ZigBee Alliance Triples in Size

maxstreampr writes "The ZigBee Alliance just put out a press release talking about how they tripled in size in the past year. I know, I can see the posts already. "What up to 3 members now." There are actually 124 members and they have some huge players in Phillips, Freescale, Samsung, and MaxStream. Not too shabby." See this story from December for more on ZigBee; in short, it's a low-data-rate wireless standard "to enable wirelessly networked monitoring and control products."

Comments

What?

[fembots]

Up to 3 members now?

Erm... Important how?

[cato kaze]

Not meaning to troll, but exactly why is ANOTHER consortium of companies that are 'working towards' something news? It seems there are several hundred of these groups, and I dont see anything in the article that seperates this one or makes its goals unique. "working together to enable wirelessly networked monitoring and control products based on an open global standard" is not exactly the most descriptive goal in the world.

Re:Erm... Important how?

[chris09876]

They've actually got some good whitepapers in MS Word format on their website. Look at the information section: http://www.zigbee.org/en/resources/

Re:Erm... Important how?

[Trogre]

...products based on an open global standard

...whitepapers in MS Word format on their website.

I guess they're not too concerned with supporting open standards elsewhere...

Re:Erm... Important how?

[lakiolen]

If you want open source low-data-rate wireless mesh networking check out the http://www.tinyos.net/ and http://webs.cs.berkeley.edu/ websites. I can't say much that wouldn't be biased because I'm, how you say, an involved party, but it is completely open source (GPL) and anybody can contribute they're own code and if it is good it might even be used :).

Re:Erm... Important how?

[lakiolen]

http://www.moteiv.com/ has a picture of the latest and (we like to say) greatest mote that is out there on their front page.
http://www.xbow.com/Products/productsdetails.aspx? sid=3 also talks about wireless mesh networking hardware and software
http://www.tinyos.net/related.html linked from PROJECTS USING TINYOS (caps not mine) under Community on the right hand side of the site lists a bunch of real projects using tinyos and mote hardware.
http://www.tinyos.net/faq.html linked from FAQ under Help on the right again talks about what tinyos is.

I think that's what you're looking for but if not let me know and i'll supply you with more info.

Call us back when...

[YrWrstNtmr]

...your product page has actual products, and doesn't say "Coming Soon".

Most Zigbee devs will be "hidden"

[EmbeddedJanitor]

While Bluetooth's niche is in PDAs and phones etc, Zigbee's is in low power / low data rate applications. This really makes Zigbee most appropriate for control comms between embedded devices, building automation etc.

Zigbee should be way cheaper to implement than BT (say a buck vs five bucks), but that does not mean you'll see PDAs get Zigbee by default. Likely though your TV will get Zigbee and apart from being able to control its power intelligently it will allow you to control Zigbee devices via your TV/remote.