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“Interoperability made simple” – welcome ZigBee 3.0

November 20, 2014 | By Anthony Capkun



November 20, 2014 – The ZigBee Alliance—an association of organizations creating open standards for device monitoring and control—says it has unified its wireless standards to a single one: ZigBee 3.0.

“Consumers expect their smart devices to just work and be simple, and we continue to deliver new and rich lighting-centric experiences that are easy to control and create,” said Filip Jan Depauw, head of marketing & partnerships at Philips Connected Lighting. “The ZigBee protocols are a key enabler to achieve this […] Interoperability made simple empowers new use cases and happy consumers.”

ZigBee 3.0 enables communication and interoperability among devices for home automation, connected lighting, energy efficiency and other markets, explains the alliance, so that additional “diverse, fully interoperable solutions can be delivered by product developers and service providers”. All device types, commands and functionality defined in current ZigBee PRO-based standards are available to developers in the new one.

SIGN UP for a FREE ZigBee webinar: ZigBee 3.0: The Open, Global Standard for the Internet of Things to learn more about the standard. The webinar is being conducted December 2, 2014, 8-9 am (PST), and will feature member experts. Space is limited.

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Based on IEEE 802.15.4 (which operates at 2.4 GHz) ZigBee 3.0 uses ZigBee PRO networking, which promises to enable communication in the smallest, lowest-power devices. Current ZigBee-Certified products based on ZigBee Home Automation and ZigBee Light Link are interoperable with ZigBee 3.0. A complete list of standards that have been merged to create ZigBee 3.0 can be seen at www.ZigBee.org.

“The ZigBee Alliance is addressing the critical need for application-level standardization,” said Mareca Hatler, director of research with ON World.

ZigBee 3.0 is currently undergoing testing, with alliance members such as Philips and Schneider Electric actively involved in the development and testing process. The draft standard is available to members of the ZigBee Alliance today, and is expected to be ratified in Q4 2015.


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