ZigBee Alliance Triples in Size

maxstreampr writes "The ZigBee Alliance just put out a press release talking about how they tripled in size in the past year. I know, I can see the posts already. "What up to 3 members now." There are actually 124 members and they have some huge players in Phillips, Freescale, Samsung, and MaxStream. Not too shabby." See this story from December for more on ZigBee; in short, it's a low-data-rate wireless standard "to enable wirelessly networked monitoring and control products."

Erm... Important how?

[cato kaze]

Not meaning to troll, but exactly why is ANOTHER consortium of companies that are 'working towards' something news? It seems there are several hundred of these groups, and I dont see anything in the article that seperates this one or makes its goals unique. "working together to enable wirelessly networked monitoring and control products based on an open global standard" is not exactly the most descriptive goal in the world.

What's with the name?

[Albinofrenchy]

I'm not sayin' that the name is all that matters, but ZigBee's? That sounds more like a fast food restaurant then an entity that should be making standards.

Let us revisit this in 2 years

[Jailbrekr]

This is nothing but a smoke show until we start seeing some serious silicon being manufactured. Once they start pumping out single chip solutions for under $5.00USD in quantity, THEN it is something to be taken seriously. Until then, its nothing more than a potential pump 'n dump stock scam.

Re:What's with the name?

[jbrader]

I know, how dumb can they be. They may as well call themselves something stupid like Apple or Yahoo or Google or...

Re:Erm... Important how?

[Trogre]

...products based on an open global standard

...whitepapers in MS Word format on their website.

I guess they're not too concerned with supporting open standards elsewhere...

Anything is better than X10 wireless protocol

[Dark Coder]

I, for one, welcome the ZigBee overlord.

X10 wireline protocol has its shortcoming when one uses in a dual-phase household (two sets of 112-120VAC in alternate AC phases). It mandates installing a capacitor to act as a bridge.

Otherwise, one would have to have dual controller segment throughout the house.

Most Zigbee devs will be "hidden"

[EmbeddedJanitor]

While Bluetooth's niche is in PDAs and phones etc, Zigbee's is in low power / low data rate applications. This really makes Zigbee most appropriate for control comms between embedded devices, building automation etc.

Zigbee should be way cheaper to implement than BT (say a buck vs five bucks), but that does not mean you'll see PDAs get Zigbee by default. Likely though your TV will get Zigbee and apart from being able to control its power intelligently it will allow you to control Zigbee devices via your TV/remote.