A Thing is a digital representation of a physical device, an application, a logical entity, or a vehicle. Each thing is categorized and is based on Thing definitions. A Thing definitions is composed of properties and characteristics required to define a Thing. You can either define the characteristics of your own thing in the Thing Definition before creating a new thing or use an already existing Thing definitions. Things are instances of a thing definition and inherit their characteristics. Things are the primary items that associate data with the items that make up your IoT solution (gateways, sensors, devices, assets, programs, cellular modules, and so on). A Thing can be something like a car, or it could be a component of a car like an engine, where a car is actually represented by multiple things.
A thing definition models the attributes, alarms, properties, methods, tunnels, presentation information, and other characteristics of a particular type of item that is a portion of your IoT solution.
A thing is defined by the characteristics that are important to your IoT solution and your application logic. Following are the example of things:
- Each Supported Gateways connected to the IoT Portal
- Each Applications connected to the IoT Portal, using the IoT Portal API Reference Guide
Things can also have dynamic run-time items associated with them that are not inherited from their thing definitions. For example, event log messages, files, and tunnel history.
What's Inside
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