Where's my 802.15.4?

[signal15]

3 years ago all these companies were talking about how awesome Zigbee is and how it was the future of HA. They were saying within a year, it would be in everything.

As far as I can tell, it's in almost nothing. I have a Brultech and a Zigbee router. I want to utilize the router for other interesting things, like switches and sensors. But as far as I can tell, no one is making them.

Is it because the chips are too expensive? $20+ for a zigbee chip IS a bit excessive if it's something that the manufacturer wants to put in everything. But the nice thing about it is that it's an IEEE standard, and technically any manufacturer would have to adhere to that standard to use the name. So regardless of the maker, we'd have all this compatible equipment.

I'm guessing that the frustration I'm feeling is the same frustration that time travelers feel when they go back in time and there's no more Chiptle or internet, but they know in a few years they'll be able to have it again.

 

[twilo123]

i took a look about 3 years ago and there was zigbee and zwave. decided after research that zigbee was vaporware and no real push and zwave wasn't too much further along but at least had some support from different manufacturers. not too much has changed although there is serious interest for zigbee on AMR for large scale projects. this is straight to the utility companies and there are pilot projects going on all around the country some of which are using zigbee radios in the meters. it will be interesting to see how everything plays out. personally i don't see why they don't concentrate on 802.11 radios and just use those with tcp/ip and udp; just increase the efficiency and power requirements in the radios. they have them in mobile phones so size should not be of matter these days and it should be able to cover most HA puposes. just my 2cents.

 

[signal15]

i took a look about 3 years ago and there was zigbee and zwave. decided after research that zigbee was vaporware and no real push and zwave wasn't too much further along but at least had some support from different manufacturers. not too much has changed although there is serious interest for zigbee on AMR for large scale projects. this is straight to the utility companies and there are pilot projects going on all around the country some of which are using zigbee radios in the meters. it will be interesting to see how everything plays out. personally i don't see why they don't concentrate on 802.11 radios and just use those with tcp/ip and udp; just increase the efficiency and power requirements in the radios. they have them in mobile phones so size should not be of matter these days and it should be able to cover most HA puposes. just my 2cents.

Because 802.15.4 has an autoconfiguring mesh capability, which drastically reduces administrative overhead, and can increase reliability in the case of failures. Implementing something similar with IP for a power grid/meters would be a monumental undertaking because of IP allocation, routing design, redundancy, etc. Plus, it would likely have to be IPV6 to deal with the huge number of devices that would be out there.

For within the home, 802.11 might be fine, but then you'd still need to design a communication protocol on top of it for sending and receiving messages/commands. And, every company is going to have their own way of designing this, so there will likely be little compatibility between manufacturers. No one is going to agree, and it will be chaos.... again. Additionally, Wifi has fairly short range across the board. Some of the 802.15.4 equipment has over a 1 mile range.

 

[ano]

Actually Zigbee has been chugging alone quite well, its just that home automation isn't its primary market, but do you really blame them? The home automation market is pretty small.

I'm a wireless analyst who follows this market, and as such, I quite often talk to those in the Zigbee "know." For example, both Freescale and TI are making Zigbee chips, and I can tell you that shipments of Zigbee chips are rising, in the 10's of millions at this point, but we are forecasting growth to the 100M level by 2011.

To date, most of ZigBee has been in utility gas, electric and water meters, which can be remotely by truck. Also, recently the RF4CE standard was approved, which won't use full MESH Zigbee, but rather will use the Zigbee radio. RF4CE will likely replace the IR in your remotes in a few years with RF, so programming all those IR codes will be a thing of the past. Yeah.

So don't give up. Its happening slowly. HAI has a Zigbee thermostat, there is Zigbee used for industrial automation, and Zigbee is starting to be talked about for healthcare. Don't be surprised if in a few years your cell phone has a Zigbee radio, and your doctor gives you a Zigbee medical device so you can be monitored remotely. Its happening today in trials.

So for home automation, you may need to wait a few more years.

 

[AnthonyZ]

You can also easily roll your own Zigbee networks to accomplish just about anything you could possibly imagine with the use of Digi's modules. The same can't be said for any Zwave that I'm aware of. I agree with Ano (though I'm not nearly as knowledgeable as he is), Zigbee is rockin'. I personally use Xbee modules and find that they are easy to work with and, frankly, fun.

 

[electron]

Some ZigBee chip manufacturers are now releasing ZigBee Pro chips, and home automation manufacturers are focusing on ZigBee Pro now as well. But I am skeptic about this as well, and will believe it when I actually see hardware which works together

 

[AnthonyZ]

Thought I'd pop in and mention that Universal Remote Control announced a new Zigbee line today that includes one remote (MX-880Z, $540 MSRP) and one base station (MRZ-260, $190 MSRP).

 

[signal15]

Thought I'd pop in and mention that Universal Remote Control announced a new Zigbee line today that includes one remote (MX-880Z, $540 MSRP) and one base station (MRZ-260, $190 MSRP).

No switches though? I'm about to go on a rampage.

 

[Red0x]

i took a look about 3 years ago and there was zigbee and zwave. decided after research that zigbee was vaporware and no real push and zwave wasn't too much further along but at least had some support from different manufacturers. not too much has changed although there is serious interest for zigbee on AMR for large scale projects. this is straight to the utility companies and there are pilot projects going on all around the country some of which are using zigbee radios in the meters. it will be interesting to see how everything plays out. personally i don't see why they don't concentrate on 802.11 radios and just use those with tcp/ip and udp; just increase the efficiency and power requirements in the radios. they have them in mobile phones so size should not be of matter these days and it should be able to cover most HA puposes. just my 2cents.

Wifi has two fatal flaws with its radio: too expensive and too power hungry. It's totally impractical for a sleeping device since you'd have to have a car battery to keep it running. For an always awake device like a light switch, you still have the cost issue, but the power from the radio can add up if you have a lot of wifi switches.

Using TCP/IP and UDP/IP is a good idea since it's so ubiquitous, but 6LoWPAN is a much better approach since it uses 802.15.4 and therefore doesn't have the cost and power issues of 802.11.

I think the biggest problem with Zigbee is still cost. People don't want to pay $80+ for a fancy electronic switch when you can get nice looking mechanical ones for well under a buck. I can't say I blame them. If people aren't willing to pay, then companies aren't going to waste time developing. There are other issues with Zigbee of course, like the lack of unity and breadth of products, but cost is the biggest issue.

 

[Steve]

If people aren't willing to pay, then companies aren't going to waste time developing. There are other issues with Zigbee of course, like the lack of unity and breadth of products, but cost is the biggest issue.

I don't think I can agree with that. While I do agree with the first part about cost in general, Zigbee based switches are no more expensive than some others. For example, I can buy a Centralite Jetstream switch cheaper than an equivalent PCS UPB switch. So Zigbee is really no more expensive than some other technologies.