ZigBee Alliance recently announced its dotdot as the “universal language for the IoT,” showing another industry effort to enable various connected devices to work together more easily.
ZigBee Alliance recently announced its dotdot as the “universal language for the IoT,” showing another industry effort to enable various connected devices to work together more easily.
Dotdot is the previous application layer ‘ZigBee Cluster Library (ZCL)’ of ZigBee, positioning to be the solution for the fragmented IoT market. The ZigBee Alliance has rebranded it and planned possible expansion of the dotdot language in the future.
“Dotdot, standardizing all IoT layers, is the application layer that speaks for the Internet of Things,” said Julie Petron, the marketing director of ZigBee Alliance.
Dotdot works on the application layer, across ZigBee, IP and other transports. The rebranded solution is expected to be adopted quickly since ZigBee devices using ZCL already use dotdot. Also, ZigBee plans to launch certification and logo programs to bring vendors with more product branding and marketing possibilities.
There will be revised specs between the current ZCL and the first dotdot release. One update is that dotdot will be able to run over IP more effectively, and to prescribe how to bridge between different network technologies running dotdot as the transport layer.
Take the context of dotdot in smart homes. Dotdot will define how various devices tell each other what they are and what they can do. For example, if a smart home owner wants to make the front door command lighting in the living room – which fulfills the scenario that the light in the living room automatically turn on as users come home – the door lock needs to know which lights are out there and be able to send commands to them.
ZigBee is a popular wireless protocol and already has some presence in the IoT market. Existing ZigBee products already support dotdot. Also, the ZigBee Alliance has made dotdot work with Thread, another wireless protocol.
The first dotdot certified device will emerge in the market in 2017, and there will be more dotdot over Thread products within one year, said ZigBee Alliance’s Petron.
Dotdot will extend compatibility with more wireless protocols, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and NB-IoT. The ZigBee Alliance expects an increase of dotdot products, and the first dotdot product over Wi-Fi in 2018, Petron stated.
Geographically, a strong group of companies are supporting ZigBee in Asia, and the growth in ZigBee adoption is obvious in China. “With dotdot, there might be more interest in Japan,” Petron said.
The mission of ZigBee Alliance is to make IoT devices interoperable. Currently, ZigBee powers more than 100 million smart devices in homes and businesses, and there are over 30 manufacturers with more than 95 product models supporting ZigBee, according to the alliance.
Product Adopted:Wireless Transmission