource in the top left corner of the portal
  • Select Storage in the newly opened blade
  • Select Storage Account - blob,file,table,queue
  • Give a unique name for your Storage account for e.g., iotstorage (you can give the name of your choice)
  • Under deployment model choose the Resource Manager Option
  • Under Account Kind select StorageV2 (general purpose v2)
  • Select standard performance
  • under replication select Locally-Redundant Storage (LRS)
  • Access Tier (default) select Hot tier
  • Disable Secure transfer requied - In production depending on your use-case select Enabled
  • Select your subscription
  • Use your existing resource group created as part of the IoT Hub
  • Select the same Location as your IoT Hub - in my case I have choosen West Europe
  • Select Virtual Networks as Disabled for the purpose of this labs
  • Click create

Configure the Azure Storage in IoT Hub

  • Goto the Azure portal home page
  • Click on All Resources from the left navigation menu
  • Select previously created IoT Hub instance for e.g., in my case iothubpractice
  • Scroll down to messaging section and select File Upload
  • Give a unique name for your Storage account for e.g., iotstorage (you can give the name of your choice)
  • Select Azure Storage Container and select the previously created azure storage and create a new container with name say iothubfilecontainer

Upload the files to IoT Hub from device using File Uploader class

IoT Hub is the cloud gateway, which is the entrypoint for your devices to send messages to the Cloud. IoT Hub also accepts files from the devices.

Devices with intermittent connections can collect and save data locally in files and use File Upload functionality to send the data into Cloud. This Lab assumes that You have a working and connected RaspberryPI or any edge device with linux os and python pre-installed on it

  • Login to your IoT device say (RaspberryPI)
  • Install the Azure IoT client sdks pip install azure-iothub-device-client
  • Create the file file-uploader.py vi file-uploader.py
import time
import sys
import iothub_client
import os
from iothub_client import IoTHubClient, IoTHubClientError, IoTHubTransportProvider, IoTHubClientResult, IoTHubError

CONNECTION_STRING = "{deviceConnectionString}"
PROTOCOL = IoTHubTransportProvider.HTTP

FILENAME = 'sample.txt'

def blob_upload_conf_callback(result, user_context):
    if str(result) == 'OK':
        print ( "...file uploaded successfully." )
    else:
        print ( "...file upload callback returned: " + str(result) )

def iothub_file_upload_sample_run():
    try:
        print ( "IoT Hub file upload sample, press Ctrl-C to exit" )

        client = IoTHubClient(CONNECTION_STRING, PROTOCOL)

        client.upload_blob_async(FILENAME, FILENAME, os.path.getsize(FILENAME), blob_upload_conf_callback, 0)

        print ( "" )
        print ( "File upload initiated..." )

        while True:
            time.sleep(30)

    except IoTHubError as iothub_error:
        print ( "Unexpected error %s from IoTHub" % iothub_error )
        return
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        print ( "IoTHubClient sample stopped" )
    except:
        print ( "generic error" )

if __name__ == '__main__':
    print ( "Simulating a file upload using the Azure IoT Hub Device SDK for Python" )
    print ( "    Protocol %s" % PROTOCOL )
    print ( "    Connection string=%s" % CONNECTION_STRING )

    iothub_file_upload_sample_run()
  • Save the above file
  • Replace the connection string above with your IoT Device connection string
  • Goto your IoT Hub instance, under Explorers select Devices select your device id and copy the Connection String - Primary Key to your connection string in the code above
  • Create a sample text file parallel to your file-uploader.py script with some text in it and name it as sample.txt
  • Run below command python file-uploader.py
  • If you see below message File upload initiated… followed by …file uploaded successfully.
  • The file upload to IoT Hub is successful, Congrats!

Documentation

Internet of Things industry case-studies, customer success stories and useful documentation links:

Link Description
IoT Hub Overview of IoT Hub
IoT Case Studies Industry case-studies on Internet of Things
IoT Customer Stories Azure customer success stories in Internet of Things
Products Main page for Azure Products
Pricing Pricing and TCO Calculators, plus pricing page for each product
Documentation Azure documentation, quickstarts, SDKs and APIs etc.
Architecture Patterns and Reference Architecture
Learning Paths Guided (and finite) paths for learning a new area

(Next Steps - Optional)

  • TBD

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