Ask HN: How does an IoT device in production get instructions from a server?

[jimhi]

My original ideas is to just ping an API every second or so. But if I have 10,000 of these out there - will I just end up DDOSing myself?

[joezydeco]

MQTT. Have the broker retain messages that are waiting for you when a connect or reconnect takes place.

[jimhi → joezydeco]

This device would be on wifi in small retail stores. Seems everyone is saying MQTT.

Curious if you have similar thoughts about how to update firmware remotely? My original idea was running docker and watchtower but maybe that's not the typical in production way either

[joezydeco → jimhi]

Too many unknowns to answer. O/S, available RAM/fixed storage, transport/bandwidth, power consumption... all matter and change the possible approach. Maybe look at Mender.

[DLA]

Here’s a decent survey of many of the top comms protocols for IoT: https://www.emnify.com/iot-glossary/guide-iot-protocols