The Rules Engine makes it possible to build IoT applications that gather, process, analyze and act on data generated by connected devices at global scale without having to manage any infrastructure. The Rules Engine evaluates inbound messages published into AWS IoT Core and transforms and delivers them to another device or a cloud service, based on business rules you define. A rule can apply to data from one or many devices, and it can take one or many actions in parallel.

The Rules Engine can also route messages to AWS endpoints including AWS Lambda, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon S3, Amazon Machine Learning, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS), Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), AWS IoT Analytics, Amazon Elasticsearch Service with built-in Kibana integration, and AWS Step Functions. External endpoints can be reached using AWS Lambda, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon SNS, and AWS Step Functions.  

You can author rules within the management console or write rules using a SQL-like syntax. Rules can be authored to behave differently depending upon the content of the message. For example, if a temperature reading exceeds a certain threshold it could trigger a rule to transmit data to AWS Lambda. Rules can also be authored to take into account other data in the cloud, such as data from other devices. For example you could say take an action if this temperature is more than 15% higher than the average of 5 other devices.

The Rules Engine provides dozens of available functions that can be used to transform your data, and it’s possible to create infinitely more via AWS Lambda. For example, if you’re dealing with a wide range of values you could take the average of incoming numbers. Rules can also trigger the execution of your Java, Node.js or Python code in AWS Lambda, giving you maximum flexibility and power to process device data.

To learn more read the Rules Engine section of the AWS IoT Core user guide.