Understanding Gateway Device and Peripheral Association

Understanding Gateway Device and Peripheral Association

What is a Gateway Device?

A Gateway Device serves as an intermediary between peripheral devices and the cloud application. It collects, processes, and transmits data from multiple connected devices to the cloud, enabling seamless communication and data aggregation. Gateway devices can have computational capabilities to preprocess data before forwarding it to an IoT application.

What is a Peripheral Device?

A Peripheral Device can mean any device that collects specific data, such as sensors, meters, or controllers. These devices usually do not communicate directly with the application but instead connect to a gateway device, which relays their data to the Zoho IoT application.

Gateway and Peripheral Device association

In Zoho IoT applications, peripheral devices are added under the Peripheral Device Type, while gateway devices are added under the Gateway Device Type. To enable data exchange between these device instances within the application, an association must be established. This is done by selecting the appropriate gateway device instance in the "Connected Gateway" field of the peripheral device instance.



The connection credentials of the gateway device instance are then used to authenticate and establish communication with the physical gateway device, enabling seamless data transmission.

Example

In a building energy monitoring system, a Raspberry Pi functions as a gateway device, collecting and transmitting power consumption data from multiple energy meters. These energy meters measure energy usage in different rooms and send the data to the Raspberry Pi, which then forwards it to the Zoho IoT application.

In the Zoho IoT application,
  • A device instance is created for the Raspberry Pi.
  • Five device instances (peripheral device type) are created, one for each energy meter.
  • Each energy meter instance is associated to the Raspberry Pi instance by selecting it in the "Connected Gateway" field.
  • Using the Raspberry Pi’s connection credentials in the Zoho IoT application, a secure connection is established between the physical device and the application.
  • The Raspberry Pi collects data from the energy meters and transmits it to the Zoho IoT platform for real-time monitoring, reporting, and analysis.