Overview

AWS IoT Core is AWS's managed MQTT broker for connecting IoT devices. The Automize AWS IoT Core connector covers MQTT publish/subscribe, retained messages, and last-will configuration.

Regions: Regional. Devices connect to the regional MQTT endpoint (xxx.iot.region.amazonaws.com).
Plans: Pay-per-message + per-connection-minute.

Setting up the connection

Auth type: aws_sigv4.

AWS IAM → user with programmatic access + AWSIoTFullAccess policy (or scoped iot:Publish/iot:Subscribe).
In Automize → Settings → Connectors → AWS IoT Core. Paste keys + region + IoT endpoint (your account's specific MQTT endpoint).

Find your credentials at https://us-east-1.console.aws.amazon.com/iam/home.

Rate limits

Per-account throttles on publish rate (default 100 TPS, raise via support). Connector retries Throttling.

Data model

MQTT pub-sub:

    Thing (IoT device) ─── connects to ─── MQTT topic
    Topic patterns: forward-slash hierarchy (devices/sensor1/temp)
    Retained messages: last value persists for new subscribers

Available operations

5 operations available. Click any row to jump to its detail.

Operation	Category	What it does
Publish	General	Publish a message to an MQTT topic
Publish Retained	General	Publish a retained message to an MQTT topic
Set Last Will	General	Set the MQTT Last Will and Testament message
Subscribe	General	Subscribe to an MQTT topic
Unsubscribe	General	Unsubscribe from an MQTT topic

Operations

Publish

Publish a message to an MQTT topic

Parameter	Required	Type
Topic `topic`	Yes	text
Message `message`	Yes	text
Headers `headers`	No	textarea

Tips

topic + payload (JSON or binary). qos: 0 (fire-forget), 1 (at-least-once).
retain=true makes it the last-known-value for new subscribers.

Publish Retained

Publish a retained message to an MQTT topic

Parameter	Required	Type	Description
Topic `topic`	Yes	text
Message `message`	Yes	text

Set Last Will

Set the MQTT Last Will and Testament message

Parameter	Required	Type	Description
Topic `topic`	Yes	text
Message `message`	Yes	text

Subscribe to an MQTT topic

Parameter	Required	Type	Description
Topic `topic`	Yes	text
Callback `callback`	No	text

Tips

Returns websocket-tunnelled MQTT stream. Use for long-lived listeners.

Unsubscribe

Unsubscribe from an MQTT topic

Parameter	Required	Type	Description
Topic `topic`	Yes	text

FAQ

Why is my publish silently dropped?: MQTT QoS 0 doesn't ack. If reliability matters, use QoS 1.
Device certificates vs SigV4?: Production devices use X.509 mutual TLS. This connector uses SigV4 for backend → IoT publish. Both work; certs are more device-friendly.

AWS IoT Core integration