Eclipse Ditto integrates with Eclipse Hono

Overview

Eclipse Ditto and Eclipse Hono form a complementary pair in the Eclipse IoT ecosystem. While Ditto focuses on digital twin state management and APIs, Hono specializes in device connectivity and protocol abstraction. Together, they provide a complete backend for IoT applications.

Integration Architecture

Typical Data Flow:

1. Devices connect to Eclipse Hono via MQTT, AMQP, CoAP, or HTTP
2. Hono normalizes messages and forwards them via AMQP 1.0 or Kafka
3. Eclipse Ditto consumes these messages to update digital twin state
4. Applications interact with Ditto's HTTP/WebSocket APIs to read twin state and send commands
5. Commands flow back through Hono to devices

Use Cases

• Unified Namespace: Hono handles southbound connectivity; Ditto provides the digital twin abstraction layer
• Predictive Maintenance: Device telemetry → Hono → Ditto twins → analytics applications
• Command & Control: Applications update desired state in Ditto; Hono routes commands to devices

Configuration

Ditto connects to Hono as an AMQP 1.0 or Kafka consumer. Configure a Connection in Ditto with:

• URI pointing to Hono's messaging infrastructure
• Credentials for authentication
• Payload mapping if needed for message format adaptation

Tradeoffs

• Complexity: Running both adds operational overhead compared to a monolithic platform
• Flexibility: The separation allows swapping either component (e.g., replace Hono with a custom MQTT broker)
• Scale: Both are designed for horizontal scaling in Kubernetes environments