ZigBee adding IP capabilities to its wireless devices, Texas Instruments likey

We've seen ZigBee wireless functionality showing up in everything from remote controls to robots, but apparently that was all just the beginning. The Alliance has announced plans to expand its low-power standards to support Internet Protocol, a move that member-company Texas Instruments is apparently quite pleased about -- perhaps seeing an opportunity to make up some of those declining sales in the mobile phone area. IP connectivity in all sorts of random devices should open the door for plenty of exciting and new-fangled connectivity options, all of which can only mean one thing: dung beetle MMO.

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 27th 2009 9:47AM]

Crazy question.. im just shooting it out there...

Suppose I were to procure a bunch of Robots and arm them with explosives and what not.. Then I use said robots via remote control from the comfort of my won home to Rob a Bank or similar institution...

It that wrong?

I mean I never went into the joint and held them up so... can I keep the monies and let the robots do the nickel?
I mean with all these flying drones I am sure it has crossed a few minds!

Ahh I want to be the first super villain!

AHAHAH!!!

Where is Badman to stop me!

I'm Badmaaaaaaaaaaan!!

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 27th 2009 10:03AM]

Reprogramming robots for bank theft is wrong and you'll eventually meet your end. This documentary should explain more:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096101/

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 27th 2009 10:12AM]

Is this 6lopan or something else?

(see also http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/6lowpan-charter.html)

[nrp Posted Apr 27th 2009 10:24AM]

Sounds like Zigbee is trying to halt the imminent threat of the open spec, largely open source 6lowpan before it gets more vendor support.

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 27th 2009 11:08AM]

That is a possible scenario, although I would hope that they leverage the good work of 6lopan and do what ZigBee does best, specify and standardize low power mesh wireless application profiles.

It was my understanding that 6lopan was IPv6 over 802.15.4, and that ZigBee is ZigBee over 802.15.4.

From the original post it is hard to tell what they are suggesting.

I suppose the ZigBee group may be adding IP based application profiles to the ZigBee specifications. They may be implementing an alternative to 6lopan (maybe IPv4 or an alternative IPv6 implementation...). Or something else.

I did not see anything on either of their websites that relates to the original post.

[(Unverified) Posted Apr 28th 2009 9:03AM]

Finally press releases were posted:

http://www.zigbee.org/imwp/idms/popups/pop_download.asp?ContentID=15754

http://focus.ti.com/pr/docs/preldetail.tsp?sectionId=594&prelId=sc09054


Says working with IETF standards but does not mention any specifically. An obvious possible starting point is 6lowpan.

[(Unverified) Posted May 7th 2009 3:35PM]

The only possible solution for integrating native IP into the ZigBee stack would be the 6LoWPAN standards, as it allows IPv6 to be used in very small frame sizes such as the < 100 bytes left over after IEEE 802.15.4. By using 6LoWPAN it is quite easy for ZigBee to add this to their specifications - in practice all that is needed is to replace the ZigBee networking layer with 6LoWPAN and UDP. Already there has been a proposal to the IETF for how to use the ZigBee Application Layer and Profiles over UDP/IP.

I just made a post about the ZigBee IP transition that might give some insight to how I think it will happen (http://zachshelby.org).