Zigbee technology

[Ste]

Does anyone know about the above and are there any business opportunities?

[ducasi]

Is that the thing that's going to be the next big wireless thing? I figure it'll either be really big in a few years' time, or just another wireless protocol.

It clearly has a role in industrial settings, and likely in (commercial) building control. But it's in our homes where it could make it big.

Zigbee has the potential to change the way we interact with our homes and our household appliances, but like (for example) the existing intelligent lighting, heating, and security systems we don't all have in our houses, there are two main obstacles...

1. What we currently have is good enough.
2. The better way is too expensive due to the lack of a market.

Now if the likes of mobile-phone or car makers (we tend to change cars and phones more often than most other suitable electronic products) were to start putting Zigbee technology into their products, that would help to counter the second problem, and the first problem can then be solved with a little clever marketing...

Time to talk to the VC's...

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by ducasi

{ snip Zigbee stuff }

Isn't all that exactly what they said about Bluetooth a few years ago?

Fair enough, it's taken off, but much more slowly than predicted - I was surprised that a PC I bought only 18 months ago didn't have a Bluetooth dongle, for example.

[ducasi]

Originally Posted by DavidJames

Isn't all that exactly what they said about Bluetooth a few years ago?

Bluetooth was hyped beyond all reasonable expectations. It still has a long way to go though – there's lots of clever things you can use it for that haven't yet fully been exploited.

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by ducasi

Bluetooth was hyped beyond all reasonable expectations. It still has a long way to go though – there's lots of clever things you can use it for that haven't yet fully been exploited.

Hah, I'm trying to think of a recent new technology that hasn't been hyped beyond all reasonable expectation - WAP comes to mind ("silent 'C'" )...

[Clive Long]

Originally Posted by DavidJames

Hah, I'm trying to think of a recent new technology that hasn't been hyped beyond all reasonable expectation - WAP comes to mind ("silent 'C'" )...

iMode.

Know nothing about it except a friend at O2 mutters it is what GPRS should have been and the logo is on all the phones over in Japan.

Shame that O2 has been swallowed and my contacts there will be dispersed :-(

Clive

[ducasi]

Originally Posted by Clive Long

iMode

I've never quite figured out what iMode is... To me it looks like a browser-type thing with lots of cool applications available to it.

But that doesn't gel with the other things I hear like "what GPRS should have been". But isn't that like saying that (e.g.) Flash is what Gigabit Ethernet should have been?

One is very much at the application level of the OSI model, while the other one is way down at the transport level...

Can someone enlighten me?