Introduction to device connection
IoT Edge provides a device connection service that supports two types of IoT devices: general-purpose devices and video devices. This service lets you easily connect your devices to the cloud for management and control.
Background information
In the Internet of Things (IoT) realm, communication protocols and data formats vary widely. Reliable and standardized device data is the foundation of business applications. Connecting devices directly to the cloud is often expensive because of high bandwidth usage. It can also result in poor real-time performance and low stability. An edge host solves these problems by parsing different protocols and transforming data formats. IoT Edge provides device management features to address these requirements.
Device connection types
IoT Edge supports the connection of two types of devices: general-purpose devices and video devices.
General-purpose devices
These are common IoT devices and systems, such as sensors, turnstiles, air conditioners, and business systems. These devices use standard communication protocols. You can connect them using official drivers from Alibaba Cloud or develop custom drivers with the driver development framework. For more information about drivers, see Introduction to drivers.
The following figure shows the architecture for connecting general-purpose devices.
Video devices
IoT Edge supports two types of video devices: Network Video Recorder (NVR) and IP Camera (IPC). The video stream connection service lets you connect your video devices to the cloud.
Video device types
NVRs are network video storage devices that support standard communication protocols.
IPCs are network camera devices.
Communication protocols
Supported protocols include ONVIF, GB/T 28181, and private video stream protocols from some major camera manufacturers.