ZigBee stack recommendations

Question

I've been out of the loop on ZigBee for a while now. Who has the most mature Zigbee stack? Is it Microchip, Chipcon, or Atmel?

Are there RF modules down to less than US$10 yet?

I recall there was some licensing issues with certain stacks a while back...

_{(This question was originally asked in 2009. As of 2012, I don't think Ember is a leading stack anymore. It seems that Texas Instruments has become the dominant chipset/stack... Although, their stack does seem to be locked to using IAR's terrible IDE which would make me think twice about using it.)}

score 7 · Answer 1 · answered May 24 '09 at 18:21

We've been using the Ember Corporation SoC chips for some time now. I'm very impressed with their chip, tools, and utilities. Some companies are using them for plug in modules, Digi's XBee and Telegesis are two that we have worked with.

Ember also has the ZCL and the HA and SA profiles implemented, ready for you to use.

www.ember.com

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 16 '12 at 20:06

I've done some work with the TI stack. It's... ok I guess. The IDE limitation makes it pretty awful, and there are some rough edges. Documentation isn't all that great, and when you hit a certain level you run into a closed-source driver module (this might be a common limitation among vendors, haven't done enough with them all to know offhand.) Still, after having built a proof-of-concept demo with the TI stack, I'm still looking for alternatives.

Saw a bunch of them at ESC and CES. For reference, some options (no particular endorsement either way, in alphabetical order)

Anaren - their modules use the TI stack: http://anaren.com/air
Atmel - http://www.atmel.com/products/microcontrollers/Wireless/software.aspx
Ember - http://ember.com/products_zigbee_chips.html
Marvell - eg the 88MZ100 part - http://www.marvell.com/wireless/
NXP - seem to have a "JenNet" stack - http://www.nxp.com/products/rf/wireless_microcontrollers/
TI - http://www.ti.com/z-stack

Any other suggestions/alternatives would be welcome.

microchip sell a zigbee stack for the PIC24/DSPIC to use with (their?) 802.15.4 rf chips... not much more info on it than that, but it does seem to exist! — Julian Higginson, May 04 '12 at 00:33
NXP and Ember seem to have the best documentation so far. Ember seems to be one of the oldest and more developed, not sure about their hawrdware though. — Larry, Nov 11 '15 at 00:46

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Mar 11 '15 at 01:41

Two years later in 2011, Ember's ZigBee stack is the clear winner. Ember has enough of the ZigBee market to be an effective standard, and most plugin modules, including Digi's Xbee and Telegesis are built on top of Ember's SoCs.

Chipcom/Texas Instruments has some different interpretations of the protocol from Ember and in general their stack is less flexible. If you don't want to scan networks and join the way they recommend, you are basically out of luck.

I haven't used any other stacks.

ZigBee stack recommendations

3 Answers3