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Getting started with the IoT Hub CLI
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Getting started with the Scaleway IoT Hub CLI

In this tutorial we will use the API through the Scaleway command line interface CLI. This will show you how to create Hubs and Devices, as well as more advanced features of the Scaleway IoT Hub: Hub Events and Routes.

You can find the API reference documentation at the following link: IoT API

Security & Identity (IAM):

You may need certain IAM permissions to carry out some actions described on this page. This means:

  • you are the Owner of the Scaleway Organization in which the actions will be carried out, or
  • you are an IAM user of the Organization, with a policy granting you the necessary permission sets
Requirements:
  • You have an account and are logged into the Scaleway console
  • You have mosquitto-clients (mqtt client), and jq (json parsing tool) installed on your computer

CLI setup and configuration

If you already have configured the Scaleway command-line interface, you can skip this section. However, we recommend checking it for updates.

  1. Follow the CLI installation steps.
  2. Configure your CLI by running the following command and answering the questions: 
    scw init

Setting up the hub

The Hub creation is done through the scw iot hub create command, your CLI configuration already includes the project ID, you can optionally set:

  • A name, with name="my_first_hub". For this tutorial purposes, the name is not important.
  • A product plan, with product-plan="plan_dedicated".

  1. Save the output to a hub.json file to make it easier later, so we need to tell the CLI to output as json:

    scw iot hub create -o json > hub.json
    jq < hub.json

    The file hub.json will contain come content as like the following example:

    {
    "id": "b20c3639-9030-496c-a1b2-6feb15846726",
    "name": "cli-hub-cocky-hugle",
    "status": "enabling",
    "product_plan": "plan_shared",
    "enabled": true,
    "device_count": 0,
    "connected_device_count": 0,
    "endpoint": "iot.fr-par.scw.cloud",
    "disable_events": false,
    "events_topic_prefix": "$SCW/events",
    "region": "fr-par",
    "created_at": "2021-04-26T08:46:33.436Z",
    "updated_at": "2021-04-26T08:46:33.436Z",
    "project_id": "<your project ID>",
    "organization_id": "<your organization ID>",
    "enable_device_auto_provisioning": false,
    "has_custom_ca": false
    }

  2. Poll the hub status until it is ready:

    scw iot hub get $(jq -r '.id' hub.json) | grep Status

    At some point, the status will switch to ready.

Set up the devices

Now create 2 devices. You just need to provide:

  • The Hub ID. This is the "id" field from the JSON response received while creating a hub.
  • (Optional) A name. Again, the name is not important for this tutorial.
Note:

As this tutorial aims to be simple and straightforward, the following commands are allowing the device to connect using insecure protocols, such as plain text MQTT or MQTTs without mutual authentication. In production, you should Deny Insecure connections to have the highest level of security. This is done by setting the field allow-insecure to false.

  1. Save the response to a file so we can use the fields later.

    scw iot device create \
    hub-id=$(jq -r '.id' hub.json) \
    allow-insecure=true \
    -o json > dev1.json
    jq < dev1.json

    The file dev1.json should contain something similar to:

    {
    "device": {
        "id": "0a184d04-aa69-43e5-8fbf-0ee0793aea43",
        "name": "cli-device-pensive-bassi",
        "description": "",
        "status": "enabled",
        "hub_id": "b20c3639-9030-496c-a1b2-6feb15846726",
        "last_activity_at": "1970-01-01T00:00:00Z",
        "is_connected": false,
        "allow_insecure": true,
        "allow_multiple_connections": false,
        "message_filters": {
        "publish": {
            "policy": "reject",
            "topics": []
        },
        "subscribe": {
            "policy": "reject",
            "topics": []
        }
        },
        "created_at": "2021-04-26T09:36:10.708Z",
        "updated_at": "2021-04-26T09:36:10.708Z"
    },
    "certificate": {
        "crt": "<certificate here>",
        "key": "<certificate key here>"
    }
    }

  2. Now create a second device:

    scw iot device create \
    hub-id=$(jq -r '.id' hub.json) \
    allow-insecure=true \
    -o json > dev2.json
    jq < dev2.json

Subscribe and Publish

Now that everything is set up, let’s simulate 2 devices and send data.

  1. Setup the subscriber:

    # In one terminal
    mosquitto_sub \
    -h $(jq -r '.endpoint' hub.json) \
    -i $(jq -r '.device.id' dev1.json) \
    -t mytopic/mysubtopic

  2. Run the publisher:

    # In another terminal
    mosquitto_pub \
    -h $(jq -r '.endpoint' hub.json) \
    -i $(jq -r '.device.id' dev2.json) \
    -t mytopic/mysubtopic \
    -m 'Hello, world!'

    You should see the subscriber receive the Hello, world! message.

Setting up TLS mutual authentication

If you require security, you can also connect your device to the Hub using TLS mutual authentication. With this method, the Hub can check the device’s identity, and the device can check the Hub’s identity.

Note:

It is possible to connect to the Hub using TLS but without Mutual authentication. In this case, the device certificates are not needed as the Hub does not need to check the device identity. But the Hub certificate will still be needed as your client must check the hub’s identity.

  1. Start by downloading the IoT Hub CA:

    curl -sS -O https://iot.s3.nl-ams.scw.cloud/certificates/fr-par/iot-hub-ca.pem
    sha1sum iot-hub-ca.pem
    # 13cf3e59ed52d4c4b6bc249e85539d5fd5d572fb  iot-hub-ca.pem

  2. Then extract the certificates from the device JSON files, so that the mosquitto clients may use them:

    jq -r '.certificate.crt' dev1.json > dev1.crt
    jq -r '.certificate.key' dev1.json > dev1.key
    jq -r '.certificate.crt' dev2.json > dev2.crt
    jq -r '.certificate.key' dev2.json > dev2.key

  3. Run the same test as before, but with the added security:

    # In one terminal
    mosquitto_sub \
    -h $(jq -r '.endpoint' hub.json) -p 8883 \
    --cert dev1.crt --key dev1.key --cafile iot-hub-ca.pem \
    -i $(jq -r '.device.id' dev1.json) \
    -t mytopic/mysubtopic
    # In another terminal
    mosquitto_pub \
    -h $(jq -r '.endpoint' hub.json) -p 8883 \
    --cert dev2.crt --key dev2.key --cafile iot-hub-ca.pem \
    -i $(jq -r '.device.id' dev2.json) \
    -t mytopic/mysubtopic \
    -m 'Hello, SECURE world!'
    Note:

    You can mix MQTT and MQTTs clients on the same hub.

You can harness the real power of MQTT Pub/Sub with this blog post: An Introduction to the MQTT protocol.

See Also
Getting started with the IoT Hub API