Hearing Fanny say that it is about 10 years from being ready, I think that I will probably steer clear of ZigBee until they have some more time to work out the kinks. Thank you again Fanny and Alex. Another great presentation.
Thank you Fanny and Alex. This session provided much needed basics of zigbee and bluetooth. the discussion on RFID was enough to make some basic design choices.
I'm looking for very low-cost Ethernet (wired or Wi-Fi) to consumer IR -- either SOC or boards - if anyone has a suggestion, please mention here or email me alan at ajw dot com - thanks!
re low power Wi-Fi and interference - yes - this would take care of the interference issues since Wi-fi has collision avoidance mechanism. Though in the 2.4 GHz band, there are a lot of devices that will just transmitt (e.g. analog phones and baby monitors), so you cannot win...
There is serious investment into NFC, but i wonder about alternaive radio technologies and whether something better than 13 MHz will eventually take over. The software stack for NFC will likely be a good investment for the long term.
CONTANINERS: another point of concern is for non-uniform cargo. metal based packages/pallets will compromize the reliability of using radio readers, will it not?
re ZigBee and Bluetooth vs. low power Wi-Fi - there are a few low-power Wi-Fi solutions and they woudl also need to support meshing (802.11s) to be able to replace ZigBee and Bluetooth. In principle, Wi-Fi can achieve the same power consumption as ZigBee or Bluetooth if you slow down the data rate and lower the TX power. It's comparable radio technology.
regarding containers - right - you can't read the tags through steel. You can read pallets and youwould need to open the container and beam readers via opening to target the tags.
Bluetooth 3.0 has the same reach as Wi-Fi when operating on the Wi-Fi radio... less than 200 feet for all practical purposes though marketing people will claim higher distances that may be achievable under special conditions (e.g. open field).
Regarding MIMO and multipath, you can also have multiple streams via line of site with no mulitpath if your antennas are cross polarized (i.e. orthoganal with respect to one another). There are other technues of decorrelating streams, for example Alamouti coding whereby the symbols are time offset.
FANNY: can you please elaborate on a comment you made to Alex of "readind through containers". As far as I know, containers are mostly made of steel, and thus will reflect fast radio waves. Aren't they?
@Fanny: 1. What tools are needed for development of a ZigBee product? 2. How expensive are these development tools? 3. How do ZibBee and Bluetooth compare in comm range?
Fanny, You have made the point several times that multi-path is required for MIMO to work. While I agree that overcoming the problems that multi-path causes is one of the strengths of MIMO, I don't understand multi-path being a requirement. Two transmitters at one place, connected to two separate receivers at another, each pair using a separate multi-path free RF path will provide twice the throughput of one alone. By extension, any symmetrical MIMO (2x2, 3x3, 4x4). For a single receiver receiving packets from two transmitters (non-symmetric MIMO, 3x2, 3x4, etc., and cross channel paths) the packets have to arrive at slightly different times, either caused by different RF path lengths (multi-path) or by delaying one of the transmitters. Perhaps the distinction should be made between multi-path and multiple RF paths.
I could not get the audio to work when using Internet Explorer. When I switched to Google Chrome it worked great. You may want to share that info with others having audio issues.
@krhohio - I understand it's still under design - it's a capacitive-coupled touch smart card tech. Who knows if it will be adopted by some standards committee ??
Android (and iPhone, presumably) called Key Ring - reads store affinity cards (e.g. the bar code tags to attach to key rings) - works mostly; hard to scan sometimes, and the app is much slower than it originally was
@Luizcosta - near field communications is a fallout of Maxwell's equations (near vs. far electromagnetic field). NFC is standard that uses those fields.
Alex, are you sure that is not a barcode on the smartphone? I have seen at Starbucks people who have their Gold Cards on their phones hold it up to the bar code reader that is used to read barcodes on products.
@trottinc: My Chrome Browser was doing the same "buffering" yesterday but it's fine today. Make sure that your IT dept is not blocking "blogtalkradio.com" or "llnwd.net".
@jl @Alex - Almost all of my postings show up fine. The symptom shows only every now and then. I have NO IS server between my workstation and the Internet, so I think the problem may be localized to Alex's end.
With a host of competitive technologies on the market, can you sum up the compelling factors for choosing ZigBee for a short range wireless application rather than some other scheme?
@Alex - I've answered most of your questions, but occasionally my postings don't show up. I wonder if your server is dropping some of the postings? This is not a new problem. I've noticed it during webinars past and have posted the observation previously. This might be why you are not seeing as many responses to your questions as you are expecting.
The notes near the bottom of slide 11 show the calculation of the channel frequency f given the channel number k, confirming the 1 MHz channel spacing.
Controlling a Field device from a central location, Reciently implemented OTA Firware updates via the cloud using a Gateway and Zigbee with a smart phone app.
When the Siemens guys started talking about eliminating a lot of wiring using this technology my electrical contractor said "Let's not get carried away."
have not used it; would be interested in smarthome applications (currently using X-10 in areas; semi-successfully) especially interested in using for home theater controls
If the APs and sensor devices are stationary in a factory, is a centrally arbitrated (scheduled) system more efficient than ad-hoc mesh network overall ?
Okay, this is the first session in weeks that I'm here before it starts. Let's see if I don't have to refresh every five minutes. I love an IT department that knows what it's doing. Now if I can only find one....
@Alexander Wolfe: If I might make a suggestion re "Interruptions": I don't know how you get Fanny's audio stream, but if you both could keep a "private communication channel" open via some IM software like skype, you could "inaudibly" ping the lecturer to stop talking for your comments and questions. Then, ideally, lecturer would pause, you could talk, lecturer would respond and the audience would be amazed by the smooooooth flow.
The streaming audio player will appear on this web page when the show starts at 2pm eastern today. Note however that some companies block live audio streams. If when the show starts you don't hear any audio, try refreshing your browser.
We looked at a number of sources to determine this year's greenest cars, from KBB to automotive trade magazines to environmental organizations. These 14 cars emerged as being great at either stretching fuel or reducing carbon footprint.
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Healthcare might seem to be an unlikely target application for the Internet of Things technology, but recent developments show small ways that big-data is going to make an impact on patient care moving into the future.
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A quick look into the merger of two powerhouse 3D printing OEMs and the new leader in rapid prototyping solutions, Stratasys. The industrial revolution is now led by 3D printing and engineers are given the opportunity to fully maximize their design capabilities, reduce their time-to-market and functionally test prototypes cheaper, faster and easier. Bruce Bradshaw, Director of Marketing in North America, will explore the large product offering and variety of materials that will help CAD designers articulate their product design with actual, physical prototypes. This broadcast will dive deep into technical information including application specific stories from real world customers and their experiences with 3D printing. 3D Printing is
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