Coming Soon: Zigbee Home Automation Products

PC World got a briefing on Zigbee home automation technology two or three years ago, and it sounded very promising. But then it fell off the face of the earth--we've never seen any Zigbee products. That's about to change; the organization behind the technology says we'll see "tens" of Zigbee-certified consumer products by the end of the year.

I spoke to Brent Hodges, vice president of marketing and business development for the non-profit Zigbee Alliance, which promotes Zigbee home automation platform and runs a certification program for the products.

Hodges says that the Zigbee specification was ratified in 2004; the reason it has taken so long is that Zigbee is an open standard, whereas Insteon is a closed standard with all products made and sold by one vendor: SmartHome. Z-Wave, another home automation standard, was developed by Zensys; that company sells Z-Wave chipsets to vendors, who incorporate them into their products. Both of those approaches gave the respective companies a speed-to-market advantage.

Some "Designed for Zigbee" products are already available; they haven't finished the certification process, but they should work with other Zigbee products, and they may be certified later. They include a couple of AMX remote controls, both of which were introduced at CEDIA; the Mio Modero R-3 costs--yow--$1200, or $1400 with a charging cradle, and the Mio Modero R-4 (on the left there) costs $1800, or $2000 with the cradle. These remotes aren't just for controlling Zigbee modules, though; they control all manner of home theater products, and they have nice LCD screens that are capable of showing video.

But I found another Zigbee application to be far more interesting: Several energy utilities are installing Automated Meter Reading (AMR) equipment outside thousands of homes; sites include Austin, Texas, Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. In addition to putting meter readers out of work, these meters can allow a utility to offer flexible rate plans--for example, higher rates for during the heat of the day and lower rates at night. But they're also "Designed for Zigbee," so they can give consumers in-home energy-use displays. Hodges says these meters can help utilities manage peak energy usage, thereby saving the utilities--and hopefully, consumers--billions of dollars.

Another "Designed for Zigbee" product shown at CEDIA, Eaton's Home HeartBeat is a wireless "home awareness" system that allows you to monitor a few important things around the house. (It was previewed at CES in January, but won't ship until October). An appliance module monitors the voltage going to whatever's attached to it, so if you're one of those people who worries about leaving the clothes iron left on when you leave the house, this device will send you an alert, either on a small fob or your cell phone. Another module monitors water in sinks; it can alert you to water leaks, or it can tell an automatic shutoff valve to engage.

A startup kit will cost $170; it will include a base station, a home key (the fob), and an open-closed sensor (to monitor a door--for example, the garage door). The system does seem to play off of people's paranoias, but they're pretty common paranoias, and I can see it providing some peace of mind to lots of people--including my sister (she's always going back in the house to check on the iron).

I have to add, as a consumer, the home automation vendors are really driving me nuts, because they still use at least five different, and incompatible, technologies, and probably many more--sometimes, they don't come out say whether they're Zigbee, or Z-Wave, or Insteon; the commercial packages are even more difficult to keep straight, because I can't really try them out without ripping up walls. But until Microsoft gets interested in home automation and, ah, sorts out the market, it's only going to get worse, because home automation is a hot topic.