First steps - FreeRTOS
Setting up your AWS account and permissionsRegistering your MCU board with AWS IoTDownloading FreeRTOSConfiguring the FreeRTOS demos

First steps

To get started using FreeRTOS with AWS IoT, you need an AWS account, an IAM user with permission to access AWS IoT and FreeRTOS cloud services. You also need to download FreeRTOS and configure your board's FreeRTOS demo project to work with AWS IoT. The following sections walk you through these requirements.

Note

If you're using the Espressif ESP32-DevKitC, ESP-WROVER-KIT, or the ESP32-WROOM-32SE, skip these steps and go to Getting started with the Espressif ESP32-DevKitC and the ESP-WROVER-KIT.

If you're using the Nordic nRF52840-DK, skip these steps and go to Getting started with the Nordic nRF52840-DK.

  1. Setting up your AWS account and permissions

    After you complete the instructions in Setting up your AWS account and permissions, you can follow the Quick Connect workflow in the FreeRTOS console to quickly connect your board to the AWS Cloud. If you follow the Quick Connect workflow, you do not need to complete the remaining steps in this list. Note that configurations of FreeRTOS are currently not available on the FreeRTOS console for the following boards:

    • Cypress CYW943907AEVAL1F Development Kit

    • Cypress CYW954907AEVAL1F Development Kit

  2. Registering your MCU board with AWS IoT

  3. Downloading FreeRTOS

  4. Configuring the FreeRTOS demos

Setting up your AWS account and permissions

To create an AWS account, see Create and Activate an AWS Account.

To add an IAM user to your AWS account, see IAM User Guide. To grant your IAM user account access to AWS IoT and FreeRTOS, attach the following IAM policies to your IAM user account:

  • AmazonFreeRTOSFullAccess

  • AWSIoTFullAccess

To attach the AmazonFreeRTOSFullAccess policy to your IAM user

  1. Browse to the IAM console, and from the navigation pane, choose Users.

  2. Enter your user name in the search text box, and then choose it from the list.

  3. Choose Add permissions.

  4. Choose Attach existing policies directly.

  5. In the search box, enter AmazonFreeRTOSFullAccess, choose it from the list, and then choose Next: Review.

  6. Choose Add permissions.

To attach the AWSIoTFullAccess policy to your IAM user

  1. Browse to the IAM console, and from the navigation pane, choose Users.

  2. Enter your user name in the search text box, and then choose it from the list.

  3. Choose Add permissions.

  4. Choose Attach existing policies directly.

  5. In the search box, enter AWSIoTFullAccess, choose it from the list, and then choose Next: Review.

  6. Choose Add permissions.

For more information about IAM and user accounts, see IAM User Guide.

For more information about policies, see IAM Permissions and Policies.

After you set up your AWS account and permissions, you can continue to Registering your MCU board with AWS IoT or to the Quick Connect workflow in the FreeRTOS console.

Registering your MCU board with AWS IoT

Your board must be registered with AWS IoT to communicate with the AWS Cloud. To register your board with AWS IoT, you need the following:

An AWS IoT policy

The AWS IoT policy grants your device permissions to access AWS IoT resources. It is stored on the AWS Cloud.

An AWS IoT thing

An AWS IoT thing allows you to manage your devices in AWS IoT. It is stored on the AWS Cloud.

A private key and X.509 certificate

The private key and certificate allow your device to authenticate with AWS IoT.

If you use the Quick Connect workflow in the FreeRTOS console, a policy, an AWS IoT thing, and a key and certificate are created for you. If you use the Quick Connect workflow, you can ignore the following procedures.

To register your board manually, follow the procedures below.

To create an AWS IoT policy

  1. To create an IAM policy, you need to know your AWS Region and AWS account number.

    To find your AWS account number, open the AWS Management Console, locate and expand the menu beneath your account name in the upper-right corner, and choose My Account. Your account ID is displayed under Account Settings.

    To find the AWS region for your AWS account, use the AWS Command Line Interface. To install the AWS CLI, follow the instructions in the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide. After you install the AWS CLI, open a command prompt window and enter the following command: 

    aws iot describe-endpoint

    The output should look like this:

    {
    "endpointAddress": "xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.iot.us-west-2.amazonaws.com"
}

    In this example, the region is us-west-2.

  2. Browse to the AWS IoT console.

  3. In the navigation pane, choose Secure, choose Policies, and then choose Create.

  4. Enter a name to identify your policy.

  5. In the Add statements section, choose Advanced mode. Copy and paste the following JSON into the policy editor window. Replace aws-region and aws-account with your AWS Region and account ID. 

    {
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
    {
        "Effect": "Allow",
        "Action": "iot:Connect",
        "Resource":"arn:aws:iot:aws-region:aws-account-id:*"
    }, 
    {
        "Effect": "Allow",
        "Action": "iot:Publish",
        "Resource": "arn:aws:iot:aws-region:aws-account-id:*"
    },
    {
         "Effect": "Allow",
         "Action": "iot:Subscribe",
         "Resource": "arn:aws:iot:aws-region:aws-account-id:*"
    },
    {
         "Effect": "Allow",
         "Action": "iot:Receive",
         "Resource": "arn:aws:iot:aws-region:aws-account-id:*"
    }
    ]
}

    This policy grants the following permissions:

    iot:Connect

    Grants your device the permission to connect to the AWS IoT message broker with any client ID.

    iot:Publish

    Grants your device the permission to publish an MQTT message on any MQTT topic.

    iot:Subscribe

    Grants your device the permission to subscribe to any MQTT topic filter.

    iot:Receive

    Grants your device the permission to receive messages from the AWS IoT message broker on any MQTT topic.

  6. Choose Create.

To create an IoT thing, private key, and certificate for your device

  1. Browse to the AWS IoT console.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Manage, and then choose Things.

  3. If you do not have any IoT things registered in your account, the You don't have any things yet page is displayed. If you see this page, choose Register a thing. Otherwise, choose Create.

  4. On the Creating AWS IoT things page, choose Create a single thing.

  5. On the Add your device to the thing registry page, enter a name for your thing, and then choose Next.

  6. On the Add a certificate for your thing page, under One-click certificate creation, choose Create certificate.

  7. Download your private key and certificate by choosing the Download links for each.

  8. Choose Activate to activate your certificate. Certificates must be activated prior to use.

  9. Choose Attach a policy to attach a policy to your certificate that grants your device access to AWS IoT operations.

  10. Choose the policy you just created and choose Register thing.

After your board is registered with AWS IoT, you can continue to Downloading FreeRTOS.

Downloading FreeRTOS

You can download FreeRTOS from the FreeRTOS console or from the FreeRTOS GitHub repository.

Note

If you're following the Quick Connect workflow in the FreeRTOS console, you can ignore the following procedure..

To download FreeRTOS from the FreeRTOS console

  1. Sign in to the FreeRTOS console.

  2. Under Predefined configurations, find Connect to AWS IoT- Platform, and then choose Download.

  3. Unzip the downloaded file to a directory, and copy the directory path.

    Important

    • In this topic, the path to the FreeRTOS download directory is referred to as freertos.

    • Space characters in the freertos path can cause build failures. When you clone or copy the repository, make sure the path you that create doesn't contain space characters.

    • The maximum length of a file path on Microsoft Windows is 260 characters. Long FreeRTOS download directory paths can cause build failures.

Note

If you're getting started with the Cypress CYW954907AEVAL1F or CYW943907AEVAL1F development kits, you must download FreeRTOS from GitHub. See the README.md file for instructions. Configurations of FreeRTOS for these boards aren't currently available from the FreeRTOS console.

After you download FreeRTOS, you can continue to Configuring the FreeRTOS demos.

Configuring the FreeRTOS demos

You need to edit some configuration files in your FreeRTOS directory before you can compile and run any demos on your board.

If you are following the Quick Connect workflow on the FreeRTOS console, follow the configuration instructions in the workflow on the console, and ignore these procedures.

To configure your AWS IoT endpoint

You need to provide FreeRTOS with your AWS IoT endpoint so the application running on your board can send requests to the correct endpoint.

  1. Browse to the AWS IoT console.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Settings.

    Your AWS IoT endpoint is displayed in Endpoint. It should look like 1234567890123-ats.iot.us-east-1.amazonaws.com. Make a note of this endpoint.

  3. In the navigation pane, choose Manage, and then choose Things.

    Your device should have an AWS IoT thing name. Make a note of this name.

  4. Open demos/include/aws_clientcredential.h.

  5. Specify values for the following constants:

    • #define clientcredentialMQTT_BROKER_ENDPOINT "Your AWS IoT endpoint";

    • #define clientcredentialIOT_THING_NAME "The AWS IoT thing name of your board"

To configure your Wi-Fi

If your board is connecting to the internet across a Wi-Fi connection, you need to provide FreeRTOS with Wi-Fi credentials to connect to the network. If your board does not support Wi-Fi, you can skip these steps.

  1. demos/include/aws_clientcredential.h.

  2. Specify values for the following #define constants:

    • #define clientcredentialWIFI_SSID "The SSID for your Wi-Fi network"

    • #define clientcredentialWIFI_PASSWORD "The password for your Wi-Fi network"

    • #define clientcredentialWIFI_SECURITY The security type of your Wi-Fi network

      Valid security types are:

      • eWiFiSecurityOpen (Open, no security)

      • eWiFiSecurityWEP (WEP security)

      • eWiFiSecurityWPA (WPA security)

      • eWiFiSecurityWPA2 (WPA2 security)

To format your AWS IoT credentials

FreeRTOS needs the AWS IoT certificate and private keys associated with your registered thing and its permissions policies to successfully communicate with AWS IoT on behalf of your device.

Note

To configure your AWS IoT credentials, you need the private key and certificate that you downloaded from the AWS IoT console when you registered your device. After you have registered your device as an AWS IoT thing, you can retrieve device certificates from the AWS IoT console, but you cannot retrieve private keys.

FreeRTOS is a C language project, and the certificate and private key must be specially formatted to be added to the project.

  1. In a browser window, open tools/certificate_configuration/CertificateConfigurator.html.

  2. Under Certificate PEM file, choose the ID-certificate.pem.crt that you downloaded from the AWS IoT console.

  3. Under Private Key PEM file, choose the ID-private.pem.key that you downloaded from the AWS IoT console.

  4. Choose Generate and save aws_clientcredential_keys.h, and then save the file in demos/include. This overwrites the existing file in the directory.

    Note

    The certificate and private key are hard-coded for demonstration purposes only. Production-level applications should store these files in a secure location.

After you configure FreeRTOS, you can continue to the Getting Started guide for your board to compile and run the FreeRTOS demo. The demo application that is used in the Getting Started tutorial is the coreMQTT Mutual Authentication demo, which is located at demos/mqtt/iot_demo_mqtt.c.

After you complete the First steps, you can set up your platform's hardware and its software development environment, and then compile and run the demo on your board. For board-specific instructions, see the Board-specific getting started guides.