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ZigBee Pro, the New Home Automation Standard?
An anonymous reader writes "Echelon, Microsoft, Intel, Sun and the Electronic Industries Alliance have been trying to create a home automation standard for two decades — to no avail. Now the ZigBee Alliance, proprietor of a low-rate two-way wireless mesh networking technology, says it will prevail. In six weeks, automation vendor Control4, which has about one million ZigBee nodes installed, will flip the switch on the new ZigBee Pro, which promises interoperability among light switches, thermostats, door locks, motorized shades, security systems, remote controls and some 36 million electric meters."
(Disclosure/Insight: My company, MMB Research http://mmbresearch.com/, makes ZigBee Smart Energy hardware and software to help people integrate this kind of technology into products, and I've been involved with ZigBee for a number of years.)
A lot of commenters here seem to be comparing the various features of competing home automation technologies, which is certainly appropriate, but you also have to look at the bigger, future picture.
ZigBee - and specifically the ZigBee Smart Energy profile is becoming the standard of choice for in-home networks that will exist on the Smart Grid.
So it's one thing to compare ZigBee to Z-wave or X10 on a merits basis (though I believe it's far superior based on years of real-world experience), but when you consider your utility is going to put a ZigBee Smart Energy enabled meter/gateway in your house, and that hundreds of OEMs are going to be integrating it into wide variety of appliances that can hop on that network, you're going to see drastic reductions in cost, and increases in choice and quality.
In a few years, there might be a handful of WiFi or Z-Wave thermostats (or pool pumps, or light switches), but there will be dozens of ZigBee ones, because the installed user base will be there.
Now, Control4 is talking about ZigBee Pro and the Home Automation profile, which isn't technically part of the Smart Energy profile, but they can coexist, and many developers of Smart Energy products/solutions - including ourselves - have implemented both, opening up the HAN (home area network) to a variety of devices and controls.