SUBJECT: ZigBee and the Geek's Revenge

Friends and Subscribers:
   
Leslye was the girl who made my heart go pitter-patter 
in junior high school.  

Leslye's locker wasn't exactly on the direct route
between English and Social Studies.  Actually it was
on a different floor.  

I was always sure to take the long way to Social 
Studies, down the stairs to first floor, past her 
locker, then back up to 2nd.  Just checkin' up.  

Leslye was always there of course, unless she was 
sick that day.  Then I'd wonder how she was doing 
at home.  

But if I was sick that day, she wouldn't notice.

I was not the boy who made her heart go pitter-patter.
She liked Sam, and maybe Rodney too. She wasn't 
interested in me.  And she never discovered that 
I liked her.  It was my little secret.  

Is it politically correct to talk about my 8th
grade Love in a newsletter for industrial
data engineers?

Yeah, I think so.  Because you're probably a lot 
like me.

Maybe you didn't run the sound system in Junior
High like I did.  Maybe you ran the film projector
instead.  Maybe you programmed Apple II computers in 
BASIC and belonged to Chess Club.

I haven't bothered to take a survey, but I don't 
think most of us data communication guys were student 
council presidents or prom kings.  Or football team 
captains.  You and I were geeks, and pretty girls took 
no notice of us.

But like that Hall & Oates song says,
"Believe it or not, there's life after high school."

It's 2005 now, and us geeks rule the world.  We're
the people who really know what's going on.  All
the pretty boys and their material girls have viruses
on their computers and they can't function without
us.  They're at our mercy.

And the latest Geek Revenge these days is...

ZigBee.

ZigBee is sort of like wireless instant messaging 
for sensors and smart devices.  You drop ZigBee nodes 
wherever you want, no cables necessary, and the more 
nodes you have, the more communication paths there 
are and the more reliable your system is.

So heads up: In the Inaugural issue of our Wireless 
eConnections newsletter, we're going to talk all about 
ZigBee, de-mystify its cousin, 802.15.4, and introduce 
you to one of B&B Electronics wireless partners, Sensicast. 
Jay Werb is Sensicast's Chief Technology officer and
I'm going to hand over the reigns for the first issue 
so Jay can teach us the ins and outs of ZigBee.  

Subscribe here to get that issue:

http://www.bb-elec.com/wireless?src=e020105

Jay is a geek like me, and in fact his heart was
also broken on a number of occasions too.  But like
all young, strong, virile geeks, he eventually hit
his stride and the world started to get out of his way.

In the case of ZigBee, he's making something that's
very promising into reality, as opposed to Vaporware.
This is not some pie-in-the-sky thing, this is
something that's going to empower you with amazing
flexibility and ease of installation.  Again, don't
miss the first issue of our Wireless eConnections:

http://www.bb-elec.com/wireless?src=e020105

N E W    S T U F F    T O    W A T C H    O U T    F O R

"Keep an eye peeled for the January issue of 
Control Engineering - they've got a very informative
article called "Ethernet Explained."  Our own
Mario Bernardini teamed up with controls guru
Vance Van Doren to take the mystery out of this.
Watch your postal mail box, or read it online at

http://www.bb-elec.com/tech_articles/ethernet_explained.asp?src=e020105

*Did you get our new catalog?  It's just hitting
the streets as you read this.  Around here we refer 
to it as the "Life's a beach" issue as our Vlinx 
Ethernet to serial converter makes another cover
appearance, in a sandy setting. And there's a very 
instructive 802.15.4 case study on page 31.

*Discover how a nuclear power plant uses wireless Mesh
technology to protect themselves from $400,000
of power losses:

http://www.bb-elec.com/bb-elec/catalog/pg30-36.pdf?src=e020105

Finally, it's now possible to use one universal
PCI card to access RS-232, 422 or 485, and up to
8 ports at the same time.  Isolated versions
protect your gear up to 2000 volts.  Hey, it takes
a pretty good sense of humor to survive a voltage
surge if you don't have thermo-nuclear protection.  
We geeks need to save our humor for other disasters, 
like unrequited schoolday Love.

Here's to successful Connections, and of course... 
Geek Revenge.

Mike Fahrion
mailto:support@bb-elec.com