We mentioned the other day that the new Home Heartbeat Monitoring system from Eaton would operate on the IEE 802.15.4 wireless protocol also known as Zigbee. So what is Zigbee? The ChicagoTribune.com has a nice article that gives you the low-down and advantages of Zigbee. One of the best features mentioned in the article is:

By now, you're probably wondering, who needs another wireless standard? After all, we've already got Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and cell phones and infrared and radio frequency and more. But ZigBee is ingeniously different.

Instead of a high-bandwidth, high-power standard, ZigBee works to send short messages over short distances using teeny-tiny amounts of energy. That way, household gadgets can chat with each other without emptying their batteries every few weeks.

In fact, the battery life of a ZigBee-capable device is estimated at anywhere from 100 to 1,000 days. Common AA and AAA batteries probably will corrode before their power is exhausted.

Read More at The ChicagoTribune.com

More Information At Zigbee.org