Google Cloud IoT Solutions Guide

Google Cloud IoT platform makes it easy to connect your devices to the Cloud platform in a few clicks. At some point, everyone knows that Google offers cloud solutions. But not everyone knows how amazing they are.

These cloud solutions IoT Core help businesses process terabytes of information in seconds. But from someone who has worked with several similar solutions before, I can say that Google’s solutions are better than the rest.

I’ll go through every aspect of Google Cloud IoT with you in this article. This will be the ultimate guide to deep dive into Google cloud IoT Solutions. Getting into a cloud platform is not easy. So, you will invest your money and energy in the long term. This article explains How You Will get started with Google Cloud IoT solutions, from basic to Starting a Project. And also, what is the difference between other competitors and cost tiers of the Cloud Platforms.

What is IoT?

IoT means the “Internet of Things,” connecting devices or specific devices to the internet via network devices or gateways. And accessing them remotely, allowing them to interact and exchange data. This method also offers an independent aspect that allows any device to be managed without human involvement.

What is an IoT Platform?

It is a middleware that synchronizes all communications between users’ apps and external devices. IoT platforms, in general, perform a variety of tasks related to the administration and automation of connected devices:

• Remote device coordination and control

• Data collection, storage, and processing

• Cloud and device software deployment

• 3d party integration support

IoT cloud platforms can severely reduce development time by providing pre-built functionalities and reusable technical architecture.

Why Do You Need An IoT Platform?

An IoT platform is designed to speed up the development of your IoT project by offering a ready-to-use technological stack. Besides the time savings, there are other benefits of using an IoT platform: It aids in the early validation of your business case. It also helps to get to the market quickly. It might be more convenient to know these things below.

To Validate Your Business Idea

It is important to have a clear business concept and validate it on the market to make your IoT product successful. In addition, building a product prototype and testing it with the target audience will benefit. Your initial product must be in the hands of your target consumers and stakeholders before you begin the development stage. The IoT cloud platform will assist you in obtaining early feedback from your clients, which you can then use to improve your IoT product development.

For Customizable Ready-Made Materials

If you want to save money upfront, white-labeled ready-to-use IoT platforms are an excellent alternative to designing time-consuming and expensive software. Also, some suppliers provide easily adaptable and practically ready-to-use systems, while others require much more integration and modification from your developers or external consultancies. So consider whether engaging software developers to build software from the ground up or paying to an IoT cloud platform and performing far less effort is the best option for you.

For Security And Compliance Assurance

Due to the obvious risks of IoT projects, the most important benefit of IoT cloud platforms is the huge decrease in technical dangers and cybercriminal incidents. Security and regulatory compliance are taken care of by IoT platform suppliers. They are in charge of maintaining current software versions and regulatory compliance, licenses, privacy documentation, and checklists.

What Is The Google Cloud Platform (GCP)?

Google Cloud Platform, or simply GCP, is a Google-provided suite of cloud computing services that operates on Google’s same platform internally for its end-user products such as Gmail, YouTube, Google One, and Google search. 

Some of the Google Cloud services offered by Google are –

• Google Cloud DataFlow
• Google BigQuery Service
• Google App Engine
• Google Cloud SQL
• Google Cloud Data Lab

Benefits of Google Cloud for IoT

With Google’s intelligent IoT platform, you can connect, store, and analyze data at the Edge and inside the cloud. In addition, it will provide you access to data from your global device network. So, accelerate business agility with Google Cloud IoT data from your physical devices.

It Boosts intelligence from Edge to the cloud

At the Edge or in the Cloud, Google Cloud IoT services collect real-time data. Use BigQuery for ad hoc analysis, Vertex AI for advanced analytics and ML, and Google Data Studio to show the results.

Operational efficiency Improvement with Google Cloud IoT

Learn how well your devices will perform with a platform that supports a wide range of operating systems, integrates seamlessly with Debian Linux, and provides out-of-the-box compatibility for major manufacturers such as Intel and Microchip.

It Adds location intelligence through other services like google maps to your IoT data.

Whether your IoT assets are placed indoors, in remote locations, or across hundreds of cities, Google Maps Platform can help you monitor their real-time position, travel patterns, and movement frequency.

Google IoT is assisting businesses in gaining additional income and intelligence with its assets and tools.

It gives Predictive maintenance.

Google Cloud’s IoT platform allows you to estimate when equipment requires repair and improve its performance in real-time, anticipating downtime, identifying abnormalities, and tracking device status, condition, and position.

Real-time asset tracking

To give relevant business insights, track precious assets in real-time, and perform complex analysis and machine learning on the data you collect.

Logistics and supply chain management

With Google Cloud IoT’s logistics solution, you can manage your fleet, inventory, cargo integrity, and other business-critical tasks.

What Is Google Cloud IoT Core?

The Google Cloud IoT Core is a major service offered by Google in IoT. Google Cloud IoT Core is a cloud-based service that allows people to connect, manage, and ingest data from internet-connected devices quickly and safely. It also enables other Google Cloud Platform services to gather, analyze, manage, and display IoT data.

Google’s Cloud IoT Core service is one of the industry’s Internet of Things solutions. It helps a lot while we have thousands of devices linked to the internet and want a highly scalable and managed service, such as cloud IoT core. One of the greatest features of cloud IoT core is that it automatically manages data load balancing and scaling.
There are two main parts of Cloud IoT Core-

Device Manager

It helps register devices with services and offers a framework for device authentication. It also keeps track of each device’s operational config and may be used to control it remotely from the cloud.

Protocol Bridge

This is a method for a device to access or connect to the Google cloud using standard protocols such as HTTP and MQTT. We can utilize our existing devices with minimal firmware updates because of all of this.

IoT Platform Architecture

Hardware (devices, sensors, Embedded Systems, etc. ), communication protocols (i.e., IoT networks) that send data to middleware (IoT cloud platform), and applications try to compensate an IoT system (s). The Internet of Things platform serves as a link between the hardware and application layers. Data storage and processing, connection and device management, analytics, and data visualization are an IoT cloud platform’s primary components or services.

Process

Sensors > Connectivity > IoT Platforms > Applications.

1. Firstly The Edge device like Sensors, Actuators, and many more Hardware devices will collect the data.
2. Secondly, To send all data to the Cloud platform for process, all edge devices need connectivity. Network protocols and connectivity layer will connect the edge device to the cloud.
3. Thirdly the IoT platforms will come. When all the Actuators and sensors have sent the data to the IoT platforms, it will store, analyze, and visualize the data.
4. Lastly, the Application phase allows the user to handle, manage, and visualize the data or Output through the Applications.

Technical Procedure to Started With Google Cloud IoT Core:

The following are the requirements and environments to set up before using the Google Cloud Platform interface for Cloud IoT Core:

1. Version 173.0.0 or above is required to install and initialize cloud SDK and cloud IoT core.
2. Set up an environment for Node.js.

Firstly You Need to Create a device registry to use Cloud IoT Core, and Secondly, You Need to Add the Registry key to use any device for IoT projects. Finally, You can Utilize the IoT core as you want.

Creating A Device Registry

• Firstly Go to the google cloud IoT core page in the GCP console.
• See Create a registry option, then click on it.
• Enter the registry id and then select the cloud Option.
• In the protocol section, MQTT protocol.
• Create a telemetry item from the drop-down list, and after clicking on create a topic Button.
• Some fields like Device state and Certificate value are optional to leave blank.
• Lastly, click on Create Cloud IoT Core page.

Add A Device To the Registry

• Click on the add device option on the registry device page and enter the device id.
• Allow Device Connectivity and the data for the public key.
• A device metadata field is an option, so we can leave it blank.
• After that, to add a device, click on add button. 

Running A Node.Js Sample To Connect To A Virtual Device

• Download and save the Cloud IoT Core Node.js samples to the directory.
• The private key needs to be copied to the current directory.
• Using the command npm install, install node.js dependencies.
• Create a subscription to the pub/subtopic of the registry.
• Connect a virtual device to the Cloud IoT core using the MQTT bridge.

Google Cloud IoT Platform Tools:

The greatest part of adopting the Google Cloud Platform is the unique Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, with the Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities. Also, scalability is a major concern while developing a project. GCP fulfilled the project’s needs because of its serverless architecture.

Some Components for IoT solutions with Google Cloud Platform are –

BigQuery:

It’s a Google-designed cloud-based IaaS platform for collecting and analyzing massive datasets with the assistance of numerous SQL queries. BigQuery may be described as a unique database from transactional databases such as MySQL and MongoDB.

Cloud IoT Core:

It is a fully managed solution that enables us to connect, monitor, and ingest data from internet-connected devices safely and simply. It also enables other Google Cloud Platform services to gather, analyze, manage, and display IoT data.

Pub/Sub: 

Pub/Sub is a synchronous service-to-service connection used in serverless and microservices architectures. In this sort of system, any service released on a topic is immediately received by all of the topic’s users. Any Google Cloud IoT Project may implement any event-driven architecture with it.

Hardware:

Android Thing is a Google-developed version of Android for IoT devices. Android Things enables developers to configure and distribute operating system upgrades for IoT Applications.

Cloud Functions:

Cloud functions are used to route data after it has been entered into the Pub/Sub. A cloud function is a javascript code executed when an event occurs. And because Google manages everything, the code will execute without the requirement for infrastructure management.

Top Competitors of Cloud IoT Platforms

The global Internet of Things (IoT) industry is growing, and the market is expected to reach USD 561.0 billion by 2022, according to MarketsandMarkets estimates. The IoT will influence organizational connectivity and revenue growth. According to Business Insider, the IoT sector will be worth more than $2.44 trillion per year by 2027.

Since we’re on data, Statista predicts that the worldwide market for IoT end-user solutions will increase to roughly 1.6 trillion dollars by 2025.

It’s easy to see why IoT cloud solutions are in high demand among enterprises looking to implement IoT initiatives. 

The IoT platforms make it much easier for developers to do their jobs. As a result, choosing the correct one that delivers connection, security, scalability, and ease of integration is critical. Now take a look at which IoT cloud platforms are best, where you will invest your Assets for a long period.

• Google Cloud IoT Platform
• Amazon Web Services IoT Platform
• Microsoft Azure IoT
• Oracle IoT Intelligent Applications
• Cisco IoT Cloud Connect
• IBM Watson IoT

All Of those platforms are the topmost Cloud IoT provider. And Nowadays, All Platforms are involved in All Industries. And Above mentioned are the top three industries where the specific Cloud Platform has grown the most. But it doesn’t mean that they don’t have All of those industry Services.

The connection between edge devices and distribution of the data in the shared cloud, and also when you are an industrial person, you need to manage more and more devices that need to be very reliable. Otherwise, data might be stolen, or could not process data on time and could not support you on digital trends at the specific period of moment. So, it is also a very important thing. But, the most interesting part is that Google Cloud IoT Platform is the best cloud platform for you by sacrificing Simple, Secure, and Reliable Connection with data. And also, Google cloud IoT provides Real-time metrics with Stackdriver Monitoring, Smart logistics, supply chain management, Out-of-box data insights Fully managed and scalable Cloud Platform.

Google Cloud IoT Strategies:

Google is frequently placed third among the public cloud market leaders in revenue. However, they must rank higher, possibly even first, as Cloud and IoT developers. Google’s core operations are powered by a complex collection of cloud technologies that gave rise to concepts like Kubernetes and Istio, giving them much expertise with high availability and performance on a robust infrastructure foundation. Google’s cloud IoT plans aren’t as well-known or easily evaluated as Amazon’s or Microsoft’s, and they may demand a different approach to Cloud IoT, but they’re worth considering.

High-Level IoT Support in Google Cloud

Recently Google has revealed a broader strategy for cloud-to-edge scenarios with the announcement of Google Distributed Cloud. The system is essentially a platform-software layer for which applications may be written and hosted in Google’s Cloud, on-premises edge devices, and even in enterprise data centers. While the feature will not be completely operational until 2022, it gives the most comprehensive model for IoT feature distribution. As a result, it might be employed in cloud-provider or other edge computing facilities.

Difference from Other Competitors

A quick peek at the Google Cloud website reveals that Google has a different IoT approach than Amazon and Microsoft competitors. Both organizations have IoT prominently featured on their product lists and a range of IoT-related services. Google includes IoT in their product list; however, just two IoT pieces are listed: Cloud IoT Core and Edge TPU, an AI processor used in Google’s Coral IoT edge devices.

This isn’t to say that Google doesn’t have the same features as its competitors. It uniquely provides them. Cloud IoT Core is a managed IoT service that covers the front-end procedures of IoT device deployment, administration, and security and connects to other Google Cloud apps that allow IoT app development, analytics, and data storage and retrieval. According to Google Cloud, IoT refers to IoT devices and application development and deployment. That’s similar to its cloud opponents; however, Google’s application-centric strategy varies from its IoT-centric component assembly.

While it is possible to develop Google Cloud IoT applications without using Google’s IoT components, it will take more time and effort. As a result, it’s probably advisable to start your IoT strategy by analyzing whether Google’s Cloud IoT is a good fit for your needs and whether the managed service cost is reasonable. If not, Google’s IoT might be challenging to implement.

Edge and Device Options

Cloud IoT Core’s Device Manager module manages the deployment, configuration, tracking, and interconnection of IoT devices. The Device Manager from Google supports a wide range of IoT devices and protocols, and it’s extremely scalable because it’s cloud-based and developed as a serverless/microservice-based component. Cloud IoT Core will provide full-stack security if the devices match Google’s security criteria. In addition, roles based on Qos values are provided, allowing users to control access to IoT data.

Unlike Amazon and Microsoft’s IoT approaches, which allow users to expand cloud functionality to a suitable on-premises server, Google doesn’t encourage users to use Google Cloud on their servers. Instead, the Cloud IoT Core element offers publish-and-subscribe interfaces for connecting IoT analytics to cloud applications. Google supports several protocols for linking a premises IoT edge device with Google Cloud. However, Cloud IoT Core includes a gateway to enable offline operation for devices with limited resources. The gateway may communicate with other Cloud IoT Core components in place of the device and then synchronize when the device is online. Connection, traffic, and error logging are all supported by Stackdriver Logging, allowing users to establish thresholds and report on exceptions depending on those settings. To publish/subscribe traffic and illustrate the connection between devices and events, this is linked to Cloud Pub/Sub logs.

IoT Event Processing

Google Cloud Platform created the Edge TPU (Google’s custom ASIC) to facilitate AI forward staging for latency-sensitive applications. Although the ASIC is accessible to devise manufacturers, Google has partnered with Coral to create a choice of edge controllers that use the chip. Other edge elements can also be used for local event processing, either by utilizing one of the device-linked IoT protocols or by constructing a unique link to Google’s message/event ingesting service, Cloud Pub/Sub.

Cloud Pub/Sub is the on-ramp for all event processing in Google’s IoT model. It allows you to convert messages and events into a publish/subscribe format. This enables any Google Cloud or Cloud IoT application and use apps to subscribe to event flows and get IoT notifications focused on specific requirements.

Cloud Pub/Sub is a Google Cloud service used to link devices using the controlled Cloud IoT Core service’s Protocol Bridge element. As a result, IoT apps that don’t use Cloud IoT Core can still access the rest of Google’s IoT-friendly cloud services, such as analytics. In addition, a Pub/Sub Lite version is offered for those that minimal value cost above extensive processing capabilities.

IoT Analytics

The Cloud Pub/Sub interface connects events to Google’s analytics tools (Cloud Dataflow, BigQuery, Cloud Bigtable, ML, and Google Data Studio) and third-party metrics and AI applications. Google also provides a diverse variety of machine learning and artificial intelligence learning-based tools and apps. IoT apps can use them, although they aren’t directly connected with Google’s IoT products.

While Google offers certain software capabilities for corporate processes (such as its latest Supply Chain Digital Twin), it does not offer digital twinning for IoT apps or infrastructure. Instead, Google may rely on third-party agreements to provide a larger digital twin IoT application architecture, as it does with edge computing, although this has yet to be published.

Top Industries that use Google Cloud IoT

We’ve mapped the top industries that are using Google Cloud IoT services to explore how they’re deploying secure, scalable IoT solutions on the cloud. Learn how other companies are succeeding by putting their data to work.

Information Technology and Services

The IoT is an interconnected network of computing devices, mechanical and digital machinery, items, animals, or people having unique identities (UIDs) and the capacity to transfer data without needing human-to-human or human-to-computer contact.

Smart Cities

Smart cities gather and analyze data using IoT devices such as linked sensors, lighting, and meters. The cities then use the data to enhance infrastructure, public utilities and services, and other operations.

Computer Softwares

IoT capabilities may be built into almost any physical device that communicates data to its owners. Many companies use IoT software platforms to manage networks of devices and sensors that convey real-time data throughout supply chains, production floors, security systems, and other areas.

Smart Home Solutions

IoT home automation refers to operating household appliances via internet-connected, electronically controlled devices. For example, it might involve pre-programming complicated heating and lighting systems, alarms, and home security controls linked via a central hub and managed remotely via a smartphone app.

Manufacturing

Manufacturing plants may benefit from IoT in various ways. First, it can help a manufacturing plant’s production flow since IoT devices can automatically monitor development cycles and manage warehouses and inventory. That is one of the reasons why investment in the internet of things has grown in recent decades.

Retail

IoT in the retail business is closely linked to GPS and RFID technology, which assist firms in tracking items along the supply chain. It provides merchants with the visibility to track product movement, conditions, and location and estimate delivery times.

Consumer Goods

Working from IoT, social media, smartphones, wearable devices, and other sources of data, consumer firms will be able to build an individual shopper genome that, through artificial intelligence, enables retailers and consumer goods firms to predict and cater to consumer behavior.

Automotive

Semi-autonomous automobiles with IoT integration make on-the-fly decisions while partially regulating vehicle operations to minimize collisions and decrease drivers’ workload. Cars are fitted with IoT technologies and various proximity sensors and cameras to decrease human error and make driving safe and comfortable.

Civil and Social Organization

The IoT will significantly influence consumers, companies, and governments, ranging from reducing healthcare expenses and enhancing the quality of life to reducing co2 emissions, boosting access to education in underprivileged places, and improving transportation safety.

Telecommunications

For telecom operators, the most basic Internet of Things uses case is to provide connection services to consumers who have their own IoT devices. Consumers are in charge of data gathering, storage, and administration, while telecom providers are responsible for keeping customers’ infrastructure linked to the network.

Restaurants

Whether you’re a single-location full-service restaurant, a restaurant chain, a commissary, a catering company, or a retail restaurant with a prepared-food portion, the Internet of Things allows you to standardize, maintain, and ensure food safety, compliance, and energy management.

Conclusion:

It’s a simple fact that businesses prefer opponents’ IoT products over Google’s. Part of this is since both Amazon and Microsoft have larger cloud client bases, and another part is related to the fact that Google isn’t as well-known among companies. Instead, companies may regard Google as a social networking corporation, accurate in revenues.

Google’s IoT Cloud services are mostly centered on proximity marketing and advertising, derived from various beacon technology products, including Apple’s iBeacon. Google’s open-source technology, Eddystone, makes it simple to set up a device as an advertising signal through Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) using various tools available on the Google Play Store. In addition, the Google IoT Cloud Platform is backed by a powerful set of APIs that allow IoT developers to implement various parts of close and proximity development goals on a la carte basis.

Google Cloud is extremely beneficial to everyone on the planet; obtaining real-time power utility provider forecasts is now feasible. In addition, it is helping people worldwide become flexible and productive and save time not just in one dimension but also in the other services that this product offers.

FAQs about Google Cloud IoT Solutions

According to studies, the majority of people looking for the ultimate guideline of Google Cloud IoT solutions have the same problems. There are some frequently asked questions that our most knowledgeable experts have answered. So I’m hoping it will help you get a quick response.

This page was last edited on 19 December 2023, at 1:20 pm