With all these Zigbee-ready transceivers popping up as demo boards offered by our traditional microcontroller companies, it looks nice that a designer wouldn't have to spend more than $10-$15 for the zigbee-specific electronics and microcontroller embedded with zigbee.
However, is there an extra cost? Do I just solder in the ICs that the Zigbee alliance has blessed, and can now declare my product as "Zigbee-ready"?
Or do I need to pay thousands to be a Zigbee member, and thousands more to get a UL-like Zigbee approval by some 802.x.x agency?
Ideally, I would just like to buy the microcontroller with zigbee embedded in it, and do my thing. And hopefully, by the time i'm done with my application specific firmware/software, then the $5 micros and transceivers are ready sometime next quarter or early next year.
(Distributors have come in to my place in recent months to push 900 MHz products that work in the unlicensed band. They say that if I want basic functionality, just go with their 900 MHz products because I cannot just sell a Zigbee-based product without spending thousands for so-called certification).