Isn’t it tiring, to enter home, switch on lights from one remote, then finding remote of your A.C. , setting temperature of your room, then suddenly realising that you ran out of milk today, but there was no one to inform you. The dream of managing appliances, having everything working perfectly on its own is now possible thanks to Smart Home Technology and Zigbee Mesh Networks.

In the era of the 21st century, the concept of smart homes has attracted many eyes towards itself.  In order to attain a life where your home is as smart as your phone, Zigbee Mesh technology has influenced the whole smart home industry. With the help of this technology,  your home is now ready to be transformed into a smart home.

What is Mesh Technology?

Mesh networking is more or less like a relay of data between points of information called nodes. The mesh network is made by routing, that is, the message is propagated along a path, by hopping from one node to other until the message reaches its destination. It basically is teamwork between appliances. Each node in the mesh network has ability to communicate with other, no matter how far the other node stands. There multiple different type of mesh network, one of them being the Zigbee Network, which has a major contribution in smart home technology.

What is Zigbee Network?

Designed for low power consumption, Zigbee is a new wireless communication technology that enables us to do smart work when we feel lazy enough to do any work. It was created by Zigbee Alliance in 1990’s. Companies like Motorola, Intel, Hp, and Phillips, all are a part of this alliance. zigbee makes possible completely network home, popularly known as smart home, where all the devices are able to communicate and work with each other via a single unit. Zigbee is ideal for smart house because it has been designed for low power consumption allowing batteries to essentially last for a longer span of time.

So, How Does Zigbee work?

Zigbee uses Radios (nodes) that have different defined roles. For example, in a smart home, each radio is connected to a separate device (Radio A is connected to Television , B is Connected to Refrigerator). There are different routes or coordinators that set up the network and then allow routers and end devices to join. The fun thing is, one router radio (main radio) can support up to 20 or so end devices and can route data along the network between each other. Isn’t the fact fascinating that whatever you had to do with 5 remotes, you can do that just in one touch. This is like a parent child Relationship where the main router act as a parent and other router which are your smart home devices act as a child.

Why to choose Zigbee for your Smart Home?

Lighting automation is my new love. I’ve programmed exterior lights to change with the sun, leveraging Wink. Inside my home, I have various levels of ‘turndown services’ that allow me strategically dim lights for evening and then bedtime. But, hands down, the most entertaining and excessive treat is ability to turn my entire home into a nightclub with hue colored lights. – Glenn Grant, G2 Technology Group.

This is exactly how you feel when you have a smart home, where you change the atmosphere according to your mood.

One can choose Zigbee over Wi-Fi whenever many nodes on the network are going to be constantly powered, anytime inter-operational between different device manufacturers is a requirement ( devices Connected in smart home with each other, so that message could reach to the device from any path of the node), when you need flexible security system, Zigbee is definitely the first choice.