HOT ON the heels of an Ultra Low Power (ULP) Bluetooth demo from CSR, Digi International has announced two new modules based on rival Zigbee technology.

Zigbee is an 'open' standard for wireless automation based around mesh computing. It is particularly suitable for embedded control of devices in the home such as heating and ventilation; lightning and security.

The low power Xbee ZB and the XBee PRO ZB modules are based upon the latest PRO feature set announced by the Zigbee Alliance. One of the benefits is support for OTA (Over-The-Air) firmware updates.

Digi claims that it should be easy for device manufacturers to swap over to the new Xbee modules since they share a common electrical interface, form factor, and software interface with other XBee platforms, including 802.15.4, ZNet 2.5, and 900 MHz XSC.

The modules are based on the Ember EM 250 chip and feature the latest ZNet stack (3.1).

One of the advantages to these new Xbee modules is that they can plug into gateways which interface with other common networking technologies such as Ethernet and Wi-fi.
Just like Wi-fi and Bluetooth, Zibee operates at 2.4 GHZ.

These modules should become available next month (May) and be priced from $16.80 per thousand.

Whether there's room in the market for yet another wireless network standard like Zigbee remains to be seen. µ