Book Image

Hands-On Azure Digital Twins

By : Alexander Meijers
Book Image

Hands-On Azure Digital Twins

By: Alexander Meijers

Overview of this book

In today’s world, clients are using more and more IoT sensors to monitor their business processes and assets. Think about collecting information such as pressure in an engine, the temperature, or a light switch being turned on or off in a room. The data collected can be used to create smart solutions for predicting future trends, creating simulations, and drawing insights using visualizations. This makes it beneficial for organizations to make digital twins, which are digital replicas of the real environment, to support these smart solutions. This book will help you understand the concept of digital twins and how it can be implemented using an Azure service called Azure Digital Twins. Starting with the requirements and installation of the Azure Digital Twins service, the book will explain the definition language used for modeling digital twins. From there, you'll go through each step of building digital twins using Azure Digital Twins and learn about the different SDKs and APIs and how to use them with several Azure services. Finally, you'll learn how digital twins can be used in practice with the help of several real-world scenarios. By the end of this book, you'll be confident in building and designing digital twins and integrating them with various Azure services.

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Table of Contents (25 chapters)
Preface
Preface
Who this book is for
What this book covers
To get the most out of this book
Download the color images
Download the example code files
Conventions used
Get in touch
Share Your Thoughts
1
Section 1: Azure Digital Twin Essentials
Section 1: Azure Digital Twin Essentials
Free Chapter
2
Chapter 1: About Digital Twins
Chapter 1: About Digital Twins
Understanding the concept of a Digital Twin
Exploring the Digital Twin environment
Looking at real-world applications
Azure Digital Twins
Understanding the components of Azure Digital Twins architecture
Exploring the Azure Digital Twins REST API
Summary
3
Chapter 2: Requirements and Installation
Chapter 2: Requirements and Installation
Technical requirements
Azure Digital Twins service
Microsoft Visual Studio
The Windows Azure CLI with Windows PowerShell
Node.js
Azure Digital Twins Explorer
Creating your first Digital Twin
Summary
4
Section 2: Getting Started with Azure Digital Twins
Section 2: Getting Started with Azure Digital Twins
5
Chapter 3: Digital Twin Definition Model
Chapter 3: Digital Twin Definition Model
Technical requirements
Digital Twins Definition Language
Digital Twin interface
Interface content
Schemas
Primitive schemas
Complex schemas
Geospatial schemas
Semantic types
Validating a model
Summary
Questions
Further reading
6
Chapter 4: Understanding Models
Chapter 4: Understanding Models
Technical requirements
Designing models
Creating an application
Managing models
Managing Digital Twins
Summary
Questions
Further reading
7
Chapter 5: Model Elements
Chapter 5: Model Elements
Technical requirements
Primitive properties
Complex properties
Telemetry
Components
Summary
Questions
8
Chapter 6: Creating Relationships between Azure Digital Twin Models
Chapter 6: Creating Relationships between Azure Digital Twin Models
Technical requirements
Understanding relationships
Creating relationships
Getting relationships
Deleting relationships
Relationship properties
Updating relationship properties
Summary
Questions
Further reading
9
Chapter 7: Querying Digital Twins
Chapter 7: Querying Digital Twins
Technical requirements
Setting up a demo graph
Basic querying
Querying by model
Querying relationships
Filtering results
Querying using code
Querying asynchronous calls using code
Summary
Questions
Further reading
10
Chapter 8: Building Models Using Ontologies
Chapter 8: Building Models Using Ontologies
Technical requirements
Understanding ontologies
Modeling strategy
Using industry-standard ontologies
Uploading ontology models
Summary
Questions
Further reading
11
Section 3: Digital Twins Advanced Techniques
Section 3: Digital Twins Advanced Techniques
12
Chapter 9: APIs and SDKs
Chapter 9: APIs and SDKs
Technical requirements
Understanding the developer landscape
Understanding the REST API
Monitoring API metrics
Using the Azure CLI to manage Azure Digital Twins
Understanding service limits
Summary
Questions
Further reading
13
Chapter 10: Building a Digital Twin Pipeline
Chapter 10: Building a Digital Twin Pipeline
Technical requirements
Understanding application architecture
Setting up a demo sensor using Azure IoT Central
Getting sensor messages on Azure Service Bus
Summary
Questions
Further reading
14
Chapter 11: Updating the Model
Chapter 11: Updating the Model
Technical requirements
Updating the digital twin
Creating an Azure function
Creating a digital twin for the sensor
Viewing the result
Summary
Questions
Further reading
15
Chapter 12: Event Routing
Chapter 12: Event Routing
Technical requirements
Data ingress and egress
Event notifications
Understanding event routes
Creating an event grid topic
Creating an endpoint
Creating an event route
Subscribing to event messages
Monitoring event route messages
Summary
Questions
Further reading
16
Chapter 13: Setting up Azure Maps
Chapter 13: Setting up Azure Maps
Technical requirements
Understanding Azure Maps
Creating an Azure Maps account
Creating a Creator resource
Building a map
Uploading a map
Converting a map
Creating and validating a dataset
Creating and validating a tileset
Creating and validating a feature stateset
Summary
Questions
Further reading
17
Chapter 14: Integrating Azure Maps
Chapter 14: Integrating Azure Maps
Technical requirements
Updating a feature stateset
Setting up an update Azure Function
Publishing the Azure Function
Configuring application settings
Subscribing to Event Grid
Monitoring updates
Visualizing the model
Summary
Questions
Further reading
18
Chapter 15: Monitoring and Troubleshooting
Chapter 15: Monitoring and Troubleshooting
Technical requirements
Setting up a log analytics workspace
Setting up diagnostic settings
Viewing logs
Viewing metrics
Using alerts
Summary
Questions
Further reading
19
Section 4: Digital Twin Implementations in Real-world Scenarios
Section 4: Digital Twin Implementations in Real-world Scenarios
20
Chapter 16: Facility of the Future
Chapter 16: Facility of the Future
Understanding the scenario
Designing the digital twin solution
The solution architecture
Summary
Questions
21
Chapter 17: Creating Digital Twins for Smart Building
Chapter 17: Creating Digital Twins for Smart Building
Understanding the smart building ecosystem
A smart building solution design
The smart building architecture
Summary
Questions
22
Chapter 18: Simulations Using a Digital Twin
Chapter 18: Simulations Using a Digital Twin
Understanding simulation
Solution design and architecture
Summary
Questions
23
Assessments
Assessments
Chapter 3 – Digital Twin Definition Model
Chapter 4 – Understanding Models
Chapter 5 – Model Elements
Chapter 6 – Creating Relationships between Azure Digital Twin Models
Chapter 7 – Querying Digital Twins
Chapter 8 – Building Models Using Ontologies
Chapter 9 – APIs and SDKs
Chapter 10 – Building a Digital Twin Pipeline
Chapter 11 – Updating the model
Chapter 12 – Event Routing
Chapter 13 – Setting up Azure Maps
Chapter 14 – Integrating Azure Maps
Chapter 15 – Monitoring and Troubleshooting
Chapter 16 – Facility of the Future
Chapter 17 – Creating Digital Twins for Smart Building
Chapter 18 – Simulations Using a Digital Twin
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Exploring the Azure Digital Twins REST API

As you will have noticed, it is possible to use a large set of different Azure services to connect to Azure Digital Twins as an input, output, management, or compute service. While in some cases, no code is required to make the connection, some services require a more tailormade approach. Azure Functions is such an example. It requires the use of the REST API of the Azure Digital Twins service to access the Digital Twin Graph.

The REST API is divided into two different API models.

Table 3

Each of these REST APIs is available through different SDKs. This gives you the ability to manage and access the Azure Digital Twins instance from various sources.

The following SDKs are available:

  • .NET SDK – A C# SDK provided through NuGet. This allows you to easily create Azure Functions and other Azure services via Visual Studio by adding the required NuGet packages.
  • Java SDK – A Java SDK to support Maven projects. Maven is an automation tool that is primarily used for building Java projects.
  • JavaScript SDK – A JavaScript SDK available to create web-based solutions that require access to Azure Digital Twins.
  • Python SDK – A Python Package Index (PyPi) SDK that allows you to access the Azure Digital Twins instance by using Python. Python is often used when building intelligent applications with, for example, Azure Machine Learning.

In this book, we will primarily focus on code examples on the .NET SDK.

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