ZigBee Alliance board member Philips gave a thumbs...

ZigBee Alliance board member Philips gave a thumbs down on plans to offer a Bluetooth Smart Mesh version of its Hue LED lighting system patterned after technology championed by U.K. chip maker CSR as a competitor to ZigBee (CD July 10 p13 ). CSR executives have said they were in talks with ZigBee supporters like Philips in hopes of converting them to the Bluetooth Smart Mesh system. Philips “will continue to innovate to help our customers realize all the possibilities the digitalization and personalization of light presents,” the company emailed us. “It is not our policy to comment on other products or products we have in the pipeline, but in this case we want to draw your attention to a number of benefits we provide over Bluetooth enabled bulbs. We believe that these capabilities deliver more meaning to our customers.” For one thing, Hue enables control from anywhere in the house and “out-of-home,” and is not a “short-ranged room-based technology,” Philips said. The Hue “ecosystem” also is expandable to include a “full range” of switches and sensors to control lights “in new and innovative ways,” instead of just a smartphone, as the CSR technology entails, it said. “Hue uses open standard connectivity technology enabled by ZigBee LightLink. This means that interoperability between devices from different brands is possible. Bluetooth is only about connectivity and does not enable interoperability on complete products."