DENVER-Although monitoring and control-enhancing technology hasn’t garnered many headlines in the past, ZigBee-enabled products are likely to burst into prime-time later this year with both consumer and commercial applications, predicted Bob Heile, chairman of the ZigBee Alliance, during last week’s IEEE standards meeting in Denver.
With backing from big-time developers like Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Texas Instruments Inc., Motorola Inc., Freescale Semiconductor Inc., Huawei Technology Co. Ltd., and most recently, Siemens A.G., Heile’s prediction seems bankable.
The likeliest products are expected to tackle automation applications for homes and businesses, including intelligent sensors that help control lighting, heating, cooling, watering, appliance-use and security systems.
“Imagine an intelligent smoke-alarm system in your home,” explained Heile. “When the smoke detector senses smoke, it could shut down your heating and air conditioning system so that smoke isn’t circulated throughout your home. It could also turn on all the lights in your home, which would help wake you up and also provides a safer environment as you make your way out of the house.”
Heile went on to describe sprinkler heads that sense rain, or dry conditions, and turn water on or off accordingly. Light switches that aren’t wired to a light fixture, but control it just the same, wirelessly. So if a homeowner always wanted a light switch in a certain place, but didn’t want to pay to have the switch wired, a ZigBee-based product could meet that need for a fraction of the cost.
Interoperability among products has been the goal of the ZigBee Alliance since the group convened several years ago. In December 2004, the IEEE’s 802.15.4 specification was standardized, giving developers an open ZigBee standard to work from. The standard focuses on low-rate personal area networking enabling wireless data communications for monitoring and control devices. The technology capitalizes on reliability, long battery life and support for mesh networking.
ZigBee operates in the unlicensed 2.4 GHz spectrum band and unlike Bluetooth and Wi-Fi technology that also operate in that band, ZigBee is designed to run on inexpensive batteries for many years, negating the need to be wired to electrical power and extending the reach of ZigBee’s applications.
The networking component is another advantage ZigBee claims over similar technologies since a ZigBee network can be controlled from a PC or a wireless controller.
To date, Heile says 2.5 million ZigBee parts have shipped around the globe and that the Alliance expects five to 10 times as many will be shipped in 2006.
