Smart homes that monitor elderly residents' every move, networked sprinkler systems that run for seven years on a single battery, radio-equipped windows that call you up if they break -- according to boosters of an emerging low-power wireless technology, such applications are about to come to your local home-supply megastore.
Developers of ZigBee, a specification for building large networks of low-power radio transmitters, expect the first set of consumer products incorporating the technology to hit the market as early as the fourth quarter of this year.
"The great thing with this technology is it's slowly going to surround you -- whether you know it or not," said Bob Heile, chairman of the ZigBee Alliance, which includes more than 175 members, including large multinationals like Motorola, Philips and Samsung.
Upcoming products, including several slated to be unveiled at the alliance's upcoming conference in Chicago this month, are mostly tailored to home security. But backers of the technology expect it will eventually be deployed much more broadly, for uses like landscaping, automated meter reading and home lighting systems.
Among the first ZigBee products lined up for commercial launch is Home Heartbeat from Eaton Electrical. The system, which includes a base station, removable display device and wireless sensors, is supposed to monitor parts of a home and alert its owners or take action when problems are detected.
To use Home Heartbeat, homeowners stick sensors throughout their house to keep watch on things like water pipes, garage doors and electrical devices. When a sensor detects flooding, for example, the system can respond by interrupting the main water supply line. It can also alert homeowners if a device is inadvertently left on. Thanks to ZigBee's low power requirements, the sensors have a battery life of three to five years.
It's unclear when Home Heartbeat will be available on store shelves, however. Eaton said in August that it has postponed its original planned launch date and "is currently working to resolve a few issues with the system in an expedient manner."
Lusora, a San Francisco startup, is developing a similar system designed for keeping an eye on elderly people living alone. Its system consists of ZigBee sensors mounted on places like refrigerator doors, windows and medicine cabinets, and it can send alerts to family members if it detects a problem or if daily routines aren't being followed.
"So if your mom didn't open the fridge before 10 a.m., you could get a text message," said Dan Bauer, Lusora's founder and chief operating officer.
ZigBee, which operates over unlicensed public airwaves, is far from the only wireless specification vying for consumers' attention: Wi-Fi, RFID and Bluetooth also transmit data over short distances in unlicensed spectrum.
Backers of ZigBee, however, say the technology is superior for certain uses, such as in large networks of sensors, because it consumes much less power. Heile estimates that a single radio node on a golf course irrigation system equipped with ZigBee could operate for seven years on the power equivalent of a single standard battery.
One reason ZigBee doesn't require much juice is that it transmits only a small trickle of data. That factor, Heile admits, made the wireless spec a tough sell to industry in early stages of development.
"Nobody was focused on a 250-Kbps standard," he said. "Everybody laughed at us.... Why would you want to do that?"
But these days low power is a stronger selling point, as gadget makers grapple with ways to reduce battery consumption on the ever-expanding array of devices in our daily lives.
The other feature that Heile likes to talk up is the ease with which radios in a ZigBee network can be connected. "We have something that can scale very nicely from a few radios to a thousand," he said, a capability referred to in the wireless industry as mesh networking.
Industry analysts are cautiously optimistic about ZigBee's potential to catch on in consumer products.
Joyce Putscher, principal analyst for In-Stat covering residential connectivity, said ZigBee networks have the advantage of being easier to build and expand than wired equivalents. She sees particularly strong potential for certain applications, such as networks that tie together smoke alarms in multiple rooms, letting homeowners pinpoint where a fire may have started.
But, like most emerging technologies, ZigBee will take time to catch on. Putcher predicts that under an optimistic scenario, shipments of ZigBee products will top 150 million units in 2008 (one unit is equivalent to a single sensor).
Erik Michielsen, director of RFID and ubiquitous networks for ABI Research, said he expects to see a big upswing in ZigBee product announcements later this year, and lots of ZigBee products on store shelves in 2006.
Whether the technology catches on, he said, will depend almost entirely on how it's packaged. Only if people find ZigBee products to be reasonably priced and easy to install will they buy them.
"It's not about the technology, it's about the applications," he said. "People are looking to solve problems at home. They're not looking to show off a new network to friends."
