Manufacturing

Starting to use AWS IOT for collecting manufacturing data off of machines on the floor. That data could be productivity (when was the machine on or cycled) or process (what temperature is the over). Of course the kinds of data collected could get out of hand real quick, the potential is endless. My question is about hardware. It is confusing. Let's say I have 50 machines and I want to send a MQTT packet to AWS IOT for each machine each time that machine was cycled. We currently have one machine and I am using a [Opto22 Rio](https://www.opto22.com/products/groov-rio) to collect a few simple data points and sent a MQTT message to AWS. They run in the $750 each range currently. We started out using Raspberry Pi's for this but they were a bit painful. For us the pain of writing the python, securing the devices, putting the pi in a plastic din rail was not worth the low cost of the equipment. The questions: * Is this a reasonable piece of hardware to use for this? Seems a bit overpowered and expensive for no more than what it is doing. * Would this be considered a gateway and my sensors/inputs be considered things? * In our use case (many machines with a few inputs) what kind of hardware solution would you recommend for collecting the data and sending the MQTT packet to AWS with?