According to De Vries (1997), “a standard is an approved specification of a limited set of solutions to actual or potential matching problems, prepared for the benefits of the party or parties involved, balancing their needs, and intended and expected to be used repeatedly or continuously, during a certain period, by a substantial number of the parties whom they are meant.” Following this definition, Simons and De Vries announced the properties of a good standard in 2002. It would not be wrong to state that ZigBee Remote Control (RF4CE) standard has a good-quality due to the fact that it fulfills the requirements of being a good standard. It provides a standard which systematizes matching the devices with remote controllers as well as matching the devices with other devices by making them be aware of others’ existence in a home environment. The alliance consists of more than one party, actually, there are around 330 parties as members of the ZigBee Alliance with different membership statuses. Decision taking approach of the alliance is not only beneficial for one or two types of members but for all three types of members. As I have pointed out before, creativity and demands of the members steer the actions and the route of the alliance. Since the standard is formed with a consensus, the results are workable and acceptable for each party.
The lifetime of the standard is another important property. I could not find an estimation of lifetime for this technology but at least, one can have an idea from the features of the products and proposed devices. It can be stated that the lifetime will be much longer than 5 years, for example. This is even enough to fulfill the requirement such that the lifetime of the standard is longer than the duration to create the standard. ZigBee remote controllers can be utilized for any home devices, they are not specialized only for music box or TV. The features like low power consumption, low cost, longer battery lifetime (I will do the comparison with the old technology in my future post) are the reasons for having a long lifetime for the standard by replacing the former technology. In addition, ZigBee Remote Control proposes really interesting and attractive use scenarios. Those scenarios will increment the lifetime of the standard more. One of the scenarios is “Home Theater Experience.” It is advertised as you just insert a DVD into your DVD-player, then the correct input socket is automatically chosen by the television, your sound system automatically adjusts itself according to DVD listening mode, remote controller automatically switch to control DVD-player and it lowers the priority to control other unnecessary devices, lighting in your house will be darkened, again automatically, at your will and curtains or blinds will close. Another scenario is “Media Control Center.” Its hardware will basically be in a room other than the entertainment center. It includes an enormous variety of media files such as music, photos, videos or movies and those media files could be streamed to or from the entertainment center. Remote routing of the media content could be achieved by the advanced remote control structure. The third offered scenario is “In-system Remote Control Programming.” When the first power op occurs for the remote controller, it can acquire the supported attributes of the devices around. After that firmware updates could be received by the remote control and additional features could be appended or bugs could be repaired automatically.
The lifetime of the standard is another important property. I could not find an estimation of lifetime for this technology but at least, one can have an idea from the features of the products and proposed devices. It can be stated that the lifetime will be much longer than 5 years, for example. This is even enough to fulfill the requirement such that the lifetime of the standard is longer than the duration to create the standard. ZigBee remote controllers can be utilized for any home devices, they are not specialized only for music box or TV. The features like low power consumption, low cost, longer battery lifetime (I will do the comparison with the old technology in my future post) are the reasons for having a long lifetime for the standard by replacing the former technology. In addition, ZigBee Remote Control proposes really interesting and attractive use scenarios. Those scenarios will increment the lifetime of the standard more. One of the scenarios is “Home Theater Experience.” It is advertised as you just insert a DVD into your DVD-player, then the correct input socket is automatically chosen by the television, your sound system automatically adjusts itself according to DVD listening mode, remote controller automatically switch to control DVD-player and it lowers the priority to control other unnecessary devices, lighting in your house will be darkened, again automatically, at your will and curtains or blinds will close. Another scenario is “Media Control Center.” Its hardware will basically be in a room other than the entertainment center. It includes an enormous variety of media files such as music, photos, videos or movies and those media files could be streamed to or from the entertainment center. Remote routing of the media content could be achieved by the advanced remote control structure. The third offered scenario is “In-system Remote Control Programming.” When the first power op occurs for the remote controller, it can acquire the supported attributes of the devices around. After that firmware updates could be received by the remote control and additional features could be appended or bugs could be repaired automatically.
ZigBee Remote Control standard is not in conflict with other standards or trying to disprove some standards. In fact, it utilizes another standard. It is established over the physical and medium access control layers specified by IEEE 802.15.4 standard. The remote controls with respect to this standard will be backward compatible with the old ZigBee devices. This standard is not an obstacle in front of the novel technological enhancements and improvements. It actually opens a new interest field for researchers and manufacturers and supports those developments.
The standard is easy to read and unambiguous. Neither it states more than enough details nor it is insufficient to be comprehended by the parties. In addition, it does not restrict the features that could be applied. The standard defines a network stack over the fundamental low layers and it also plans the application layer with some flexibility for the producers. Application layer consist of one profile component and application specific component. The profile component is for the regular commands and certain tasks such as controlling the volume or changing TV channel, and it is for the interoperability among the devices in the same environment. However, application specific component is for the additional attributes and functionalities of a product which are uploaded by the end manufacturer. Moreover, the standard handles repetitive and frequent usage since its aim is to create advanced remote control experience in everyday life. For instance; Set-Top Boxes, televisions, video player devices are regularly used.
No comments:
Post a Comment