AWS IoT, part of Amazon's ongoing attempt to corner all aspects of the 'cloud', is essentially a secure MQTT broker with a management console and some back-end logic behind it to make it easier and more flexible to work with than a vanilla broker like Mosquitto.

One of the key aspects that makes AWS IoT stand out compared to other MQTT solutions is the security layer. In addition to validating the remote MQTT server with a certificate (similar to how HTTPS works), the individual sensor nodes are also verfied via a second device-side certificate. What this means is that there is a very high level of certainty that the device pushing the data out to the MQTT broker or subscribing to data from it is exclusively the device you think it is.

Unfortunately, this this also makes using AWS IoT more of a technical challenge, and there aren't a lot of embedded platforms out there that can jump through all of the technical hoops required to work with AWS IoT. Thankfully, with the WICED Feather, we've got you covered!

This guide will walk you through configuring a new 'thing' with AWS IoT, and run you through the steps required to start securely communicating with Amazon's servers using a WICED Feather, including getting the two required certificates into a form the WICED Feather can use.

New to AWS? Don't worry about it, you should have everything you need here to get up and running in under an hour!