Airbee gets ready for Zigbee standards

Venkatachari Jagannathan
17 June 2004

According to chief executive officer, Raj Sundaresan, the company is waiting for ZigBee Alliance to declare the standards for mesh, peer-to-peer short range communication standards for different devices.

However, even before the declaration of the standards Airbee has started development of software for couple of original equipment manufacturers (OEM) for embedding the same in the latter's semi-conductor chips. Airbee has signed an agreement with the Ireland-based SupaRule Systems Ltd, that develops and manufactures electronic measurement devices for industrial applications.

The other OEMs that Airbee develops software for include Sharp Electronics, Winedge Electronics, Singapore and Visonic, Isreal, Linkplus, USA. "We can modify our software if there is going to be a variance in the ZigBee standards that will be announced couple of months down the line," Sundaresan adds.

Simply put, Airbee is in the business of developing embedded software that facilitates device communication without wires at short range. This has applications in home, building and industrial automation.

For instance, with Airbee's software, a single remote control device one can operate different household gadgets — air conditioners, refrigerators, television, music system.

Similarly, in the case of building and industrial automation one can integrate and centralise lighting, heating, cooling, security and other operations and reduce energy costs. The software could be used in the healthcare sector too.