The ZigBee Alliance announces what it describes as a "major ongoing initiative" in making smart home and IoT products easier to develop, deploy and sell across ecosystems-- the All Hubs Initiative.
Driving the initiative are some of the biggest names in the industry, including Amazon, Comcast, Exegin, Kwikset, Landis+Gyr, LEEDARSON, Legrand, MMB Networks, NXP, OSRAM, Samsung SmartThings, Schneider Electric, Silicon Labs, Somfy and ubisys, among others. The goal, according to the Alliance, is to improve interoperability between IoT device and major consumer and commercial platforms.
The effort will bring about a set of features at the application and network layers of the upcoming Zigbee 3.1 technology. The features should bring about a robust method for hubs to communicate supported and required features to devices joining the networks, and how the devices should configure themselves appropriately. They also further standardise the process of commissioning and operating Zigbee devices based on the best practices of Alliance member companies.
In addition, a number of smart home system will add the features to platform certification requirements ahead of the full 3.1 feature set to more immediately take advantage of the enhancements. The updated features will be backwards-compatible with Zigbee 3.0-certified devices and hubs.
The Zigbee 3.1 standard is set for a "later in 2019" release.
