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".
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
