ZigBee Home Automation is designed to help create smarter homes that enhance comfort, convenience, security, and energy management for the consumer. ZigBee Home Automation 1.2 adds several new features that improve battery life for security sensors to over seven years, standardize pairing of devices, and simplify installation and maintenance.

ZigBee Home Automation 1.2 includes enhancements to functions in devices such as door locks and support for additional devices including smart appliances and electrical measurement devices. The standard incorporates new features resulting from a collaboration with the Energy@home initiative, an Italian collaborative and ZigBee Alliance partner, which will benefit consumers by integrating new devices and raising consumer awareness of energy usage without necessarily connecting to an electric utility.

“ZigBee Home Automation 1.2 is a major step forward in creating an open and fully interoperable wireless home control platform,” said Ted Grauch, vice president, Video Premise Equipment, Technology & Product, Comcast Cable. “For service operators and CE companies, ZigBee Home Automation 1.2 will provide a technology standard that removes much of the complexity from planning and deploying advanced home services and reduces the amount of energy they consume.”

“ZigBee Home Automation is already the most robust, reliable, and scalable low power wireless standard in the home and the technology of choice for world-leading service providers, installers, and retailers,” said Tobin J.M. Richardson, chairman and CEO of the ZigBee Alliance. “ZigBee Home Automation 1.2 further strengthens this position and more importantly delivers a standard that can make every home a smarter, safer, and more energy efficient environment for consumers and families.”

For more information, visit www.zigbee.org.

Publication date: 8/19/2013

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