Azure Digital Twins - Overview

Costa Rica

brown9804

Last updated: 2025-09-09

---

A digital twin is a virtual representation of a physical object, system, or environment. Think of it as a real-time digital mirror of something in the physical world, like a building, a factory, or even an entire city. It uses data from sensors and systems to simulate, monitor, and analyze how the real world counterpart behaves.

Tip

Azure Digital Twins is Microsoft’s platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering that lets you build these digital models at scale.

• Model Entire Environments: You can digitally recreate buildings, farms, energy grids, stadiums even whole cities.
• Use DTDL (Digital Twins Definition Language): This is a JSON-like language to define entities like rooms, elevators, or machines, and describe their properties, telemetry, and relationships.
• Live Data Integration: Connect IoT devices and business systems to stream real-time data into your digital twin.
• Query and Analyze: Use powerful APIs to extract insights, simulate scenarios, and optimize operations.
• Visualize in 3D: Build interactive dashboards or 3D scenes to monitor and control your environment.

List of References (Click to expand)

• What is Azure Digital Twins?
• Learn about twin models and how to define them in Azure Digital Twins
• Azure Digital Twins pricing

From MSFT- Sample solution architecture

Important

This guide walks you through setting up a digital twin of a warehouse using Azure Digital Twins and Digital Twin Definition Language (DTDL). It includes modeling, deployment, and integration steps.

Tip

Using DTDL in Azure Digital Twins allows you to:

• Digitally represent your warehouse layout and operations
• Monitor real-time data from sensors and devices
• Simulate and optimize workflows
• Build scalable, intelligent systems for logistics and automation

What is DTDL?

DTDL (Digital Twin Definition Language) is a JSON-based modeling language developed by Microsoft. It’s used to define the structure, behavior, and relationships of digital twins in Azure Digital Twins.

Think of DTDL as the blueprint for your digital twin system. It describes:

• Entities (e.g., shelves, robots, sensors)
• Properties (e.g., shelf capacity)
• Telemetry (e.g., temperature readings)
• Commands (e.g., move robot)
• Relationships (e.g., shelf belongs to zone)

How DTDL is Used:

1. Modeling Components: You create DTDL models for each warehouse component (shelf, zone, robot, etc.).
2. Uploading Models: These models are uploaded to your Azure Digital Twins instance.
3. Instantiating Twins: You create digital twin instances based on the models.
4. Defining Relationships: You connect twins to reflect real-world relationships (e.g., shelf is in zone).
5. Streaming Data: IoT devices send telemetry to Azure IoT Hub, which updates the twins.
6. Visualizing and Interacting: Use Azure Digital Twins Explorer or custom dashboards to monitor and control the system.

Prerequisites

To enable and use DTDL with Azure Digital Twins:

• An Azure subscription is required. All other resources, including instructions for creating a Resource Group, are provided in this workshop.

• Contributor role assigned or any custom role that allows: access to manage all resources, and the ability to deploy resources within subscription.

• Azure Digital Twins instance (pricing)

  This is the core service where your digital twin graph lives. What it does?

  • Hosts your DTDL models.
  • Stores twin instances (e.g., shelves, zones, robots).
  • Stores twin instances (e.g., shelves, zones, robots).
  • Enables querying and updating of twin states.

  

• Azure IoT Hub: This service connects physical devices (e.g., sensors, robots) to Azure. What it does?

  • Receives telemetry from devices.
  • Sends commands to devices.
  • Acts as a bridge between the physical warehouse and its digital twin.
  • How to setup?: Normally, use IoT Hub routing to forward messages to Azure Functions or Event Grid.
    • Register each device with a unique ID.
    • Use device SDKs to send telemetry (e.g., temperature, load).
    • Secure with device authentication and access policies.

• Azure Functions or Event Grid: These services handle event-driven processing of telemetry and commands. Use Functions to transform raw telemetry into meaningful updates for your twins.

  • Azure Functions:
    • Serverless compute that reacts to IoT messages.
    • Updates twin properties or telemetry using SDKs.
    • Can be written in C#, Python, JavaScript, etc.
  • Event Grid:
    • Event routing service.
    • Connects IoT Hub to Digital Twins via event handlers.
    • Useful for scalable, loosely coupled architectures.

• Visual Studio Code with DTDL extension

  

• Azure CLI or SDK (Python, C#, etc.)

Refresh Date: 2025-09-10