Does AWS Mobile SDK for Android gives capabilities to call AWS IoT REST APIs?

Question

I thought of writing an WebApp to control my Android Phone.

What I'm intended to do is My WebApp will call the REST APIs of AWS IoT and send some commands. Using AWS rules engine I store those command data into a database and the same time send a push notification to my Android application.

When my Android application receives the push notification it will call the AWS IoT REST APIs to retrieve the stored command data from the database and executes those.

I believe in this manner I can control my mobile phone using AWS IoT as a EMM (Enterprise Mobility Manager) provider.

My question is, does AWS IoT allows this type of REST communication instead of using MQTT protocol?

Answer 1

AWS IoT uses the MQTT protocol (and AWS APIs), not REST.

There are two ways to solve your problem:

1. Convert everything to MQTT: Have your web app send a message to AWS IoT (Luckily, they support websockets for just this purpose), and use the AWS mobile SDK to make your mobile app speak MQTT.

2. If you need your components to be RESTful, then you should forget about AWS IoT and use AWS Lambda (+API Gateway) instead. You can use SNS messaging and push notifications.

Don't force AWS IoT if it's not a good fit. The name is just a marketing term. There is no best IoT Architecture.