Remember the Fieldbus Wars of the 90s? It was a time when there was hope for a single standard for an industrial network for devices and information. Eventually it devolved into a standard of many standards. But things are settling into niches with various potentials for cross connecting.
Now the wars are heating up at the device layer with Echelon firing a broadside at the ZigBee Alliance. It has released "the first platform for ubiquitous embedded control networks that is self-organizing, can be both wired and wireless, and is suitable for home, commercial, and industrial applications."
The company somewhat disingenuously calls ZigBee a "proprietary" protocol. When I asked Echelon, they replied that it is not an "official standard" of the sort ratified by IEEE. Of course, ZigBee is an industry standard, perhaps some day to achieve official status through the efforts of the ISA SP100 committee.
Although Echelon has not gained traction in industrial automation and control and, it should be noted, Invensys/Foxboro has a wired mesh network, this announcement appears to up the ante a little in device networking by offering both wired and wireless with the same protocol. Echelon also says that the chips required to implement the network are low cost, but the release doesn't say how low. It also says the new network called Pyxos will connect to other networks than its LonWorks network.
We need to know more--especially if Echelon is going to try once again to target the industrial automation market or stay with its strength in the building automation market.
11:13:20 AM 
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