What’s a ZigBee?
Before I delve into ZigBee in detail, I’d like to address one question that seems to come
up every time I speak about ZigBee in public. Where did the name ZigBee come from?
Well, the way I first heard it was at the ZigBee Open House in Seattle, back in 2004.
This story was told during a time when ZigBee was often confused with Bluetooth™.
Just so you don’t confuse the two: Bluetooth™ is great at point-to-point (as seen in many
headsets and cell phones). ZigBee is great at wireless control, where anywhere from two
to thousands of nodes are all connected together, in multi-hop mesh network.
Bob Heile, Chairman of the ZigBee Alliance explained the origin of ZigBee something
like this: