Zigbee Direct brings control with Bluetooth devices

Zigbee Direct is a new extension offering onboarding of new Zigbee devices using Bluetooth low energy devices.

Smartphones, tablets and other devices such as smart speakers are finding their way into homes and businesses in ever-increasing numbers, which is behind the Connectivity Standards Alliance’s latest update to Zigbee, Zigbee Direct.

Zigbee Direct, an addition to a growing number of such solutions, is designed to enable these devices to control existing Zigbee devices and onboard new ones.

Thus for consumers who often use Bluetooth low energy devices, Zigbee Direct provides a new avenue, without the use of the cloud or a hub, for these devices to communicate directly with the large ecosystem of Zigbee devices.

Have you read?
Matter smart home IoT standard launched
How Digital Twin technology can help homes and buildings perform better

“The release of the Zigbee Direct certification programme is great news for application developers and product manufacturers that want to simplify design and development while greatly enhancing and streamlining the user experience,” said Jon Harros, Head of Certification and Testing at the Connectivity Standards Alliance.

“Both new and existing Zigbee users can now control or set up new products with Bluetooth devices they already have, including simplified onboarding for large networks used in commercial applications.”

Zigbee is a standards-based wireless technology developed to enable low-cost, low-power wireless machine-to-machine and Internet of Things networks.

While Zigbee has been in the marketplace for more than two decades, work on the protocol stack is actively ongoing and growing in scope with the release of revision 23 expected later in 2023.

Over one billion Zigbee chipsets have been sold with hundreds of companies continuing to build and deploy products. In 2022 alone, more than 400 Zigbee products and platforms were certified with more than 4,700 certified over its lifespan to date.