ZigBee real using

Hello dear ALL,

Is there any people that uses ZigBee products in big projects or all worldwide Zigbee-related design are just small start-ups?

Regards.

Reply to
vazic.spb
Loading thread data ...

Most companies that make big projects have a great deal of interest in ensuring their communications protocols are closed, so they can restrict end-users to buying all components from a single source.

Reply to
larwe

But I think big companies can benefit from mesh networking because they can leverage products made by other companies to extend the range of their own products. If you believe the marketing hype, the average household will have many ZigBee devices someday so the range should pretty much cover the entire house.

The high cost has been a hinderance to its adoption. And the RF certification issues make it hard to incorporate into your design. The RF antenna and board layout are also difficult for many logic-oriented desigers to work with. A lot of companies are deploying products that use certified daughter-boards or modules made by third parties to avoid these issues. But they are a lot more expensive that way.

Eric

Reply to
Eric

I don't think, that big OEMs can have a problem in finding good RF engineer for HW design. At my point of view - before ZigBee2006 it wasn't possible to create product for Home Automation that should work with products from other vendors. But Z2006 changed that thing so we could expect huge growth of this market...

Reply to
vazic.spb

and whilst some have found this a successful business model, others have found it a way for your (potential) customers not to buy your product at all.

tim

Reply to
tim.....

It is successful for the big market players, who sell a complete set of everything - and I understood that was the thrust of the OP's question. ZigBee is kinda like X11 - everyone understands it, but only small niche players actually care about it.

That's a fundamental problem with home automation products (and related features like HVAC, security, fire safety, etc): supporting an open comms standard can grow market share if you're currently a tiny player, but if you're currently a dominant player, it only opens up your markets to excessive competition.

A stated goal of most large companies is to raise barriers to entry in their active markets. Developing and popularizing closed communications protocols (and patenting aspects of those protocols in order to make reverse-engineered products illegal) is one tool to achieve this.

Reply to
larwe

I agree with you if you are the first to market the closed system. But if there is already an 'expected' protocol in place and some companies are working to that standard, going to market with a proprietary system would seem to be the way not to win many customers.

tim

Reply to
tim.....

I've got one word for you: Microsoft.

Suppose there is an existing market for widgets. Some flavors of widget are expensive and unprofitable (very difficult to design), and people usually only buy one. Some flavors of widget are cheap to make, little effort to design, and profitable, and most people buy several.

Suppose you are one of the three major world suppliers of widgets with a leading market share in the markets that matter.

Suppose a small company develops a method of networking widgets and consumers love the idea.

Your three options are:

  1. Ignore the idea of networking widgets and lose market share.

  1. Make your widgets compatible with the small company's protocol. A small number of early adopter consumers are made very happy. A large number of competitors erode your market share for cheap widgets. They can't compete with you on expensive widgets because there's too much engineering in them - but they drive down the price of cheap widgets and start people buying heterogeneous systems which hurt your profitability.

  2. Make a completely incompatible system that fulfils the same customer need. A few early adopters of the small company's system are inconvenienced. However your competition is locked out of your existing markets, and you gain market share because you now have a new feature.

This exact scenario plays out every day.

Reply to
larwe

and what already agreed standard did MS ignore?

4) there are lots of small companies all making equipment that talks to each other.

ISTM that the OP suggested that Zigbee was in this category. Therefore it makes no sense for the bigger players not to join in.

This is not the same as saying that the bigger companies cannot make their own alternativce products.

tim

Reply to
tim.....

No, it still makes sense for bigger players to use their own protocol because they have a large incumbent customer base who will adopt those protocols automatically by default. If you believe otherwise, you don't understand the commercial reality of the situation.

Again, think Microsoft. MP3 was an open standard. They developed WMA. MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 were open standards. Microsoft developed WMV. Etc, etc, etc. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't.

Reply to
larwe

Correct in principle, but you're wrong on details - MP3 is not an open standard, nor are MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. Anything which requires royalties and licenses cannot be an "open standard". So MP3 is a standard (I can get all the information I need to create or read MP3 files) but not an open standard (I cannot freely write code implementing the standard and use it as I want). Compare with ogg vorbis, which is an open standard, and WMA/WMV which is not a standard at all.

Reply to
David Brown

I'd say their non standard version of Kerberos was a pretty big one.

The Samba crowd are having (or have) to reverse engineer the incompatibilities MS have produced.

Glyn

Reply to
Glyn Davies

I haven't the faintest idea what these things are (and therefore would suggest that they are not a consideration in people's buying decisions)

tim

Reply to
tim.....

It was an example of the business practice - one that as larwe stated Microsoft is rather good at.

Glyn

Reply to
Glyn Davies

If you're arguing about semantics they you've got your semantics wrong. Larwe is correct in both principle and detail. A standard doesn't have to be royalty free to be called an "open standard". An open standard is just a standard where it is possible to get documents describing it - even if you have to pay money for it. PCI, USB, mp3, MPEG, DNP3 are all open standards but all require that you pay money either for the documentation (PCI, DNP3) or for the implementation (USB, mp3).

Now, there is such a thing as a closed standard like Microsoft Word

6.0 document format and Adobe Photoshop files. Typically these are standards only because they are de-facto, not because their specs are published (otherwise they'd be open standards).

There are also such things as free open standards like HTML and PNG.

In the world of standards, do not confuse "open" with "free".

Reply to
slebetman

With a little more research (which I should probably have done before posting :-), there appear to be several "definitions" of the term "open standard" (see

formatting link
for a summary of some of these). The definition you were using is more like that of the ITU-T, where you may need to pay royalties for patents as long as they are "reasonable and non-discriminatory"). The definition I use is more like that of the EU and open source advocates, which exclude any concept of software patents and require any "IP" in an open standard to provide irrevocable royalty-free usage. Which definition is "right" is, of course, a matter of opinion.

Charging money for the standards documents is not an issue for whether it is an "open" standard or not, as long as the fees are reasonable and the documents are available to anyone. Many standards organisations also charge for certifications or logos (USB is an example - the standard itself is free to implement, but you can't use a USB logo without some sort of royalty).

What you are referring to, where all the documentation is available (with or without a cost) but where licenses or royalties may be needed for the implementation, is merely a "standard", not an "open standard". The term "de-facto standard" is an oxymoron - things like the MS Word format are not documented or specified, and therefore cannot be a standard despite their common use.

Reply to
David Brown

In this NG, and indeed most technical NGs, "open" is defined as "documentation is readily available". This sometimes means "available for free" but in many cases also means "available at a fee". The key points are:

  1. No NDA required to acquire spec.
  2. No special qualifications required to acquire spec; i.e. any Joe can request a copy, though it might cost money.

The issue of whether a specification is encumbered by patents is a business phantom, it doesn't directly affect the engineering.

Reply to
larwe

On Aug 3, 11:20 am, David Brown

No, you're missing the semantic point that a "standard" need not be "publicly available", and "public" ~= "open".

Not directly, as I stated. Sure, I do a block diagram of a proposed widget, I give it to the IP attorneys, they say certain blocks should be redesigned, or certain uses of the product should be disallowed in the documenation, or they say "we just bought a patent from company XYZ". It's a cost issue, not an actual engineering issue. This is what I meant by not direct. As an engineer building a widget, I could care less about the IP. As an engineer preparing a widget for commercial distribution, yes the IP becomes important.

Not a widely used sense of the phrase at all. Open means I can get the data. It doesn't mean I can commercialize my knowledge without paying someone else for the privilege.

In exactly the same way, not all open-source software is free (in either sense of the word).

Reply to
larwe

I'd say that 1 and 2 above are what are required to be a "standard" at all.

Patents, licenses, royalties, or other fees or restrictions that apply to products or software are very much an engineering issue. If I design a product whose software requires a license fee, then that license fee is as much a part of the cost and the production of the product as any other component.

If I write software based on a standard that requires a patent license fee (for those countries which have such things), I am greatly restricted in how I can distribute or license my software. That is why such standards are not "open".

Reply to
David Brown

I see what you mean - and agree that standards are not necessarily public. But I would still say that being publicly available means just that - it's a publicly available standard, and not necessarily "open". I know there are many who agree with me on that, and also many who see "open standards" more broadly as you do (see google or wikipedia) - I'm not sure there is any clear definition.

Ok, I see your distinction now.

I'm not sure I agree with you here (either in your definition of "open standards", or that my definition is not widely used). But I'm not really in a position to argue - it's not a topic that I've thought much about or had to worry about, so all I can do is point to the same web sites you'd find in a quick search. Since I know *you* have thought more about the issue and won't have formed your opinion lightly, I can see it's not nearly as clear as I first assumed.

That's certainly true - I have a better understanding of software licensing issues than standards licensing.

mvh.,

David

Reply to
David Brown

ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.