Your Guide to AWS IoT at re:Invent 2018

AWS re:Invent 2018 is almost here! As you plan your agenda, we don’t want you to miss any IoT sessions. This year we have a lot of great technical content about our IoT services as well as use case specific sessions for industrial and the connected home – over 100 breakout sessions, hands-on workshops, deep-dive chalk talks, and more. You’ll hear success stories from our customers and partners including Pentair, Vestel, VIZIO, Thermo Fisher Scientific, GE, Enel, Analog Devices, the City of San Jose, Ayla Networks, Deutsche Bahn, Fender, Hudl, FormCell, AISIN AW, and many more. This year’s re:Invent also includes an AWS IoT pub crawl, Tuesday, November 27, 6:00pm at the ARIA where you can relax and enjoy some food and drink with AWS IoT experts.

You will not want to miss the IoT Thought Leadership session delivered by Dirk Didascalou, VP of AWS IoT. Another do not miss session is AIoT: AI Meets IoT with AWS IoT GM, Sarah Cooper and James Gosling, Distinguished Engineer. Below are few highlights from this year’s lineup to help you plan your event agenda. For a full list of sessions, see the re:Invent session catalog.

Industrial IoT Sessions

Industrial IoT (IIoT) bridges the gap between legacy industrial equipment and infrastructure and new technologies such as machine learning, cloud, mobile, and edge computing. IIoT helps customers optimize industrial operations and increase productivity and efficiency. You can use IIoT applications for predictive quality and maintenance and to remotely monitor operations from anywhere. Attend the sessions below to learn more about to use AWS IoT for industrial applications.

How Fender is Automating Its Manufacturing Operations with AWS (Session IOT220-R)

In this session, we explain how combining IoT and AI technologies, such as computer vision, enables you to increase the productivity of a manufacturing process. Using AWS IoT services and analytics, we show you how to sense and control environmental conditions. Finally, we show you how to quickly transition from a patrol-based model to a notification-based model for replenishment scenarios.

Industrial IoT: Connecting Existing Machines to Tomorrow’s IoT, ft. Deutsche Bahn (Session IOT303-R)

The overwhelming majority of today’s industrial machines is not internet-ready. This is because many industrial machines lack connectivity or have proprietary or industry-specific interfaces. The value of these machines is in their access to data and metadata that can be used to unlock new business opportunities. In this session, we provide a detailed view into how to use AWS Greengrass and AWS Lambda to connect machines with industrial interfaces, such as OPC UA, Modbus, Ethernet/IP, and EuroMap63. We also walk you through a demonstration and show you how to connect to industrial machines and provide data and metadata at the edge and in the cloud.

Serverless Industry 4.0 & AI: Drive Business Insights from Machine Data Workshop (Workshop IOT402-R)

In this workshop, we provide a hands-on approach for building the complete Industry 4.0 AI dataflow – from accessing data on machines to deploying AI models on the edge. Learn how to combine fully managed AWS IoT services for such a solution. First, we connect different industrial devices using AWS Greengrass with industry protocols (e.g., OPC UA). Next, we use AWS IoT Analytics to create AI models with Amazon SageMaker. Finally, we deploy and run models with AWS Greengrass Machine Learning (ML) Inference.

Industrial IoT Applications: Making the Connection and Extracting Value Chalk Talk (Chalk Talk IOT342-R)

Industrial IoT applications are rapidly emerging across industries such as oil and gas, manufacturing, and agriculture. In this chalk talk, we help you architect end-to-end solutions that will deliver value like predictive maintenance, manufacturing quality, and process monitoring. In this interactive session, we help you understand how to connect greenfield and brownfield infrastructure with AWS that leverages both AWS Greengrass (on premises) and other AWS Cloud services. Along the way, we show how the AWS Industrial IoT Reference Architecture is incorporated to build your industrial application.

Connected Home Sessions

A connected home brings devices and services together for an integrated, autonomous experience that improves a consumer’s life. Connected home experiences include everything from voice-controlled lights, house-cleaning robots, machine learning-enabled security cameras, and WiFi routers that troubleshoot for you. You can use AWS IoT for home automation, home security and monitoring, and home networking. Attend the sessions below to learn more about to use AWS IoT for connected home applications.

Alexa and AWS IoT, ft. VIZIO (Session IOT302-R)

Voice is a natural interface to interact not just with the world around us, but also with physical assets and things, such as connected home devices, including lights, thermostats, or TVs. In this session, we discuss how you can connect and control devices in your home using the AWS IoT platform and Alexa Skills Kit. We also hear from customer, VIZIO, on how they are using AWS IoT and Alexa to bring a voice-controlled television experience to their hundreds of thousands of customers.

Building IoT Applications for a Smart Home, ft. Vestel (Session IOT306-R)

The IoT transformation begins at home. Today, device manufacturers and network providers are building groundbreaking connected devices and applications to make your home smarter. In this session, we dive into the best practices and common patterns for building connected devices and applications for a Smart Home. This session focuses on securely onboarding your devices to a consumer’s account, leveraging IoT, using ML at the edge, and video streaming for home security. By the end of the session, you’ll have a set of best practices for how to build IoT products in the Smart Home. Also hear from Vestel about their smart home application.

IoT Analytics in the Connected Home (Builders Session IOT339-R)

How can you make the smart home smarter? In this session, learn the most common use cases for analytics in the connected home. Attendees get hands-on experience implementing AWS IoT Analytics using data points common in connected home applications.

Ambient Intelligence – Bringing ML and AI to the Connected Home (Chalk Talk IOT350-R1)

AWS IoT Analytics is a fully managed service that makes it easy to run and operationalize sophisticated analytics on massive volumes of IoT data. In this session, we demonstrate how AWS IoT Analytics can help you incorporate the power of ambient intelligence into your IoT workflow and extract valuable insights from your generated IoT data. In addition, as we walk you through a specific example, we describe each of the service components, how to use them, and general best practices.

AWS IoT Services Sessions

Anatomy of a Successful IoT Project, ft. Pentair (Session IOT202)

Patterns of IoT project success are starting to emerge across industries and project types. In this session, we identify and review high-level challenges, and we describe the most common solutions to those challenges. Leave this session with an understanding of the common phases and personae necessary for your project as well as general guidelines for orienting your project and organization toward success. A representative from Pentair discusses the company’s IoT project as an example case study.

Computing at the Edge with AWS Greengrass and Amazon FreeRTOS, ft. Enel (Session IOT213)

Edge computing is all about moving compute power to the source of the data instead of having to bring it to the cloud. The edge is a fundamental part of IoT, and it is not only about connecting things to the internet. In this session, we discuss how AWS Greengrass, which is an IoT edge software, can power devices small and large, from a sensor all the way to a wind turbine. With AWS Greengrass, these IoT devices can securely gather data, keep device data in sync, and communicate with each other while still using the cloud for management, analytics, and durable storage. Join us to learn more about the edge of IoT.

Keep Your IoT Devices Secure (Session IOT205)

Helping you manage the security of your IoT fleet is a top priority for AWS. You can use AWS IoT Device Defender to audit device fleets for best practices and drift in security settings, detect abnormal device behavior, and receive alerts to investigate issues. In this session, we will show you how you can use AWS IoT Device Defender to implement and maintain secure policies and controls to keep data and devices secure. Come away understanding how to spot insecure device configurations and how to set up metrics that can be used to spot a DDoS and botnet attacks. We will also look at how AWS IoT Device Defender works with AWS IoT Core and AWS IoT Device Management to respond to security alerts.

Managing Connected Devices at Scale with AWS IoT Device Management, ft. Hudl (Session IOT207-R)

IoT deployments often consist of thousands to millions of devices deployed across multiple locations. It is essential to have a solution to track, monitor, and manage your connected device fleets at scale. In this session, learn how AWS IoT Device Management can help you onboard, remotely manage, and monitor your connected devices. In this session, we discuss key features of AWS IoT Device Management, including fleet indexing and search, remote commands, over-the-air (OTA) updates, and device monitoring. Learn how AWS IoT Device Management can help you scale your fleets and reduce the cost and effort of managing IoT device deployments. Also, representatives from Hudl, the world leader in sports video analysis, discuss how the company is changing the recording and upload process for high schools across the country with their newest product, Hudl Focus.

The Essentials of AWS IoT Device Management (Chalk Talk IOT326-R)

In this session, learn how to use AWS IoT Device Management to onboard and manage devices at scale. We discuss a customer use case, provide a demo, and share best practices to solve the fleet management challenges that you may be facing.

Amazon FreeRTOS: IoT Operating System for Microcontrollers (Session IOT208-R)

In this presentation, we take a deeper look at Amazon FreeRTOS. As OEMs work to squeeze more functionality onto cheaper and smaller IoT devices, they face a series of challenges in development and operations that result in security vulnerabilities, inefficient code, compatibility issues, and unclear licensing. With Amazon FreeRTOS, it is now easier to build, deploy, and update connected microcontroller-based devices quickly and economically, while retaining confidence that the devices are secure.

Machine Learning at the IoT Edge (Session IOT214)

Whether it’s connected cars, smart home devices, or industrial applications, IoT applications are rapidly becoming more intelligent. Edge computing is helping lead this transformation as IoT devices not only collect and transmit data, but also perform predictive analytics and respond to local events, even without cloud connectivity. In this session, learn about ML inference at the edge, why it matters, and how to use it to build intelligent IoT applications. Through customer use cases, we demonstrate how to use AWS Greengrass to locate cloud-trained ML models, deploy them to your AWS Greengrass devices, enable access to on-device computing power, and apply the models to locally generated data without connection to the cloud.

Customer Showcase for AWS IoT Analytics (Session IOT219)

See how our customers are using AWS IoT Analytics.

Operationalizing Your Analysis With IoT Analytics (Session IOT358-R)

AWS IoT Analytics makes it easy to run and operationalize sophisticated analytics on massive volumes of IoT data without having to worry about the cost and complexity required to build your own IoT analytics platform. It collects and prepares data for analysis and also lets you explore and visualize your IoT data so you can make better and more accurate business decisions. AWS IoT Analytics is a fully-managed service that makes it easy to run and operationalize sophisticated analytics on massive volumes of IoT data without having to worry about the cost and complexity typically required to build an IoT analytics platform. It is the easiest way to run analytics on IoT data and get insights to make better and more accurate decisions for IoT applications and machine learning use cases. Models built and trained in AWS IoT Analytics can be run on connected devices. Join us for a deep dive and demo on how to operationalize your analytical workflows with AWS IoT Analytics.

Implementing Multi-Region AWS IoT, ft. Analog Devices (Session IOT401)

Your devices are being shipped across the globe. You have consumers who use their hardware across different countries. How can you build an IoT application that reflects the geographic reach of your devices? In this session, we walk you through the stages of going multi-region with AWS IoT. We first tackle common challenges around setting up your accounts and permissions for AWS IoT. We then dive into different modes of multi-region deployments using multiple AWS services. We also cover the nuances of moving devices across locations and how you can plan, monitor, and execute on your IoT application. Throughout this session, we dive into code and architectures that show the good, the bad, and the ugly of multi-region deployments in IoT, and we share how best to tackle them on day 1 as you take your applications global. We also highlight a customer example from Analog Devices.

Want to find out about all of the IoT activities at re:Invent? Download our re:Invent IoT Guide here.