ZigBee Low-Power Wireless Networking

asmithmd1 writes "Do you you have a great idea for a wireless device that really doesn't need the 1 Mbit/sec (and high power consumption) of Bluetooth? Well you will have a new choice soon, ZigBee. Zigbee is the trademark for IEEE 802.15 Personal Area network low data rate standard. Designed to run in low power 8 bit devices at data rates of 20k bits/second, a ZigBee node will run for months if not years on one set of batteries. With heavy hitters like Motorola and Phillips behind it and chips available soon for half the cost of bluetooth, it looks like it will become a reality."

Comments

Well?

[grennis]

Do you you have a great idea for a wireless device that really doesn't need the 1 Mbit/sec (and high power consumption) of Bluetooth?

No. Next question?

This will be great

[Anonymous Coward]

For connecting my fridge to the internet. Also, my lightbulbs. Those need IP addresses, too.

Re:This will be great

[keesh]

Ah, right. Let me guess... You're a MIT student, and you need to justify your hording of an entire class A block.

Re:This will be great

[Motherfucking Shit]

Ah, right. Let me guess... You're a MIT student, and you need to justify your hording of an entire class A block.

An entire class A? MIT has 10317 students. When you divide MIT's /8 (16387064 addressable IPs, excluding .0s and .255s) among these students, that means that each MIT student only has a paltry 1588 IP addresses. Let's assume that, for each student, a quarter of his IPs are used up by administrative servers around campus, now all of a sudden each MIT student has only 1191 IP addresses for his or her own personal use!

An entire class A, hah! What is a poor student supposed to do with such few IPs, you insensitive clod?! That's barely enough to assign a unique network address to each pr0n movie ;)

Re:This will be great

[garethw]

Nortel Networks has an entire class A block, too...

...Split between the 17 people they haven't laid off yet...

Where do they get the names from?

[Freaek]

First bluetooth, now zigbee (wifi should be in here somewhere too I suppose), what do they do, get pissed in the office on a friday arvo and pull stupid arse names out of a hat?

I can just see a group of marketroids sitting round in a room saying things like, "oh numbers, they'll never catch on" "quite so, we need something snazzier" "wait a minute, a bee is flying into my beer" "oh look, a ziggy cartoon"

"EUREKA!!!!! lets call it ZigBee"

"good idea, pass me another beer"

Hmmm...

[xRizen]

Will ZigBee nodes be known as "Zigs"?

TAKE OFF ALL ZIGS

*ducks*

Not only that...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've determined that several of my IP addresses really should have their own IP addresses! I mean, 10.6.6.6 is pretty lonely there all by himself, I've often thought about the need to assign several IP addresses to him. But then, those IP addresses would need some company of their own...

Who says we don't need millions of addresses per square millimeter of the Earth's surface?! ipv6, here I come, with exponential redundancy! We'll be needing ipv256 in no time ;)

And Finally!

[mschoolbus]

Ahhh Yes... I will stream 20k bits/second of data to all my 8 bit devices hangin around my general area....

wireless dildo

[Anonymous Coward]

That follows the action as programmed on the 3rd audio channel on DVD's.

spelling

[wwwillem]

Why do people (well, mostly Americans) never write Motorolla, but too often write Phillips where it should be Philips. Or do people really think that an oil company is suddenly going into wireless electronics. Mmmm, with McDonalds going into the WiFi ISP business, you never know. And maybe those French fries are coming out of a pan of Phillips 66. :-).

Re:spelling

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean McDonallds.

- Thjorska