ZigBee protocol stack

[Guest]

Feb. issue of Circuit Cellar has an interesting article on Zigbee. It does a good job of bringing important fact together and is very easy to read.
If you are going to do ZigBee it's worth reading...

[CharlieGill]

Re: I predict Zigbee for $75 (1-25) a module by 2006/7

The Freescale MC13192 is priced at $2.65 @1K and available at Digi-Key for a bit over $4 in hundreds. An additional $4-5 should get you all the discretes needed for a module. I would guess that $20 modules will be available within a few months.

The MC13192 and the Chipcon 2420 are IEEE 802.15.4 "ZigBee ready" radios. As such, they implement the 15.4 MAC only. You have to run a ZigBee protocol stack in your host micro. Freescale and others have announced (and are sampling) full ZigBee radios that include the ZigBee protocol in firmware. At this level, purchasing a radio that included the ZigBee protocol would probably include the ZigBee license fees. If you just buy a 15.4 radio, this would not be true since a 15.4 radio can be used for other protocols than ZigBee.

I've been ready ZigBee articles and talking to reps for a year and the licensing issue is murky at best at this time.

Just as there are now several companies selling "guaranteed compliant" stacks for all the common industrial protocols, certified ZigBee stacks will probably become available in about 6 months. In the meanwhile, free "demonstration quality" stacks like that available from Microchip are a good place to start.

Incidentally, their ZigBee App Note, AN965, is far and away the best app note I have seen on some of the nuts and bolts of ZigBee. Highly recommended!

Charlie

BTW why don't any of these forum boards have a spell checker?

[libor]

[CharlieGill]

Well, I am not a lawyer (thank goodness) but my understandings (from an engineer's viewpoint) are;

The ZigBee spec is copyrighted. That means that you can't copy or distribute (without permission) the actual written spec. Writing code that conforms to the ZigBee spec will not run afoul of copyright law.

However...there may be (and probably are) patents involved with the technology behind 802.15.4 and ZigBee mesh networks. That mean you may run afoul of patent law if you write clean room code that mimicks the fundamentals of ZigBee. Hard to say at this time unless you work for a big company with a big legal department that is talking to the big legal departments in the other big ZigBee companies.

My opinion (hardly well informed) is that ZigBee will shake out like the other (non-Apple) protocols and that us little guys will be able to buy approved ZigBee compliant modules at a reasonable cost.

BTW if there are any of you that are interested in porting the Microchip ZigBee stack to CCS I would be happy to participate. I'm up to my ears in a paying project for the next couple weeks but plan to start playing with ZigBee after that.

Charlie

[Mark]

[CharlieGill]

I didn't know that Chipcon and Figure8 had merged. I assume that means that Chipcon will use the Figure8 stack in their Z products. It will probably be good in the long run. It's usually cheaper to buy an embedded stack (in low to modest volumes) than to seperately license a stack from a seperate company.

I wasn't aware that the MC13192 or CC2420 had any Z derivitives at this time. Both are 802.15.4 radios as far as I know. I have read reviews of the MC13193 ZigBee version but have not seen a data sheets. I've seen pricing for the Freescale parts but not for the Chipcon parts.

What is a CC2420 going for in small quantities?
Where can you buy it?

Charlie

[libor]

Earlier I managed to buy a rail of CC2420 (43pcs) directly from Chipcon. It was thank to that it was accompanied with their Dev.kit, I think (Dev.kit = I bought not the Zigbee one, but the cheaper one)
They sell samples of 5 pcs ICs for $45 on their website. plus shipping

[Guest]

[CharlieGill]

For general ZigBee interest...
DLP Design has just released a "ZigBee ready" module. It has the Freescale MC13192 radio and MC9S08GT60 processor with a trace antenna. You still need a ZigBee stack.

Cost $50 qty 1, available around mid Feb.
About the same as the Microchip RF daughter board I believe.

Charlie

[valemike]

www.zigbee.org

You can now download the spec for free. So whoever wants to port it to CCS, and add on router functionality which Microchip doesn't provide (yet) can do so.

(I tried looking at it, and barely got past the Table of Contents and page 3 and got too sleepy. Only 375 more pages to read!)

[Rocket]

Microchip has a new version of the Zigbee stack. Now we need some1 to get it working in CCS. I would like 2 but know my limitations.
So, here's to the frendly CCS folk who are working on it.

[Bill_Smith]

I just returned from the Microchip 2005 Masters Conference. I participated in the ZIGBEE "Hands-On" training class which gave us a 4 hour crash course on Microchip's implentation of the software stack. Very little information was given on the hardware, which uses the Chipcon chip, and no one from Chipcon was available at the conference, pretty strange I think.

I was also able to purchase a ZIGBEE demo kit which comes with two PIC18F4620 mother boards and two plug-in modules with the Chipcon solution. There is a CD with all the ZIGBEE source code, Microchip Apps notes, and there tutorial. You will need Microchip's C18 C compiler to directly compile the demo source.

You can freely download the Student version of the C18 compiler from their website, and for a limited period, 60 days I think, it is fully functional. You can also go to the ZIGBEE User's website and after registering your name and email address, download the full specification which is a TOME.

The ZIGBEE training class used different hardware, demo boards with more LEDs and pushbuttons, and we were able to create small networks with each other, turn LEDs on and off, etc.. The Microchip ZIGBEE software stack is definitely a work in progress, and my impression is that they are still in a learning phase themselves. You will need about 12K of flash to load up their code.

My understanding of the legal issues is that until you start selling a product with the ZIGBEE certification label attached, you don't need to pay the money to become an adopter. There is a ZIGFEST "Plugfest" to test interoperability with other vendor's devices, and I'm sure that you can get your legal questions anwered there.

ZIGBEE is a pretty cool, low cost, RF comm technology and well worth the time investment to check it out.

I hope this information helps.

Bill

[MikeValencia]

[treitmey]

Mike, Do you have a link to that video. I would love to look at it.

[valemike]