ZigBee: household networking alternative to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

You probably have a mobile phone with a Bluetooth radio in it and you may have a Wi-Fi network as well. Soon, you could be using a third wireless networking technology in your house.

It’s called ZigBee http://www.zigbee.org/ and it eventually might find its way into more devices than Wi-Fi and Bluetooth combined.

In the near term, you’re likely to see it show up in the SmartMeters that PG&E is starting to install and in the remote controls of high-end televisions. In the not-too-distant future, you could be using ZigBee networking to control the lights in your home, monitor your elderly parent’s health or turn off your air conditioner during periods of peak energy use when no one’s home.

"ZigBee is regarded as a fairly robust, good technology for many applications," said Sam Lucero, an industry analyst at ABI Research, a technology research firm.

By Troy Wolverton

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