Talk:ZigBee

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[edit] Zigbee Bandwidth

I found contrary claims of the channel bandwidth Zigbee devices use. While it is true that the channels are separated by 5 MHz, it is nowhere mentioned in standards that the bandwidth is 5 MHz. I see some research papers claiming that the bandwidth is 2 MHz. E.g. this: Mutual interference analysis of IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.11b, CMOS RFIC Architecture from Cadence and Agilent webpage Anyone has a clear idea?

Allrite82 (talk) 23:02, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why the name?

Can anybody explain the origin of the name 'ZigBee' ? I think this may add context to the introduction of the article.

[edit] Clean up

  • Got rid of the advert warning. It is misleading to put this warning since there are multiple vendor claims.
  • So what is wrong with this page?
    • Too much info: No. Length is reasonable.
    • Some info read too much like an add? yes, especially in the module section.
    • Solution for module:
      • Suppression of all trademarks, marketing names, etc.. since it does not bring any technical information.
      • Suppression of any adjectives such as best,first etc..
      • No comparison (vendor A module is bigger than vendor B module). Note that in this case bigger is not better.
      • Using the same style for every entry.
      • Standardize on: offers, provides etc..
    • Solution for Chip:
      • Not much to modify.
      • Contrary to module, standard practice is to know a chip by its name which is a number.
      • Standardize on: <chip number> offers etc..
    • General:
    • Organise entries in alphabetical order.
    • Max number of lines: 3
      • Why limit the number of lines?
        • To make it readable and allow an increase of entries without taking too much space.
    • Finally, as it stands now , vendor information is reasonable. I do not guarantee the future, but before suppressing it completely, let us give a chance to the herding of cats.

Dilane 02:53, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
-Very Nice job, thanks--MountainLogic 22:59, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Contrary to the Microchip Blurb

Microchip currently has no plans to continue support of their existing rudimentary stack which has limited support for other vendor's RF section (Chipcon, in particular). It is misleading, or downright dishonest to include mention of this stack inferring it is viable. It is not certified as interoperable, cannot be certified in its current state, nor does Microchip have any current plans to make it certifiable.—Preceding unsigned comment added by BluesFiddler (talk • contribs) -Source for this claim? This sounds very harsh! --MountainLogic 19:51, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
-Indeed it is harsh, but not nearly as harsh as developing a product only to discover this was all a figment of somebody's imagination! It is simple enough to ask the question of a Microchip FAE before committing to a project. The good news is they now have their own radio (MRF24J40) in sample quantities; allegedly available in production quantities 1Q 2007. Their 3.6 stack has been certified as ZigBee-compliant with this radio. If you are just hacking, none of this matters. If you are in development, make sure you target the MRF24J40 and the 3.6 stack. Once production has been confirmed, most of this comment can be deleted except for the caveat to check your PICDEM-Z kit for the proper radio. --[User:BluesFiddler] 15 December 2006

I have verified that the Microchip radio is now available (at least in limited quantities) and the stack now supports their radio (MRF24J40) and is currently supported by Microchip as evidenced by the fact they are now on revision 3.8 of the stack. This was confirmed by acquiring their current PICDEM-Z package and implementing a simple application beyond their demo application. BluesFiddler 01:07, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The first commercial ZigBee product

zPoint Products was informed that the ZigBee USB Dongle (as shown at Light Fair in the ZigBee Alliance booth) was the first commercial product in the world (according to the Zigbee Alliance, who invited zPoint Products to demonstrate a ZigBee wireless lighting control system in their booth). That was a surprise given all the hype about ZigBee to date. However, anything else out there appears to be dev. kits or vapor ware, at least as of Sept. 2006. That was certainly the case in April 2006 when the product was first shown.

This can easily be verified by the Zigbee Alliance. Ask Bob Heile, the Chairman, since he's the one that informed us of the status of our product. Bempey 05:19, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Please DO NOT put commercial information"

Revragnarok recently deleted the entire "Device Vendors" and "Chip/Firmware Vendors" sections with no explanation beyond a comment "Please DO NOT put commercial information (vendor, supplier, etc.) here". I disagree with this. Anybody interested in Zigbee will be interested in an overview of who is implementing it and how the various implementations compare. Of course we should not allow it to turn into a forum for advertisements by every single commercial vendor, but a brief summary of the major contendors is completely warranted, and has numerous precedents in other Wikipedia articles, e.g. Photoshop: Alternatives. Feel free to reword the descriptions to eliminate bias and prune the list, but you cannot just delete entire sections of Wikipedia content because commercial products were mentioned. --Anonymous 02:13, 8 June 2006 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.169.134.132 (talk • contribs)

No, I didn't. Ausinha did here [1]. I think we can use a few but see Section 1.5. It can use some pruning. -- RevRagnarok Talk Contrib Reverts 10:17, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
A list of resources is usefull because much of the technical documentation and white papers on the topic is going to only be found from the vendors at this point. That said, the vendor list did need some cleaning up (removal of words like "leading," "world's first," etc.). A better break down of the catagories (splitting ICs from stacks, adding a engineering services area, renaming devices to modules and adding consumer devices when they arrive) to reduce the need for verbage and thus the tempation for embelishment. If ZigBee does take off and we see mass adoption much of the page should be split off and become ZigBee Development and this page replaced with much more non-technical user oriented material--MountainLogic 17:17, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
I've changed my mind. The marketing speak on this page is out of control. Time to eliminate commercial links. If reader really need to find links thay can to to the ZigBee.org page. --MountainLogic 21:43, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
I think that is a bit harsh... I agree the vendor lists were getting "out-of-hand", but today's edit (removing ALL vendor sections), is reactionary. Just because something is commercial information, doesn't mean it is useless information. I vote we leave the vendor lists in and just keep trimming here and there. Mware 20:56, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps it is time to create a ZigBee Market Page??--MountainLogic 01:55, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
The deletion of the vendors of chips and products is totally against the intention of the provision of knowledge to the public.

This is a new technology and there are many engineers and designers who are interested in it beyond a discussion of the theory behind it. Not only has someone deleted all the useful content for anyone interested in experimenting or learning more about the hardware supporting ZigBee, but someone has deleted half of the pages that were linked to by this article! If a company cannot exist in Wikipedia because any reference to a commercial organization is "spam", then I will go ahead and delete all the entries for IBM, Michael Dell and his company, Bill Gates & Microsoft, Apple, Henry Ford & his company, GM, Chrysler, Harley Davidson, Wright Brothers etc. Well, I think that you get my point. The fact that all those companies mentioned have pages, but someone can willy-nilly delete a bunch of the notable companies performing ground-breaking work in the worlds of embedded computers and wireless controls just because the editor (deletor) is:

  • not interested in those topics, or
  • not knowledgable in those fields

is a sign of total hypocrisy, and I believe that they are a dis-credit to the Wikipedia community! Bempey 02:48, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

This Wiki entry *used* to be useful. Now it is quite useless. If you are not going to allow vendor lists (sans the superlatives), you might as well delete my "Contrary to the Microchip Blurb" entry since it now refers to something which no longer exists. If you are going to target amateurs only, that is fine, but I *used* to come here first as my first look at serious subjects. Also, while I am on a rant, mass delete-ers are obligated to delete everything that references that which was deleted.--User:BluesFiddler 15 December 2006

I've restored the list to a new page ZigBee_Products so that it can live or die on its own. If the community annotates the listing it can become more than a bill board into perhaps a history of technology type article if it is done without bias. --MountainLogic 17:32, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

The link to "ZigBee_Products" has either already been deleted by somebody or it was never properly linked. While this might be a reasonable solution for allowing vendor references, I continue to fail to see what harm is done by allowing vendor references within this article. Most people know that you cannot believe everything you read regardless of whether a vendor states it or some anonymous author contributing to these (or any other) pages states it. BluesFiddler 01:07, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

If you check with deleted pages it would seem that User:Irishguy seems to have a problem with that list. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MountainLogic (talk • contribs)

See WP:NOT#DIR. — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 03:11, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Products

Does anyone know any low cost products (sub $20) that use zigbee?

No commercial products have been released, to my knowledge. Most zigbee products are development boards right now. --Bakkster Man 02:23, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Products are now available on the market including home automation stuff from [| Control 4]. I am not aware of anythign below $20 yet =\ Kail Ceannai 12:08, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
I was under the impression that the pricing meant for the IC. Kind of like when AMD announces a new processor would be available at $75, that's when you buy them in lots of 1000 and you don't expect your entire end-user PC to then cost $75 - it's only one component. — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 13:00, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I have found information confirming the uncited note about 128kB Zigbee devices, such as the Chipcon CC2430-F128 (a $10 chip). What is the most appropriate way to incorporate this information? 67.168.127.219 21:24, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Standards

Are there any standards for device control that run on top of ZigBee. It's great that ZigBee makes it easier and potentially cheaper to do wireless control of a lamp, but is there any standard way to use ZigBee to tell a lamp to turn on and off?

I haven't really been able to find any such standards, and I'm wondering if I'm missing something.

If ZigBee were higher bandwidth and the devices had more processing power, I'd assume that the home automation related UPnP standards would come into play, but they seem too heavyweight to seriously consider using them over ZigBee.

ZigBee makes use of profiles as far as I can remember, but those as is the ZigBee standard itself is not public. This knowledge itself commes derived from some datasheets and manuals included with a testboard I obtained from Chipcon. I don't believe ZigBee is high bandwith, at least not higher then Bluetooth, also the devices are usually not high processor powered. --Alras 15:33, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
ZigBee devices are supposed to have an application code (can't remember the actual name) which defines a standard. The idea is that Company A can make a ZigBee lamp controller and get application code 1. Company B can then make a ZigBee lamp controller with timer, place it under application code 1, and the devices would work together. Company C then comes along and makes a full suite of wireless home controll products, and all of these applications are made application code 1.
The ideal way this is accomplished is through "binds", where the data on two different devices are linked. Using the lamp example, the on/off data bit of the light switch is bound to the on/off of the lamp. Whenever the switch changes the lamp is automatically informed and changes its status.
ZigBee's goal isn't wireless light switches (thankfully). The ideal application is embedded sensors, especially where low-power is a prime factor of the design, and device networks, where one controller can communicate with many other devices. I'm actually working on a project to integrate zigbee into an embedded sensor network. I'd go into more detail, but the patent work has yet to go through. Let's just say, that it's a small sensor which will collect data in a large area and the many sensors will transmit their data to a reader. Hopefully I'll be able to tell you what it actually is at some point. --Bakkster Man 02:23, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
I believe the ZigBee Alliance (or some member thereof) is intending to create "profiles" to help standardize the control of devices, but I cannot remember off hand where I picked up this rumor. As of yet, I do not know of any standard framework for the application layer that develoeprs might layer upon the ZigBee standard; most researchers are still concerned with the Network, Transport, and Session layers. Kail Ceannai 22:58, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

This may be more appropriate to the introduction section, but one of the reasons our industry is so excited about Zigbee is that it will decrease risk of interference with WLANs in the professional and commercial market. Most of our control equipment operates at 2.4 GHz (802.11g), and moving to a 915MHz platform will allow us to deploy our control equipment much more easily. Sorry if this is self-evident, but I haven't seen any specific mention of it.128.231.88.4 13:06, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Node size

"node size" indicated in kilobytes. This is confusing. An explanation of what is meant by "size" in this context would be helpful.

[edit] UML

Are you guys sure that OpenBee is written in UML? I'm pretty sure the M in UML is modelling. As in it is always pseudocode, never real. -- RevRagnarok 02:10, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

UML is modelling, and then most tools generate code in a standard programming language, although some (experimental ones) can generate machine/object code. They should correctly state that the SW was "designed" in UML, or something more accurate. Bempey 03:24, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

OpenBee is modeling a Zigbee stack in UML from which a tool can generate an implementation. The openbee team is actually using C to test the model on their dev board. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.13.149.29 (talk • contribs)

[edit] Jargon

In, the part of the introduction beginning with "CCM*", it's not clear that the article is talking about encryption, or what all the acronyms mean. -- Beland 06:05, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

The way this article is written makes my eyes glaze over. And I've been an electrical engineer for 25+ years. Buzz, buzz buzz ... —QuicksilverT @ 01:53, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. It has way too much jargon, and the intro needs to be completely rewritten to simplify and break it down for the person who is not in the know. I mean, talking about protocol and standards is all good and fine, but what the heck is the dang product for? What does it do, in terms the layman can understand? --Lendorien 23:28, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] ZigBee node size is small / ZigBee node size is big

The most capable ZigBee node type is said to require only about 10% of the software of a typical Bluetooth or Wireless Internet node, while the simplest nodes are about 2%[citation needed]. However, actual code sizes are much higher, closer to 50% of Bluetooth code size[citation needed]. ZigBee chip vendors have announced 128 kilobyte devices[citation needed].

So which is it? If these sentences don't conflict they can at least be cleaned up; it really does read like too many people edited it.

What does the 10% versus 50% mean, to say nothing of the 2%? Does the node need smaller data structures than Bluetooth, which is the only explanation that occurs to me? Howard C. Berkowitz 13:19, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Harmonization with IETF Work

Is the Zigbee or IEEE work here completely independent of the IETF ZEROCONF and MANET work? Why? Why not? Howard C. Berkowitz 13:19, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Detailed not technical

19-Oct-2007: I have been editing several technical articles (such as "Discrete Fourier transform") to add simplified wording, but this article "ZigBee" is not too technical, just detailed in content. The article doesn't even mention "radio field" (or "digital signal processing"). Actual overly technical articles typically have more than 3 rare terms in a sentence (such as aquifer, aquitard & aquiclude) or contain several mathematical formulas; however, this article doesn't involve any of those technical issues. I have removed tag "{{technical}}" and suggested writing a more detailed analysis as to why the article is troublesome. Please don't tag an article as "technical" just because it contains detailed information. -Wikid77 07:50, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Added section on controversy

Added section on controversy. Requesting review since this is a very sensitive issue. The section absolutely must appear neutral to all. User:Kcrao Allrite82 (talk) 23:02, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] AfD result

The article "Drop-in Networking" has been redirected to this location following an AfD. Editors more conversant in the subject than myself may wish to use content from the history of that article to improve this article if they wish. Orderinchaos 13:21, 15 February 2008 (UTC)