ZigBee – A New Wireless Standard
If you already know all about WiFi, and you’ve know what Bluetooth is, good on ya. Have you heard of ZigBee? ZigBee is a new wireless standard that we discussed in February and now Motorola has just annouced they are producing chips in sampling quantities. This means device manufacturers can access some chips for testing in their products. ZigBee solves a need that is not addressed by other current solutions. Like a wireless limbo, it goes very low: low cost, very low power-consumption, low-range, low-bandwidth communications. The idea is that you could embed a ZigBee radio in dozens of cheap products in the home and workplace. Like temperature sensors in multiple rooms, or automated lighting, and other applications where extremely long battery life was important. The key to this, in my opinion, is the low, low, low part. This is not WiFi, nor Bluetooth. You will not be streaming media over ZigBee. So when you read the inevitable “ZigBee Vs. WiFi” article, or get invited to the “ZigBee vs. 3G” track at a conference, just say “no”.
