Bosch IoT Device Management - will be discontinued by mid 2024

Setup a gateway device running Bosch IoT Edge

images/confluence/download/attachments/2230549181/07-edge.png

Performing even the simplest device management scenario would require a connected device. Bosch IoT Device Management provides a couple of different ways to register a field gateway or edge device.

To illustrate the process, we will download a pre-configured Bosch IoT Edge Agent, which is available with your service subscription, and connect it with the cloud infrastructure.

This guide walks you through configuring and connecting a Linux-based device to the Suite services available in your subscription.

The connectivity of Linux-based devices is provided and ensured by the Bosch IoT Edge Agent available for Debian-based Linux distributions for ARM (v7) and x86_64 platforms.

In case you need an Edge Agent for another system, e.g. Yocto-based devices or Zephyr-based microcontroller, see https://docs.bosch-iot-suite.com/edge/edge-agent/#/home/connect-device/en/default


Steps to follow to provision a gateway device:

Download the Edge Agent

  1. Enter the Bosch IoT Suite UI.

  2. Open Services and features.

  3. Search for Subscriptions (Classic) and click it to open the classic Portal UI.

  4. Click Edge Downloads of your particular subscription.

  5. It may take, several minutes, to receive personalized Bosch IoT Edge downloads.
    Download the Edge Agent (this example continues with the image for Linux).

    The license is limited to 3 months after the subscription date.

    Advanced developers can build their own runtime image via the Bosch IoT Edge Service SDK by downloading the appropriate SDK.
    See the Edge Services official documentation for details.

  6. Unpack the agent on your local machine or directly on the field gateway.

Use the provisioning result with the Bosch IoT Edge Agent

The file called provisioning.json will authorize the Bosch IoT Edge Agent to access the Bosch IoT Suite infrastructure, and to send data to the digital twin of the gateway device.

Install the Edge Agent

  1. Assuming you have unpacked the agent on your local machine or directly on the field gateway - move the provisioning.json file to the root folder of the uncompressed Edge Agent e.g.
    <com.bosch.iot.edge.agent.assemblies.dist-pack_linux_x86_64>\provisioning.json

  2. Each of the Edge Agent Linux distributions includes a set of Bash management scripts that are located in the root of the uncompressed Edge Agent folder.

    1. Select install.sh , which will download (if necessary), install and configure the core components (the edge containers management engine and the cloud connectivity enablement) and their relevant dependencies (containerd, Eclipse Mosquitto).

  3. The Bosch Edge Agent provides two installation options:

    1. Headless or remote installation, which uses an existing installation script with a configuration file that contains the installation parameters and no user interaction is required.

    2. Interactive or manual installation, where user interaction is needed.

      For our getting started scenario we will go with the headless type of installation and will use its default configuration parameters.

      Read more about how to install the Edge Agent with its default parameters or through a configuration file in Headless install.

  4. Now you have an installed and ready-to-connect Edge Agent on your target platform.

Start the Edge Agent

  1. Start the Agent using the start.sh script.

    1. Starting the Edge Agent establishes the cloud connection based on the device credentials provided in the Bosch IoT Suite Console dialogue.

    2. Since we have not entered any configuration parameters during installation, the agent will

      1. search for the provisioning.json in the same directory as the install script

      2. and will use the default local Mosquitto broker: tcp://localhost:1883

  2. Configuration

    All manual configurations are persisted in an edge.config file, located in the same directory as the install script.

    To change the configurations later, edit the file and restart the Edge Agent for the new configurations to take effect.

  3. After a successful registration the Bosch IoT Edge gateway will be marked as ready for communication in the Developer Console.

You can now continue with exploring your newly registered gateway device.