As a low-speed and short-distance wireless communication technology, ZigBee has its own characteristics, so there are tailor-made applications for it, although it may overlap with other technologies in some applications. Some possible applications of ZigBee include smart home, industrial control, automatic meter reading, medical monitoring, sensor network applications and telecommunications applications.
Smart home
There may be many electrical appliances and electronic equipment at home, such as lamps, televisions, refrigerators, washing machines, computers, air conditioners and so on. There may also be smoke sensors, alarms and cameras. In the past, we may realize point-to-point control at most, but if we use ZigBee technology, we can connect these electronic and electrical devices to form a network and even connect to the Internet through a gateway, so that users can conveniently monitor their family situation anywhere, eliminating the need to stay at home.
industrial control
There are a lot of sensors and controllers in the factory environment. ZigBee technology can be used to connect them into a network for monitoring, strengthen job management and reduce costs.
Automatic meter reading
Meter reading may be something familiar to everyone, such as gas meter, electric meter and water meter. It may be necessary to count the readings monthly or quarterly and report them to the gas, electricity or water supply company, and then charge according to the readings. At present, most places still use manual meter reading and knock on doors, which is very inconvenient. ZigBee can be used in this field, using sensors to convert electric meter readings into digital signals, and sending the readings directly to companies providing gas or water and electricity through ZigBee network. Using ZigBee for meter reading can also bring other benefits. For example, gas or hydropower companies can send some information directly to users, or combine it with energy conservation, and automatically slow down the use speed when they find that energy is used too fast.
medical supervision
Electronic medical monitoring is a research hotspot in recent years. Many sensors are installed on human body, such as measuring pulse and blood pressure, monitoring health status, and some monitors and alarms are placed in the surrounding environment of human body, such as ward environment, so that people's health status can be monitored at any time, and once problems occur, they can respond in time, such as notifying hospital staff on duty. These sensors, monitors and alarms can form a monitoring network through ZigBee technology. Because of wireless technology, there is no need for wired connection between sensors, and the monitored person can move freely, which is very convenient.
Sensor network application
Sensor network is also a research hotspot in recent years, which has a good application prospect in goods tracking, building monitoring, environmental protection and so on. Sensor network requires low cost, low power consumption, automatic networking, easy maintenance and high reliability. The advantages of ZigBee in networking and low power consumption make it a good technical choice for sensor network applications.
Telecommunication application
At the beginning of 2006, Telecom Italia announced that she had developed a SIM card integrated with ZigBee technology and named it "ZSIM" [5]. In fact, this SIM card is just a means to integrate ZigBee into telecom terminals. The ZigBee Alliance also released a message in April 2007, saying that members of the Alliance are developing telecom-related applications [6]. If ZigBee technology can really be developed in the field of telecommunications, users can make mobile payments with their mobile phones in the future, get some interesting information in hot spots, such as news and discount information, and users can also know their location through location services. Although the current GPS positioning service has been done well, it is difficult to support indoor positioning, and the positioning function of ZigBee just makes up for this defect.