Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Is Zigbee the Next Bluetooth?

Posted by Cliff on from the rise-or-fall-of-another-wireless-technology dept.

bz asks: "I work for a small product development company that is considering the use of RF. Naturally, it seems that it would be easier to use a proprietary protocol rather than some of the standards on the market. We are restricted by small code space and low power. The Zigbee protocol needs more memory than we would like to give up. Naturally, if Zigbee is going to become ubiquitous, we would like to sacrifice the extra memory and jump on the bandwagon. However, if it is only going to be as popular as Bluetooth, we would prefer to pass. Is Zigbee going to succeed, or is it likely to follow along the low road that Bluetooth has already paved?"

6 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. Only as sucessful as Bluetooth??? by LWATCDR · · Score: 4, Informative

    Bluetooth seems to be really catching on in cell phones, laptops, and PDAs. It is actually pretty unlikely that Zigbee will be as popular as Bluetooth. It is too slow for data transfer. Zigbee will mainly be seen in the embedded space. Frankly you better hope that Zigbee is the next Bluetooth. Cheap and available.
    Zigbee does look like it will be easier to interface than Bluetooth though.

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    1. Re:Only as sucessful as Bluetooth??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      With over 9.5 million Bluetooth devices shipping per week, Zigbee can only wish that it would be so sucessful.

  2. 802.15.4 good, ZigBee bad by palfrey · · Score: 4, Informative

    ZigBee is designed towards the home automation market, *not* wireless sensors. I could name half a dozen more stable and power efficient routing algorithms for WSNs (Wireless Sensor Networks) than this beacon crap they came up with. 802.15.4 on the other hand, is being grabbed onto thoroughly, and that's because the advantages of having a stable PHY and Packet layer for WSNs (as opposed to the current situation where various nodes even from the same people can't communicate) is enormous. The combination of a general purpose computing node + 802.15.4 hardware is a damn good idea, and one that's liable to survive for at least a while. I've spent the last few weeks messing around with a TinyOS node with 802.15.4 and porting our MAC layer onto it, and it's been a lot easier than most platforms.

    (On this note, don't buy the MaxStream 802.15.4 chips, because they're non-conformant - got an official line on that from one of their engineers. They're building a 802.15.4-like proprietary protocol.)

    --
    Beware the psychokinetic mimes!
  3. Re:No way by rastachops · · Score: 2, Informative

    No-one seems to understand the purpose of Bluetooth or Zigbee. Zigbee is designed to be low power, make once, then use until it's battery dies and for sensors. Adhoc networks for routing and low response times( I think its about 40ms instead of Bluetooth's 3seconds ish) but also low bandwidth.
    It's not intended to be a Bluetooth killer. They are both great for their designed purposes. Bluetooth for rechargable peripherals and Zigbee for making a load of probes to scatter around a plant to measure temperature, humidity etc and then report back on those conditions.
    Slashdot: getting more retarded by the day.

  4. Extra Memory for Zigbee? by fwc · · Score: 2, Informative

    Unless you are implementing this in a *really* small processor, Zigbee should fit in about anything. For example, Microchip has an royalty-free implementation of the ZigBee protocol which only needs about 32K for a coordinator and 15K for a RFD (endpoint).

  5. Depends on the Application by dr_nik · · Score: 2, Informative

    Zigbee is for low data rate- larger range. Bluetooth is high data rate- low range. like comparing Apples and Oranges.