Protocols: What is ZigBee
Posted on October 24, 2017 • 1 min read • 184 words
ZigBee is a wireless protocol, which is used for remote control and reading sensors. ZigBee is an official IEEE standard, namely IEEE 802.15.4. It is intended for short-distance connections.
ZigBee is intended for monitoring and control of networks. It is a machine-to-machine protocol from the ground up. A practical example of this is: monitoring the water level in a large field.
Originally it was designed with the following objectives:
- Low energy consumption
- Low speed
- ‘Ad hoc’ mesh networking
mesh The above image shows a mesh network, where each node can communicate with every other node via multiple paths.
Some examples of ZigBee:
- Security of doors and windows
- Controlling lighting
- Remote control that does not have to be pointed at the device, such as with the Philips Hue lamps
How does it work?
A ZigBee network is called a PAN (Personal Area Network) and consists of 1 coordinator, 1 or more end devices and 1 or more routers.
Support
Zigbee is supported by a large number of (well-known) manufacturers:
- Bosch
- Control4
- LG -Samsung
- Phillips -Osram
- Logitech
Other protocols:
- Z Wave -Insteon -X10 -Thread
