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The ZigBee Member Meeting and Open House road show pulled into Beijing, China on September 10 and I am delighted to report that both activities were a great success.
| ZigBee Alliance | www.zigbee.org | Copyright 2007 |
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ZigBee Today The ZigBee Member Meeting and Open House road show pulled into Beijing, China on September 10 and I am delighted to report that both activities were a great success. The Board of Directors ratified an impressive slate of new features to the ZigBee specification. These updates create two Feature Sets, ZigBee and ZigBee PRO. If you would like to see a description of the ZigBee Feature Set and the ZigBee PRO Feature Set, click here. To have full access to the Feature Sets, you need to be a member of the Alliance as these new features will not be made available to the public until sometime in 2008. You can join the Alliance today by clicking here. ZigBee is now well positioned for a variety of needs, especially in the energy efficiency and management market as well as home and commercial building automation. We expect to see a growing number of products as a result of this update as more manufacturers adopt ZigBee. In fact, our membership today has grown and become largely manufacturer centric, with this group now representing 50% of our membership. Last year, they represented 37% of all members. The Open House was one of our most attended events with more than 550 people and scores of journalists in attendance. Dong Xiaolu, Vice Chief Engineer of the Institute of Communication Standards Research, from the Ministry of Information Industry was our keynote speaker who discussed the importance of ZigBee in China. Attendees learned about ZigBee technology and our successes to date in energy management and efficiency and had a chance to view the more than 50 products on display. We thank Texas Instruments who was our Diamond sponsor for making such a strong contribution to the success of this Open House. Expect to hear more news from the Alliance in the coming months as we shift our focus to completing the various public application profiles that will make ZigBee even more widely used. Best Regards, Bob Heile Chairman, ZigBee Alliance ZigBee Alliance (www.zigbee.org) Wireless Control That Simply Works |
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Member Spotlight Member Spotlight: ZigBee and Develco Enable Energy Management and Efficiency A new world of possibilities in energy efficiency exists today because of wireless communication. Over the years, the number of digital devices in homes and businesses has multiplied. With the increased number of devices came increased awareness that many of these devices, appliances and systems are unable to communicate with one another. Additionally, the rise in the number of electricity dependent devices also creates a steady increase in energy consumption. This global need for more power contrasts sharply with a predicted lack of power plants, leaving many experts calling for greater energy efficiency. Energy efficiency has traditionally taken a back seat to energy production. But implementing efficiency standards is less controversial and less costly than building new transmission, generation or distribution facilities. This worthwhile cause helps residential, commercial and industrial users get a breather on their power bills while utilities are able to avoid huge capital investments and the deferral of maintenance. 1 By developing advanced metering infrastructure products for electric meters, gas meters, water meters and calorimeters for distributed heating, Develco, an independent design house specializing in product engineering, and ZigBee® are ultimately putting more power in customer's hands. Providing a real-time report of current energy consumption allows customers to make informed energy usage decisions. Develco SmartAMM with ZigBee allows customers to review their energy consumption yearly, monthly, daily or even hourly. The Develco ZigBee Solution The Develco SmartAMM with ZigBee solution provides utilities the reality of advanced metering infrastructure. Customers now enjoy the power of control through flexible management of lighting, heating and cooling systems in their home from anywhere. Utilities can automate control of multiple home systems to improve efficiency, convenience and safety. Highly detailed electric and gas utility usage data helps customers make informed energy usage decisions. Convenience is provided through a single remote control that runs multiple home control systems without wires. Providing the ultimate in safety features, ZigBee allows wireless sensor installation and monitoring of a wide variety of conditions with automatic notification to users of unusual events that otherwise might go unnoticed. Develco and ZigBee: Optimizing Energy Usage With Develco SmartAMM, it is now quick and easy to make wireless technology an integral part of existing products with seamless connectivity. Develco, working closely with Denmark's largest utility, DONG Energy (Danish Oil and Natural Gas) has developed energy efficient products and systems. Develco SmartAMM is a system which covers a wide range of products including SmartRead GSM and SmartRead fiber. Both are part of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) designs that utilize ZigBee. Develco SmartAMM provides an open standards-based approach to new energy efficiency programs, from energy monitoring and net metering, to tracking and adjusting energy consumption. Develco uses ZigBee to provide a gateway from the utility company to each house or building. Once installed, these ZigBee-enabled homes and buildings feature remote access to the power sources for air conditioning, heating and security systems. In the home, these ZigBee networks are commonly known as Home Area Networks, or HANs, and refer to all of the ZigBee enabled devices in the home which can communicate to the consumers' utility meter. Customers are able to remotely log onto a web-based system using a computer or a cell phone, read the current energy consumption and determine what needs to be turned on or off and even set a future command. By being able to see their energy consumption, customers are now making smarter energy spending decisions. The Future of the Energy Industry: Informed Energy Efficiency Utilities companies need smart ways to guide their customers to become more efficient. The best way to do this is to keep customers informed of how much energy they use and how much this energy costs when it is delivered instead of six weeks later in the monthly bill. With AMI, delivering and receiving information immediately is now possible. Fundamentally, AMI represents an infrastructure that utilizes smart meters with advanced two-way communications to enable utilities to meet their business needs for meter data collection, empowers all their customers to actively and frequently participate in demand response and energy conservation, while supporting movement toward the Smart Grid of the future. AMI has emerged as one of the key technologies expected by many industry experts to transform the utility market worldwide. Develco supports DONG Energy with one of the largest integrated AMI and Home Area Network in Northern Europe. Their AMI network relies on a ZigBee HAN to communicate with ZigBee enabled devices like appliances, thermostats, water heaters and security systems. "Our SmartAMM helps customers and utilities take better control of energy consumption. And with ZigBee, there is now a wireless standard that connects dramatically different devices", says Poul Eriksen, vice president of sales and technology at Develco. "There is a great opportunity and synergy between ZigBee and Develco."
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ZigBee Newsroom ZigBee unveils comprehensive new features More Interoperable Choices Creates ZigBee Networks with Numerous Strengths San Ramon, Calif. - October 02, 2007 - The ZigBee® Alliance, a global ecosystem of companies creating wireless solutions for use in residential, commercial and industrial applications, today announced it has approved comprehensive new features for the ZigBee specification giving more choices to manufacturers as they design ZigBee products. These new features significantly expand the capabilities of ZigBee, further strengthening its leadership position as the global standard for wirelessly connecting dramatically different devices into a single, easy to install and use network."The market for wireless sensor networking technology is growing significantly, enabled by a number of factors, one of which is the continuing development of standards such as ZigBee," said Sam Lucero, senior analyst with ABI Research. "ZigBee addresses the largest cross-section of WSN market segments, and the new features announced today will further enhance ZigBee's suitability for use in the largest commercial WSN deployments." The ZigBee specification offers all the wide-ranging features released in 2006, and adds new features, giving manufacturers greater flexibility when designing innovative ZigBee products. The original set of features published in 2006 is now known as the ZigBee Feature Set. An expanded set of features known as ZigBee PRO maximizes all the capabilities of ZigBee and facilitates ease-of-use and advanced support for larger networks. These features expand product development options available to manufacturers. The newly released Feature Sets are designed to interoperate with each other, ensuring long-term use and stability. Highlights of the expanded ZigBee PRO Feature Set include:
In addition to its original capabilities, the ZigBee Feature Set also gains optional use of the Frequency Agility and Fragmentation features described above. A full list of capabilities for both Feature Sets along with a side-by-side comparison can be found here. Access to the updated ZigBee specification is available immediately for all members. Free public availability of the new features is scheduled for early 2008. “ZigBee now gives unparalleled choices for companies looking for the right low-power, low-cost wireless networking standard,” said Bob Heile, chairman of the ZigBee Alliance. “These new features make ZigBee stronger and play a key role in expanding ZigBee’s value as a key part of innovative AMI programs for utility companies around the world. No other technology can wirelessly connect an exterior utility meter to an interior home automation network or building control networks as efficiently and effectively as ZigBee.” With the addition of these additional features to the ZigBee specification, the Alliance is shifting its attention to development efforts facilitating the deployment of the technology for energy management and efficiency, specifically in areas like public application profiles for advance metering infrastructure (AMI). Public application profiles enable end-to-end, multi-vendor interoperable solutions in markets such as AMI, home automation, commercial building automation and telecommunications. ZigBee uses self-organizing and self-healing mesh networking to enable robust communications over the globally available 2.4 GHz frequency, with 868/915 MHz technology available in select countries. ZigBee networks offer superb interference immunity and capabilities to host thousands of devices. With ultra low-power requirements, ZigBee devices run on regular batteries for years, eliminating the need for wiring to a power source and offering unparalleled maintenance convenience and installation flexibility. The ZigBee Alliance has multi-market and global appeal along with steadily growing membership. Today, more than 225 companies from 28 countries spanning six continents are Alliance members. ZigBee is a volunteer driven Alliance relying upon the support of its members to develop the standard and public application profiles. Manufacturers now represent 50 percent of the membership, up from 37 percent in 2006. Organizations seeking immediate access to the enhanced ZigBee standard, or assistance with developing products based on ZigBee can join the Alliance by visiting http://www.zigbee.org/en/join/. ZigBee: Wireless Control That Simply Works The ZigBee Alliance is an association of companies working together to enable reliable, cost effective, low-power, wirelessly networked, monitoring and control products based on an open global standard. The ZigBee Alliance membership comprises technology providers and manufacturers worldwide. Membership is open to all. Additional information can be found at www.zigbee.org. http://www.zigbee.org/en/press/index.asp |
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