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The End to IR-Based Control? RF4CE Consortium Works on RF Standard
Panasonic, Philips, Samsung and Sony are working with a consortium to establish a ZigBee-based solution for RF control of CE devices.
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Thank goodness for IR routing systems like those from Xantech, but the world would be a much better place if we didn’t need them.

Jun
13

By Julie Jacobson
Filed in: News, Product News, Control Systems, Universal Remote Controls
Comments (8), Ratings (0/5)

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06.13.2008 — Wouldn't it be nice to abandon infrared (IR) completely, and replace it with an RF standard for controlling A/V and other home technology?

We may be close.

The new RF4CE (Radio Frequency for Consumer Electronics) Consortium is helping to drive the adoption of an RF solution for entertainment control, based on the ZigBee protocol (IEEE 802.15.4). (Correction: Thanks to reader John Fuziak for pointing out that 802.15.4 is not the ZigBee protocol; ZigBee is built on top of the IEEE RF protocol.)

ZigBee is a robust, low-cost mesh-networking technology adopted (in various iterations) by such home-control firms as AMX, Control4, Crestron, Colorado vNet, Denon, RTI, Niles, Russound, and CentraLite.

To date, though, the technology has not been integrated into CE devices (TVs, DVD players, etc.). So in order to control these devices via ZigBee, an array of bridges and adapters must be installed, defeating the simplicity and richness of the RF protocol.

It looks like the CE industry is warming up to an RF control standard, though. Panasonic, Philips, Samsung and Sony are all founding members of the RF4CE consortium.

According to a press release on the consortium:

The RF4CE (Radio Frequency for Consumer Electronics) industry consortium has been formed to develop a new protocol that will further the adoption of radio frequency remote controls for audio visual devices. The consortium founding members -- Panasonic, Philips, Samsung Electronics, Sony Corporation -- will work together with Freescale Semiconductors, OKI, Texas Instruments to create a standardized specification for radio frequency-based remote controls that deliver richer communication, increased reliability and more flexible use.


To support the effort, ZigBee chip-maker Freescale Semiconductor has offered up its Synkro software stack, written on top of IEEE 802.15.4, for use in the design of home entertainment products.

Not only would mass adoption if a ZigBee-based solution help us eliminate obnoxious IR quirks and annoying IR routing systems, it would also give us two-way communications between CE devices and controllers.

The RF4CE specification is due to be launched in the second half of 2008.

Thanks for the tip, Derek.

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Comments

Posted by Jerry Johnson  on  06/13  at  04:08 PM

I think they should do away with IR all togeater.

Posted by TA  on  06/14  at  02:07 PM

What’s wrong with the existing standard of Bluetooth?

Posted by Julie Jacobson  on  06/14  at  02:35 PM

Bluetooth consumes too much power, costs too much, and only supports short distances. ZigBee (and Z-Wave for that matter) adds very little overhead in terms power consumption and cost, so it can be implemented in small, very low cost devices like remote controls and light switches that don’t have the processing power for Bluetooth. Furthermore, Zigbee is a mesh-networking technology so it can span an entire house.

Posted by John Fuziak  on  06/16  at  03:53 PM

Note to the article: The RF4CE is *NOT* building their protocol on top of ZigBee. ZigBee builds on top of IEEE 802.15.4, so do Wireless HART and 6loWPAN and the now upcoming protocol from RF4CE.

In other words, please don’t mistake IEEE 802.15.4 for ZigBee. IEEE 802.15.4 covers the PHY and MAC layer, while ZigBee is an extension on top of this forming the network layer and parts of the application layer.

The RF4CE protocol is not ZigBee.

Posted by Julie Jacobson  on  06/17  at  10:06 AM

Yes, John is absolutely correct (and then Zigbee developers pile on their own extensions so nothing is interoperable).

Please forgive the faux pas.

Posted by emad  on  06/22  at  07:50 PM

good work

Posted by Neil  on  06/23  at  11:19 AM

Hi Julie, nice post.

You might be interested to know that ZigBee has in fact been incorporated into at least one CE device. AlertMe, a home management platform, is one of the first CE devices to incorporate the ZigBee protocol and is a prime example of how it can be used in the home.

http://www.alertme.com/

Can put you in touch with the CEO if you’d like to know more about them.

Posted by Brian Blum  on  07/31  at  05:00 PM

The RF4CE consortium has taken the 802.15.4 PHY/MAC protocol and developed the RF4CE protocol on top of this from scratch.  Any previously existing protocol such as Synkro will NOT be RF4CE compliant.

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