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ESP32 AWS IoT example using Arduino SDK

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This is a fork of https://github.com/ExploreEmbedded/Hornbill-Examples focusing on the AWS_IOT library and removing everything else. The code was also upgraded to AWS IoT Device SDK v3.0.1.

The library was modified so that the TLS configuration (i.e. certificates and stuff) is no longer included in the library code self, but is now passed to the AWS_IOT class from the client code. This makes the library easier usable.

Additionally, I added a tutorial on using the AWS cli to create everything needed to set your thing up.

Also I added all-in-one thing creator script which uses the AWS API (python/boto3) to create a thing, certificates and attach certificates and policies. In addition the script outputs ready-to-include C++ code to be included in your sketch.

Contents

Examples

pubSubTest Example/Quickstart

Under examples/pubSubTest the original PubSub example of the hornbill repository is included, with the configuration externalized to a separate file config.h-dist. To build the example, copy the config.h-dist file to a file called config.h and modify to fit your configuration:

  • add your WiFi configuration
  • add AWS thing private key (see below)
  • add AWS thing certificate (see below)
  • add AWS MQTT endpoint address

The easisiet way to obtain the certificates and create the things is to use the all-in-one thing creator script. Don't forget to create a IAM policy first (see below).

Build

A plattformio project and Makefile is provided.

Run make upload monitor to build and upload the example to the ESP32 and start the serial monitor afterwards to see what is going on.

If everything works, you should see something like this on your console:

Attempting to connect to SSID: MYSSID
Connected to wifi
Connected to AWS
Subscribe Successfull
Publish Message:Hello from hornbill ESP32 : 0
Received Message:Hello from hornbill ESP32 : 0
Publish Message:Hello from hornbill ESP32 : 1
Received Message:Hello from hornbill ESP32 : 1
...

AWS IoT core notes

Work in progress

This chapter describes how to use the AWS cli to

  • create a thing type and thing
  • create keys and certificates for a thing
  • attach a certificate to a thing
  • create and attach a policy to a thing

Create thing group and thing

We use the AWS cli to create a thing type called ESP32 and a thing with the name ESP32_SENSOR. For convenience and later reference, we store the things name in the environment variable THING.

$ export THING="ESP32_SENSOR"
$ aws iot create-thing-type --thing-type-name "ESP32"
$ aws iot list-thing-types
{
    "thingTypes": [
        {
            "thingTypeName": "ESP32",
            "thingTypeProperties": {
                "thingTypeDescription": "ESP32 devices"
            },
            "thingTypeMetadata": {
                "deprecated": false,
                "creationDate": 1530358342.86
            },
            "thingTypeArn": "arn:aws:iot:eu-central-1:*****:thingtype/ESP32"
        }
    ]
}
$ aws iot create-thing --thing-name "$THING" --thing-type-name "ESP32"
$ aws iot list-things
{
    "things": [
        {
            "thingTypeName": "ESP32",
            "thingArn": "arn:aws:iot:eu-central-1:*****:thing/ESP32_SENSOR",
            "version": 1,
            "thingName": "ESP32_SENSOR",
            "attributes": {}
        }
    ]
}

Create keys and certificates

$ aws iot create-keys-and-certificate --set-as-active \
                                      --certificate-pem-outfile="${THING}_cert.pem" \
                                      --private-key-outfile="${THING}_key.pem"
{
    "certificateArn": "arn:aws:iot:eu-central-1:*****:cert/7bb8fd75139186deef4c054a73d15ea9e2a5f603a29025e453057bbe70c767fe",
    "certificatePem": "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----\n ... \n-----END CERTIFICATE-----\n",
    "keyPair": {
        "PublicKey": "-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----\n ... \n-----END PUBLIC KEY-----\n",
        "PrivateKey": "-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----\n ... \n-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----\n"
    },
    "certificateId": "7bb8fd75139186deef4c054a73d15ea9e2a5f603a29025e453057bbe70c767fe"
}

On the thing we later need (see config.h-dir):

  • the private key stored in ${THING}_key.pem (i.e. ESP32_SENSOR_key.pem)
  • the certificate stored in ${THING}_cert.pem (i.e. ESP32_SENSOR_cert.pem)

Note that this is the only time that the private key will be output by AWS.

Next we attach the certificate to the thing:

$ aws iot attach-thing-principal --thing-name "$THING" \
         --principal "arn:aws:iot:eu-central-1:*****:cert/7bb8fd75139186deef4c054a73d15ea9e2a5f603a29025e453057bbe70c767fe"
$ aws iot list-principal-things --principal  "arn:aws:iot:eu-central-1:*****:cert/7bb8fd75139186deef4c054a73d15ea9e2a5f603a29025e453057bbe70c767fe"
{
    "things": [
        "ESP32_SENSOR"
    ]
}
aws iot list-thing-principals --thing-name $THING
{
    "principals": [
        "arn:aws:iot:eu-central-1:*****:cert/7bb8fd75139186deef4c054a73d15ea9e2a5f603a29025e453057bbe70c767fe"
    ]
}

Attach policy to your thing

It is important to attach a policy to your thing (technically: to the certificate attached to the thing), otherwise no communication will be possible.

First we need to create a permission named iot-full-permissions which, as the name suggests, has full iot permissions:

$ cat >thing_policy_full_permissions.json<<EOT
{
   "Version" : "2012-10-17",
   "Statement" : [
      {
         "Action" : [
            "iot:Publish",
            "iot:Connect",
            "iot:Receive",
            "iot:Subscribe",
            "iot:GetThingShadow",
            "iot:DeleteThingShadow",
            "iot:UpdateThingShadow"
         ],
         "Effect" : "Allow",
         "Resource" : [
            "*"
         ]
      }
   ]
}
EOT
$ aws iot create-policy --policy-name "iot-full-permissions" \
                        --policy-document file://thing_policy_full_permissions.json
$ aws iot list-policies
{
    "policies": [
        {
            "policyName": "iot-full-permissions",
            "policyArn": "arn:aws:iot:eu-central-1:*****:policy/iot-full-permissions"
        }
    ]
}

(TODO least privilege permission sets in policies)

Next, we attach the policy to the certificate:

WiP

"arn:aws:iot:eu-central-1:*****:thing/ESP32_SENSOR"
$ aws iot attach-policy --policy-name "iot-full-permissions"  \
                        --target "7bb8fd75139186deef4c054a73d15ea9e2a5f603a29025e453057bbe70c767fe"
$ aws iot list-targets-for-policy --policy-name iot-full-permissions
...

All-in-one thing creator script

Entering above aws cli commands manually is slow and error prone. See the provided create_thing.py Python script, which performs all steps automatically and also produces c++ code containing the certificate and keys ready to be included in your ESP32 sketch.

usage: create_thing.py [-h] [--type-name TYPE_NAME] name policy_name

positional arguments:
  name                  name of the thing to create
  policy_name           policy to attach thing to

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --type-name TYPE_NAME
                        thing type name

MQTT endpoint

Running aws describe-endpoint will give you the endpoint of your MQTT service (make sure to use the ATS enpoint for the data service type):

$ aws iot describe-endpoint --endpoint-type iot:Data-ATS
{
    "endpointAddress": "*****-ats.iot.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com"
}

The secure MQTT port is 8883. To test if your MQTT endpoint is up, you could for example issue a netcat command like nc -v <your-iot-endpoint> 8883.

Troubleshooting

Error -0x2780

E (15426) aws_iot: failed!  mbedtls_x509_crt_parse returned -0x2780 while parsing device cert`

Check the format of your PEM key and certificates in config.h.

Error -0x2700

(11417) aws_iot: failed! mbedtls_ssl_handshake returned -0x2700
E (11417) aws_iot:     Unable to verify the server's certificate. 
E (11427) AWS_IOT: Error(-4) connecting to **********.iot.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com:8883,

Are you using the correct MQTT endpoint (hint use the ATS endpoint)?

Author

Jan Delgado , original work from https://github.com/ExploreEmbedded/Hornbill-Examples.