Posted On: Nov 15, 2021
AWS IoT Greengrass is an Internet of Things (IoT) edge runtime and cloud service that helps customers build, deploy, and manage device software. With this release, AWS IoT Greengrass version 2.5 adds support for Microsoft Windows devices. Windows gateway devices are commonly used in industrial IoT scenarios to automate manufacturing operations by collecting local sensor and equipment data and triggering local actions using application business logic. For example, consider an automotive assembly line where a steel stamping press creates a complex part that is prone to defects. Quality Control (QC) automation can be built using a video camera stream fed to a gateway device that uses local ML inference to check part dimensions and find cosmetic defects. The gateway could then notify operators if defects are identified.
Building this solution with AWS is easy. First, you install AWS IoT Greengrass on your Windows gateway device from the console in minutes. Once AWS IoT Greengrass is running, you can now deploy your QC application onto the gateway with just a few clicks. You can also use the managed MQTT broker to receive messages locally from your video camera, or use AWS IoT Greengrass device as a hub to aggregate data from other local sensors and equipment, process and take action on those messages, run local ML inference, and easily send data to the AWS cloud to be analyzed. Once you have a Windows gateway up and running, you can easily replicate this configuration to thousands of gateways across your manufacturing sites in hours, not weeks, using AWS IoT fleet provisioning.
We have extensively tested AWS IoT Greengrass version 2.5 on Windows Server 2019 and Windows 10. If you are unsure if your Windows-based device can run AWS IoT Greengrass and interoperate with other AWS IoT services, you can use AWS IoT Device Tester to run a series of automated functional validation tests.
Please see the AWS Region table for all the regions where AWS IoT Greengrass 2.5 is available. To learn more, visit our product page and view the updated developer guide.