Bound Things

A bound thing is an intermediate thing that acts as a virtual representation of all the things connected through it.

When a thing connects to Device Cloud it establishes a session with a unique session ID. Bound things are connected to Device Cloud through an intermediate thing (proxy) that has established a direct connection to Device Cloud. Bound things share the same session and session ID of the intermediate thing to which they are bound. When the proxy establishes a connection to Device Cloud, all things that are bound to the proxy thing receive data from Device Cloud through the proxy connection. The proxy sends a thing.bind API call to initiate the session binding to bind the things to the current session. In the diagram below, when the message is sent to Thing A using either the method.exec or mailbox.send API, a session is established with a valid session ID. Using this session, Device Cloud sends the message to Thing Y (proxy) which is a virtual representation of Thing A, Thing B, and Thing C. Thing Y then delivers the message to Thing A using an established communication path.

The Bound things tab appears on the thing page for a thing that is a proxy and shows all the things that are bound to it.