The ZigBee personal area network standard has often been criticized for being too fragmented – trying to be all things to all men and sacrificing a harmonized platform in the process. Release 3.0 of its specifications aim still to address a wide range of uses, but with greater unification of its multiple profiles. A single standard will be extremely important as ZigBee increasingly expands out of its traditional heartland in industrial control and into the smart home, which will be far more reliant than vertical markets on a huge, harmonized ecosystem to support low prices and interoperability. ZigBee 3.0 promises to bring together all the current profiles – in home and building automation, LED lighting, healthcare, retail and smart energy…