Mesh networking frontrunner ZigBee has announced a new collaboration with the energy harvesting EnOcean protocol, which will see the two alliances behind the protocols collaborate to further the goal of a self-powered IoT network that is far less dependent on batteries – where light switches can generate enough power from the button press to transmit to the bulb or a thermometer can harvest enough ambient thermal energy to report to a HVAC unit via ZigBee. The ZigBee Alliance and the EnOcean Alliance will work together to enmesh the EnOcean Equipment Profiles (EEPs) for sub-GHz networking with ZigBee 3.0 – the newest iteration of the ZigBee standard, which unites the previously disparate profiles, and adds support for batteryless designs. This week…