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Learn AWS IoT Greengrass V2 with this Step-by-Step Tutorial



How to Download and Install AWS IoT Greengrass V2




If you are looking for a way to build, deploy, and manage edge software components and locally act on the data that your intelligent IoT devices capture, you might want to consider using AWS IoT Greengrass V2. In this article, we will explain what AWS IoT Greengrass V2 is, why you should use it, and how to download and install it on your edge device.




download greengrass v2



What is AWS IoT Greengrass V2 and Why You Should Use It




AWS IoT Greengrass V2 is a service that provides AWS Cloud capabilities across all of your local devices. It enables you to run data processing, machine learning inference, data streaming, and other applications on your edge devices without requiring constant connectivity to the cloud. It also allows you to manage your device fleets at scale with features that control rollout rates, timeouts, and rollbacks.


AWS IoT Greengrass V2 Features




AWS IoT Greengrass V2 introduces the following features that make it easier and more flexible to develop and deploy edge software components:


  • Open source edge runtime: The edge runtime is now open source and distributed under the Apache 2.0 license and available on GitHub. You can view the AWS IoT Greengrass edge runtime code, which allows you to troubleshoot interactions with your application and helps you build more reliable and performant applications running on AWS IoT Greengrass. You can also customize and extend the AWS IoT Greengrass edge runtime to meet your specific hardware and software needs.



  • Improved modularity: You can add or remove pre-built software components based on your use cases, and your device CPU and memory resources. For example, you can choose to include only pre-built AWS IoT Greengrass components, such as stream manager, when you need to process data streams with your application. Or, you can include only machine learning components when you want to perform machine learning inference locally on your devices.



  • New development tools: AWS IoT Greengrass includes a new command line interface (CLI) that enables you to locally develop and debug applications on your device. In addition, the new local debug console helps you visually debug applications on your device. With these new capabilities, you can develop and debug code on a test device before using the cloud to deploy to your production devices. AWS IoT Greengrass also provides the Greengrass Development Kit CLI (GDK CLI), which you can use on your development computer to help you develop and publish custom Greengrass components.



  • Improved fleet deployment features: AWS IoT Greengrass is now integrated with AWS IoT thing groups. This enables you to organize your devices in groups and manage application deployments across your devices with features that control rollout rates, timeouts, and rollbacks.



AWS IoT Greengrass V2 Benefits




By using AWS IoT Greengrass V2, you can enjoy the following benefits:


  • Reduced latency: You can run data processing, machine learning inference, data streaming, and other applications on your edge devices without requiring constant connectivity to the cloud. This reduces the latency of your applications and improves the responsiveness of your devices.



  • Reduced bandwidth costs: You can filter, aggregate, and compress data locally on your edge devices before sending it to the cloud. This reduces the amount of data that you need to transfer over the network and lowers your bandwidth costs.



  • Increased reliability: You can continue to perform local logic and actions based on LoRaWAN sensor input, even when the cloud connection is intermittent or unavailable. This increases the reliability of your applications and devices and ensures that they can operate in offline or remote environments.



  • Increased security: You can encrypt and sign data locally on your edge devices before sending it to the cloud. This protects your data from unauthorized access or tampering. You can also use AWS IoT Device Defender to monitor and audit your device configurations and detect anomalies and threats.



How to Download AWS IoT Greengrass V2




To download and install AWS IoT Greengrass V2 on your edge device, you need to meet some prerequisites, and then choose between a quick installation or a manual installation method.


Prerequisites




Before you download and install AWS IoT Greengrass V2, you need to have the following:


  • An AWS account: You need an AWS account to use AWS IoT Greengrass V2. If you don't have one, you can create one for free.



  • An edge device: You need an edge device that meets the minimum hardware and software requirements for AWS IoT Greengrass V2. The device must have at least 128 MB of RAM, 256 MB of disk space, and a Linux operating system with kernel version 4.9 or later. You can use any device that meets these requirements, such as a Raspberry Pi, an NVIDIA Jetson Nano, or an Amazon EC2 instance.



  • An IAM role: You need an IAM role that grants permissions to AWS IoT Greengrass V2 to access other AWS services on your behalf. You can use the AWSIoTGreengrassV2FullAccess managed policy to create this role.



  • A thing group: You need a thing group that contains your edge device as a member. You can use the AWS IoT console or the AWS CLI to create a thing group and register your device.



  • A deployment configuration: You need a deployment configuration that specifies the software components that you want to run on your edge device. You can use the AWS IoT console or the AWS CLI to create a deployment configuration and assign it to your thing group.



Quick Installation




The quick installation method is the easiest way to download and install AWS IoT Greengrass V2 on your edge device. It uses a single command that downloads and runs an installation script from the internet. The script automatically installs the AWS IoT Greengrass core software, registers your device as a thing in AWS IoT, creates a certificate and a private key for your device, attaches an IAM role alias to your device certificate, and downloads the software components that you specified in your deployment configuration.


To use the quick installation method, follow these steps:


  • Open a terminal on your edge device and run the following command:



wget -q -O - sudo bash -s -- -i ggc_user_name ggc_group_name region aws_access_key_id aws_secret_access_key thing_group_name iot_role_alias_name component_names...


  • Replace the italicized parameters with the following values:



  • ggc_user_name: The name of the user that owns the AWS IoT Greengrass core software on your device. For example, ggc_user.



  • ggc_group_name: The name of the group that owns the AWS IoT Greengrass core software on your device. For example, ggc_group.



  • region: The AWS Region where you registered your device as a thing in AWS IoT. For example, us-east-1.



  • aws_access_key_id: The access key ID of an IAM user that has permissions to create things, certificates, policies, and role aliases in AWS IoT. For example, AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE.



  • aws_secret_access_key: The secret access key of the IAM user that has permissions to create things, certificates, policies, and role aliases in AWS IoT. For example, wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY.



  • thing_group_name: The name of the thing group that contains your device as a member. For example, MyGreengrassGroup.



  • iot_role_alias_name: The name of the role alias that grants permissions to AWS IoT Greengrass V2 to access other AWS services on your behalf. For example, GreengrassV2TokenExchangeRoleAlias.



  • component_names...: The names of the software components that you want to run on your device. You can specify one or more component names, separated by spaces. For example, aws.greengrass.HelloWorld aws.greengrass.Nucleus aws.greengrass.StreamManager.



  • Wait for the command to complete. It might take a few minutes to download and install the AWS IoT Greengrass core software and the software components on your device.



  • Verify that the AWS IoT Greengrass core software is running on your device by running the following command:



sudo /greengrass/v2/bin/greengrass-cli status


  • You should see a message that indicates that the AWS IoT Greengrass nucleus component is healthy and active, and the software components that you specified are installed and running.



Manual Installation




The manual installation method gives you more control over the download and installation process of AWS IoT Greengrass V2 on your edge device. It requires you to perform several steps manually, such as downloading the AWS IoT Greengrass core software, creating a device certificate and a private key, attaching a policy and a role alias to your device certificate, and deploying the software components to your device.


To use the manual installation method, follow these steps:


How to download greengrass v2 on Raspberry Pi


Download greengrass v2 open source edge runtime


AWS IoT greengrass v2 download and installation guide


Download greengrass v2 CLI and local debug console


Download greengrass v2 components from AWS Cloud


Download greengrass v2 nucleus for Linux or Windows


Download greengrass v2 stream manager component


Download greengrass v2 machine learning component


Download greengrass v2 OTA agent component


Download greengrass v2 PSA-certified nucleus


Download greengrass v2 GDK CLI for development


Download greengrass v2 OTF for testing


Download greengrass v2 hello world component tutorial


Download greengrass v2 custom component example


Download greengrass v2 deployment configuration file


Download greengrass v2 device setup script


Download greengrass v2 core device certificate and key


Download greengrass v2 device provisioning plugin


Download greengrass v2 device shadow sync component


Download greengrass v2 device defender component


Download greengrass v2 MQTT bridge component


Download greengrass v2 secrets manager component


Download greengrass v2 local resource access component


Download greengrass v2 lambda runtime component


Download greengrass v2 docker application deployment component


Download greengrass v2 edge manager component


Download greengrass v2 fleet provisioning component


Download greengrass v2 telemetry component


Download greengrass v2 logging component


Download greengrass v2 IP detector component


Download greengrass v2 network proxy component


Download greengrass v2 token exchange service component


Download greengrass v2 AWS IoT jobs component


Download greengrass v2 AWS IoT thing groups integration component


Download greengrass v2 AWS IoT core endpoint discovery component


Download greengrass v2 AWS IoT analytics data collector component


Download greengrass v2 AWS IoT events detector model client component


Download greengrass v2 AWS IoT site-wise connector component


Download greengrass v2 AWS IoT secure tunneling access manager component


Download greengrass v2 Amazon Kinesis video streams producer SDK component


Download greengrass v2 Amazon Rekognition inference accelerator connector component


Download greengrass v2 Amazon SageMaker edge manager agent component


Download greengrass v2 Amazon S3 uploader component


Download greengrass v2 Amazon SNS publisher component


Download greengrass v2 Amazon SQS queue reader and writer components


Download greengrass v2 Apache Kafka producer and consumer components


Download greengrass v2 Azure IoT Hub publisher and subscriber components


Download greengrass v2 Google Cloud IoT Core publisher and subscriber components


  • Download the AWS IoT Greengrass core software from the AWS IoT Greengrass console or the AWS CLI. You can choose between a ZIP archive or a Debian package format.



  • Extract or install the AWS IoT Greengrass core software on your edge device. You can use any directory that you have write access to, such as /home/pi/greengrass/v2.



  • Create a device certificate and a private key for your device. You can use the AWS IoT console or the AWS CLI to create a certificate signing request (CSR) and register it with AWS IoT. You can also use OpenSSL or other tools to generate a CSR and a private key.



  • Download the root CA certificate for AWS IoT and save it on your device. You can use the following command to download the root CA certificate:



wget -O root.ca.pem


  • Attach a policy and a role alias to your device certificate. You can use the AWS IoT console or the AWS CLI to create a policy that grants permissions to connect to AWS IoT and access other AWS services, and attach it to your device certificate. You can also create a role alias that points to an IAM role that grants permissions to AWS IoT Greengrass V2, and attach it to your device certificate.



  • Configure the AWS IoT Greengrass core software on your device. You can use the greengrass-cli configure command to specify the following parameters:



  • The region where you registered your device as a thing in AWS IoT.



  • The thing name of your device.



  • The paths to your device certificate, private key, and root CA certificate.



  • The name of the role alias that grants permissions to AWS IoT Greengrass V2.



  • Start the AWS IoT Greengrass core software on your device. You can use the greengrass-cli start command to start the edge runtime.



  • Deploy the software components to your device. You can use the AWS IoT console or the AWS CLI to create a deployment configuration that specifies the software components that you want to run on your device, and assign it to your thing group.



  • Verify that the software components are running on your device by using the greengrass-cli status command or the local debug console.



How to Verify AWS IoT Greengrass V2 Installation




To verify that you have successfully downloaded and installed AWS IoT Greengrass V2 on your edge device, you can use one of the following methods:


- Use the greengrass-cli status command on your edge device A: You can develop custom software components for AWS IoT Greengrass V2 by using the Greengrass Development Kit CLI (GDK CLI). The GDK CLI is a tool that helps you create, test, and publish custom Greengrass components. You can use the GDK CLI to generate a component recipe, which is a JSON or YAML file that defines the metadata, parameters, dependencies, lifecycle, and artifacts of your component. You can also use the GDK CLI to create a component artifact, which is a file or a folder that contains the code or resources of your component. You can then use the GDK CLI to test your component locally on your device or in a Docker container, and publish your component to the cloud.


  • Q: How can I monitor and troubleshoot AWS IoT Greengrass V2 devices and components?



  • A: You can monitor and troubleshoot AWS IoT Greengrass V2 devices and components by using the following tools:



  • AWS IoT Greengrass console: You can use the AWS IoT Greengrass console to view the status, configuration, and logs of your devices and components. You can also use the console to create and update deployments, manage software components, and configure settings.



  • AWS IoT Core console: You can use the AWS IoT Core console to view the status, configuration, and logs of your devices and components. You can also use the console to manage things, certificates, policies, and role aliases.



  • AWS CloudFormation console: You can use the AWS CloudFormation console to view the status, configuration, and logs of your devices and components. You can also use the console to create and update stacks that contain AWS IoT Greengrass V2 resources.



  • AWS CloudWatch console: You can use the AWS CloudWatch console to view metrics and alarms for your devices and components. You can also use the console to create dashboards and alerts.



  • AWS X-Ray console: You can use the AWS X-Ray console to view traces and service maps for your devices and components. You can also use the console to analyze performance issues and errors.



  • Local debug console: You can use the local debug console to view the status, configuration, logs, metrics, and traces of your devices and components locally on your device. You can also use the local debug console to start and stop components, update configuration parameters, and download artifacts.



  • Greengrass CLI: You can use the Greengrass CLI to perform various operations on your devices and components locally on your device. You can also use the Greengrass CLI to configure, start, stop, restart, reload, status, list, get-configuration-snapshot, stream-logs commands.



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