Exten Posted September 21, 2012 Posted September 21, 2012 My Brultech is off getting zigbeed and I do not have an RCS thermostat yet so I can't try this stuff out. Will the ISY act as a zigbee access point and conduct zigbee communications/relay for any zigbee device within range - or is it limited to just the ECM1240/Greeneye/RCS thermostat? And will it act as a zigbee gateway and forward packets on to the greater TCP/IP network ? I have seen a specialized zigbee gateway but I was wanting the ISY to do that functionality so I could avoid yet another wart. I wish all these devices would get some POE.
Michel Kohanim Posted September 21, 2012 Posted September 21, 2012 Hi Exten, Will the ISY act as a zigbee access point and conduct zigbee communications/relay for any zigbee device within range - or is it limited to just the ECM1240/Greeneye/RCS thermostat? ISY acts as a coordinator for the specific PAN (personal area network) that it has been configured for. And, as such, it cannot act as a router for any other type of traffic. ISY currently supports only ECM1240, UDI-EM3, and RCS thermostats. GreenEye is planned by no ETA yet. We do have plans for supporting more Zigbee devices but, unfortunately, we have not found any interest and most have proprietary protocols not publicly available. And will it act as a zigbee gateway and forward packets on to the greater TCP/IP network ? No, ISY is very much strong-typed; this means that it will only publish events for "known" devices (registered in ISY) and "known" events for those devices as described in our WSDK. I have seen a specialized zigbee gateway but I was wanting the ISY to do that functionality so I could avoid yet another wart. I wish all these devices would get some POE. ISY is very specialized and not generic. If you can tell me what other Zigbee devices you have on your network, then we'll figure out what's needed
GuitarBuilder Posted September 21, 2012 Posted September 21, 2012 I'd like to chime in on this subject: It's looking more and more likely that the utilities will go in the direction of Zigbee Smart Energy for Home Area Networks and energy management: http://www.zigbee.org/Products/ByStandard/ZigBeeSmartEnergy.aspx A lot of companies are already on this bandwagon, giving it good credibility and a variety of products to choose from. I would urge UDI to make the ISY-99x compliant with Zigbee SE as quickly as possible. For selfish reasons, I'd like to keep mine and not have to replace it with another system!
Michel Kohanim Posted September 21, 2012 Posted September 21, 2012 Hello GuitarBuilder, We have been for a while now (since June of this year): ISY994i ZS Series: http://sales.universal-devices.com/util ... zs-series/ Our news: http://sales.universal-devices.com/news/ With kind regards, Michel
Exten Posted September 21, 2012 Author Posted September 21, 2012 I have much to learn in this zigbee arena. So.... a Wonderful Generic Zigbee Home Automation Device cannot have it's packets routed out onto the greater TCP/IP network...over to The Great Zigbee Processing Center In The Cloud even if the device is a member of the PAN ID and all other settings are correct. I can work with that Thanks.
Michel Kohanim Posted September 21, 2012 Posted September 21, 2012 Hello Exten, There's a Digi gateway that does what you wish. This said, even that requires you to setup a PAN (just like you connect to WiFi). I am not sure how that would help us! With kind regards, Michel
Exten Posted September 21, 2012 Author Posted September 21, 2012 I'm looking to have generic zigbee gateway functionality as part of an ISY unit. Seems like an advantage to me if there is simply 1 less wall wart to provide an ac outlet for. Why power a seperate gateway when there is a device right here with an ethernet jack on it and it's already hooked to the ethernet. Just have the Generic zigbee device join the same PAN ID as the brultech and thermostat...and send on out somewhere. I don't care for vendor lockin. You can probibly see how little I understand about zigbee. Wish there were more materials explaining it abit more in terms of the what I currently have for hardware...which I admit I cannot play with because my brultech is out to have zigbee installed and I have no RSC thermostat yet. But if UDI will only provide zigbee for it's own drivered devices and partners then that's what we live with. UDI has the best thing going.
Michel Kohanim Posted September 21, 2012 Posted September 21, 2012 Hi Exten, I do want to understand what other Zigbee devices you have beyond Brultech (which we support). With kind regards, Michel
Exten Posted September 22, 2012 Author Posted September 22, 2012 None yet....but I'm really liking the idea of zigbee and looking at other devices and wondering how they fit into the overall scheme of things. Whether or not they are POE, whether or not they have RJ45 network jacks as opposed to archaic serial connections of yesteryear on them and just how it all fits together in the UDI scheme of things. Thx for your time.
Michel Kohanim Posted September 23, 2012 Posted September 23, 2012 Hello Exten, From my experience, I can tell you that Zigbee is one of those protocols that is so fragmented with different profiles that it would be quite improbably for anyone to figure out what can or cannot be done. For instance, RCS has its own proprietary protocol over Zigbee as does Brultech. Then, there's Zigbee Home Automation Profile which is similar to INSTEON but you will have a very hard time finding interoperable devices. And, finally, there's SEP which is designed to communicate with Smart Grid meters. As such - and if I understand you correctly - our plans are modest in nature and, unfortunately, nothing generic is planned. With kind regards, Michel
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