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Simple-to-use ZigBee Hardware

Posted by timothy on from the what's-a-zigbee-you-ask dept.

An anonymous reader submits "I thought this was interesting. Up till now, ZigBee was only available as a chipset or some rudimentary modules. Now regular schmucks like me that don't want to mess with a soldering iron can use ZigBee and see if it sucks or not. These radios have a range of almost a mile and cost less than $100. Not bad since nobody else seems to offer anything like this (yet). Now I can get my laptop to communicate with some of my robotics projects without an RS-232 umbilical cord." (WikiPedia's page on ZigBee a is a good way to figure out whether this is interesting to you; in short, a low-power, medium-range radio spec for all sorts of interesting uses.)

3 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Looking forward to ZigBee home automation by FerretFrottage · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That's one are I think ZigBee can be very successful. X10 works, but has less than stellar reliability. RadioRA (Lutron I beleive) and the others are properitry and can be quite expensive. Conversely, "anybody" can make a ZigBee compliant device and it should work with any other ZigBee device--even from another manufacturers. This should help to keep ZigBee home automation devices price competitive--at least I hope so.

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    "Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
  2. The range is what? by Sketch · · Score: 3, Interesting

    According to the link:

    "capable of transmitting up to 0.9 miles (1.4 km) in line-of-sight conditions."

    According to the wikipedia article:

    "Transmission range is between 10 and 75 metres (33~246 feet)."

    There is quite a bit of a difference between those two. Is wikipedia out of date, or rfdesign overly optimistic?

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    -- OpenVerse Visual Chat: http://openverse.com
  3. Well... by Blue-Footed+Boobie · · Score: 2, Interesting
    This will be excellent for all kinds of wireless projects.

    Especially thos where you only have two weeks and a $100 budget...

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    DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!