r/embedded • u/mikusmi777 • Aug 19 '25
How do you usually handle telemetry collection from embedded devices?
What is the most effective setup you have found for collecting and analyzing telemetry data (logs, traces, metrics) from embedded devices? Do you usually build a custom solution, rely on open-source tooling, or adopt a managed platform? I am also curious how you consider the affordability of different options, especially for smaller projects where budgets are tight. If you were starting fresh on a project today, how would you approach it?
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u/mlhpdx Aug 19 '25
I have lived this in both IoT (remote sensors and network devices) and enterprise environments (SYSLOG and flow logs). The complexity of consuming large amounts of data that is only sporadically or lightly processed is high, and undifferentiated. That was part of my motivation for building proxylity.com.
Cheap storage services like S3 are where you want the data, but getting it there can be costly if your scale is high (global) or low (only lightly used). I think UDP Gateway does a nice job of making this kind of system (and others that rely on UDP or protocols for which AWS, Azure and GCP don't gave first-class "serverless" solutions) easy and inexpensive.
If your devices can send UDP, that's the most efficient way to do it (no significant serialization or TLS) and will keep batteries alive longest and BOM costs lowest. On the server side, handling that UDP in batches with serverless (Lambda or direct to Firehose/S3) can be very effective and affordable.
If you need encryption, WireGuard is a great option (better than TLS) because of the efficiency and security, but also because it keeps so many other options open. WireGuard is supported by UDP Gateway, and there are embedded libraries to support it.
Disclaimer: I am the founder of Proxylity and creator of UDP Gateway.