Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance today announced a new working group that plans to develop and promote the adoption of a new, royalty-free connectivity standard to increase compatibility among smart home products, with security as a fundamental design tenet. Zigbee Alliance board member companies such as IKEA, Legrand, NXP Semiconductors, Resideo, Samsung SmartThings, Schneider Electric, Signify (formerly Philips Lighting), Silicon Labs, Somfy, and Wulian are also onboard to join the working group and contribute to the project.
This really was about damn time. I’d love to add more smart devices to our home, but the varying standards and questionable security has always made me think twice. A royalty-free, secure, and interoperable standard that everyone can use and adhere to sounds like music to my ears.
Will this eventuate in a closing off of the standards, ultra-big business muscling it’s way into the next big thing, another light-bulb conspiracy?
Open standards, but only if you are a member. Sorry for the cynicism but this list reads like an oil cartel!
Check out the full list of members here:
https://zigbeealliance.org/members/
There are many more than just the big tech companies, quite a few small players and startups. Also, “royalty free” means anyone can implement the standard, you know, without paying royalties. Unlike ZWave, for instance.
nichoslasj,
We need to be clear about what “no royalties” means: there are no per-unit royalties to other members, but to be clear they do charge fees.
Membership fees = $7k – $75k / year
Certification fees = $1k per product, $500 for derivative products, $500 for transfer program
In the terms agreement you agree the fees even if they change in the future (no grandfather clause).
Obviously for a large company, these prices are nothing, for a small company with one or two employees, it’s a bit steep IMHO.
From what I read, zigbee does not require its members open their patents to non members, so on that basis, they are allowed to charge royalties to non members.
https://zigbeealliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Zigbee-Alliance-IPR-Policy-6.0-Final.pdf
So it’s not clear to me how tolerant the zigbee alliance is of non-members using zigbee technology. They do make clear that they don’t want anyone to say “zigbee compatible” and “works with zigbee”.
https://zigbeealliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Zigbee-Alliance-Trademark-and-Logo-Policy.pdf
cpcf makes a good point in saying it’s an open standard, but only if you are a member and only higher tiers have voting rights to shape zigbee. In fairness, it may all be well intentioned, but not everyone can afford those sort of fees to participate in this “open” process.
“questionable security has always made me think twice.”
As it should.
Other than turning on the heating when I’m coming back from vacations in winter, which is sadly an uncommon situation, I don’t find the need for much more home automation. Is there a way I can automatically roll down the south-facing blinds from noon to four in winter so that the sun does not eat up the carpets?
I guess each person finds his own need… Still, I don’t really see the point.
Yes, Motorized blinds are not completely unaffordable these days, and relatively easy to automate.
“Yes, Motorized blinds are not completely unaffordable these days, and relatively easy to automate.”
And they don’t work all that well either. Public Library has these installed by picture windows and half the time they don’t respond to sunlight streaming through the windows, either the sensors got coated with dust or the intensity of the light wasn’t enough to trigger the blinds.
yoko-t,
How do you know they’re set to automatic? Also, in public areas they may be subject to more abuses than normal. We need a bigger sample size! 🙂
On a more serious note, I find some automation useful. Perhaps it’s niche, but I find it extremely useful to be able to control outlets remotely for my servers. Controlling lights can be useful too (like christmas tree & outdoor christmas lights, etc). Internet connected smoke alarms can be more useful than local-only versions. My main gripe with most of these technologies is when they’re engineered to be reliant on 3rd party servers (like the google nest thermostats). It’s bad engineering when hardware in designed to take control away from owners and make us more dependent on centralized services than can and do fail.
Products for “home automation” have been around 25+ years (e.g. Schneider Electric’s “C-bus” system – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipsal_C-Bus ). “Internet of things” (as academic theory) is even older ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_things#History ).
The fact is that for most people it’s a gimmicky “solution looking for a problem”, where the potential benefits (e.g. not needing to adjust blinds manually) don’t justify the increased complexity, cost, maintenance, or fragility (from both hardware failures and things like loss of functionality during power failures, etc); so even though this kind of thing has been possible for several decades there’s still very few people that actually want it (and possibly even more people that explicit do not want it – e.g. where installing all the stupid crap reduces the market value of your house).
Yea, nothing new. Seems like just a waste of resources all around to me, but I hate “features” and “bells and whistles”. Does it do the job it was made to do as expected while needing the least maintenance possible? Great use that till something better. New materials/tech can make things ACTUALLY better, but gimmicks/features/add-ons not so much.
Can you people say *SUCKER BAIT* ?!?
Sure you can……..
Within a year, this is going to vanish along with your money so fast you’ld think Taz got a hold of it…
The inventors of Venetian and vertical blinds are rolling over in their grave!
My goodness, do you have to go outside to learn about altitude and azimuth?
“How do you know they’re set to automatic? Also, in public areas they may be subject to more abuses than normal. We need a bigger sample size! ”
Because I’m friends with the library directory and staff of the library, I’ve known them for years.
I’d be happy if they at least got to a point that API proxies were a thing for vendors. Smartthings lets you partially connect a lot of products at the loss of many features. I’ve got 3 zigbee networks running because of this and it is causing all sorts of weird problems.
Smartthings devices + hue bridge & bulbs + keen home vents. I initially had the vents on the samsung device but had a lot of problems managing the vents automation rules. Device compatibility is a problem, but the lack of “smart” in the hubs is the real problem. IFTTT does not solve the problem either because it’s too simplistic and doesn’t really have intelligence built in either.