SAN RAMON, California, January 30 /PRNewswire/ --
- Public Availability of ZigBee Technology Foreshadows New Products Available From ZigBee Members This Year
The ZigBee Alliance, a global ecosystem of companies creating wireless solutions for use in energy management, commercial and consumer applications, today announced the public availability of the latest version of the ZigBee Specification and the certification of the newest ZigBee Golden Unit platforms which implement the ZigBee PRO Feature Set.
The newest Golden Units are available from Ember, Texas Instruments and Airbee Wireless. These member companies successfully implemented the new ZigBee PRO Feature Set and passed independent testing conducted by NTS Corp. and TUV Rheinland. With the completion of the three Golden Unit platforms supporting the latest ZigBee Specification, other platform suppliers may now gain ZigBee Pro Feature Set certification. One of ZigBee's key strengths is offering the market multiple interoperable platforms. This provides product manufacturers with a solid supply chain and the greatest choice in technology needed to deliver a wide range of energy efficiency, home and commercial building automation and industrial products.
The latest ZigBee Specification includes the ZigBee Feature Set and the new ZigBee PRO Feature Set, offering product companies greater flexibility in using ZigBee. It was released exclusively to Alliance members last October. Capabilities for both Feature Sets and a side-by-side comparison are available at http://zigbee.org/imwp/download.asp?ContentID=11900 and the specification download can be found at http://zigbee.org/en/spec_download/zigbee_downloads.asp.
"Schneider Electric and its subsidiaries are embracing ZigBee, including the newest features such as the ZigBee PRO Feature Set, and view them as key to the wide-spread adoption and implementation of ZigBee," said Jean-Pierre Desbenoit, electronic and software research director at Schneider Electric. "With this move, the ZigBee Alliance is continuing to deliver the key technology and tools the market needs to develop and deploy products for a wide variety of products and services."
To ensure quality, the Alliance requires Golden Units. They are multiple independent implementations proving a Specification revision and demonstrating interoperability for future ZigBee products.
"With certification of these new ZigBee Compliant Platforms and the public availability of the latest ZigBee Specification, we continue to see a significant increase in developers who are using ZigBee in their product development efforts," said Bob Heile, chairman of the ZigBee Alliance. "The ZigBee Alliance congratulates the three Golden Unit companies on delivering the latest building block the market requested."
The Alliance is making strong progress in its deployment of interoperable ZigBee product solutions via ZigBee Public Application Profiles that enable end-to-end, multi-vendor interoperability. In January, the Alliance announced the completion of the ZigBee Smart Energy profile. In November 2007, it made the ZigBee Home Automation profile and ZigBee Cluster Library available for public download at http://zigbee.org/en/spec_download/zigbee_downloads.asp. Future public application profiles in development include commercial building automation and telecommunications.
The Alliance is more than 250 members strong, boasting a presence in 28 countries spanning six continents. Product manufacturers represent 50 percent of the Alliance's global membership. ZigBee is the only standards-based technology designed to address the unique needs of low-cost, low-power, wireless sensor networks for energy management and efficiency, home and commercial building automation, plus embedded network applications in the commercial, industrial and consumer markets. Companies wanting to participate in developing the ZigBee marketplace may 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 http://www.zigbee.org.
Web site: http://zigbee.org/imwp/download.asp?ContentID=11900 http://www.zigbee.org
Kevin Schader of ZigBee Alliance, +1-925-275-6672, kschader@inventures.com; or Whitney Liem of GolinHarris, +1-714-662-5111, whitney.liem@golinharris.com, for ZigBee Alliance
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