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Thumbnail sized modules costing a few bucks each: Chipcon CC2420.

I'm currently working with a CC2420 from Chipcon, but not actually with Zigbee, only with IEEE 802.15.4. In order to access to the spec, you must pay $9,500 for a year (as Participant), or $40,000 /year (as Promoter). I'm developing my own stack. Okay, it will not be compatible with other ZigBee products, but it will work (I hope).

Here are a few companies already producing silicon:

Chipcon
Freescale
Atmel
CompXs

Just FYI

Actually, Chipcon http://www.chipcon.com/is selling RFIC's NOW (I have a stack of 20 right in front of me) and will have single chip solutions later this year, not 2 years from now.

In our office we tested for range using two of the Chipcon boards. We measured about 40m range, through various walls and offices and whatnot. That was using el cheapo PCB trace antennas. If you put on chip antennas (like what most BT devices use) then you could probably get 50m+. Outdoors, either of these options can do 100m+, one guy said they got 400m between devices.

Zigbee adds some really cool stuff, including mesh networking, dynamic mesh creation and maintenance, security, and a very cool application profile tool.

Who says that you need to get certified? Maybe you do if you want to advertise your product as "zigbee compatible" or whatever, but if you don't care then there's no reason to test. We're using the zigbee stuff from Chipcon and we aren't a member of the Zigbee Alliance. Oh, BTW, it costs $9500 to become a member of the Alliance, not $7500.

Zigbee does have security - 128bit AES. I think it uses CBC but I'm not sure. The Chipcon CC2420 has an onboard crypto engine.

Chipcon and Motorola are both producing 2.4GHz Zigbee RFIC's now. They are fairly inexpensive, about $4.50 each in 1k qty. ZMD will be releasing 900MHz Zigbee RFIC's very soon. Licensing the stack from one of these company's partners adds about $0.50 but of course you could always roll your own.

I think it's just the first production ZigBee chip, which, until now, has been total vaporware

Actually we (Chipcon) launched a 802.15.4 compliant device in november last year. Datasheets and reference designs are availible here .

I think it's just the first production ZigBee chip, which, until now, has been total vaporware

Actually we (Chipcon) launched a 802.15.4 compliant device in november last year. Datasheets and reference designs are availible here .

I think it's just the first production ZigBee chip, which, until now, has been total vaporware

Actually we (Chipcon) launched a 802.15.4 compliant device in november last year. Datasheets and reference designs are availible here .

Since 2.4 GHz is an ISM band, there are no license requirements, and there are already many proprietery transceivers on the market. The difference here is that Zigbee (802.15.4) is an IEEE std. ZigBee was developed because many felt Bluetooth was too complicated for sensor network and automation type applications. Indeed, with the Piconet scheme of 7 active nodes, large Bluetooth networks are very complicated, and I don't think the problems associated with large meshes of piconets have been solved. ZigBee is supposed to be lower power, and it uses a more robust DSSS transceiver. It also implements some additional security protocols. However, the data rate is at best 4x slower. Bluetooth has applications in one market segment, namely personal computing, and ZigBee in another (sensors, automation).

There is room for each protocol in the appropriate vertical marketplace, and no one protocol is appropriate for everything. Think of 802.11a/b/g, Bluetooth, and ZigBee as FireWire, USB, and... serial.