Some notes from this week’s big Project CHIP webinar & announcements,
-
Thread will be the low-bandwidth protocol for CHIP-certified devices, while Wi-Fi is the high-bandwidth protocol. Bluetooth LE will be used for provisioning.
-
Current non-CHIP IoT devices can join the CHIP “network” via a CHIP bridge; the CHIP side is what’s certified, but no requirements for whatever’s on the other side (Z-Wave, etc.).
-
At 22:13, the speaker mentions “Thread / BLE combo radios”.
-
At 34:49, the speaker notes that if devices support 802.15.4 and/or WiFi, they can be upgraded to CHIP certified, but it will depend on the available compute and memory, the manufacturer, the chipset, and whether that’s the best approach versus a dedicated CHIP bridge.
-
Samsung SmartThings was present at the Webinar via Mark Tekippe, along with Google, Apple, Zigbee, Tuya, Comcast, and Infineon: Google actually had three representatives.
And it’s been covered on Stacey On IoT, as well. The orange circle with the inscribed “T” is Thread. See “Other protocols” at the top, with a very Phillips Hue-like hub, Alexa speaker, and Google Nest Hub.
The panelists also confirmed that CHIP devices will use Wi-Fi for high bandwidth applications and Thread for low bandwidth applications. The standard will also use Bluetooth Low Energy for device provisioning, which is a nice win for BLE because those radios will still be inside most smart home devices. That makes sense given that provisioning is likely to happen in most homes using a mobile handset.
//
There are definitely mechanisms to convert current ZigBee radios to Thread radios on a low-level, but it likely depends on interest & budgets.
Q: We recently upgraded our SoC from the CC2531 to the CC2538. We are referencing the document ‘Z-stack OTA Upgrade Users Guide’. We plan to build and test the demo using the CC2538EM dev kit – but this looks like an OTA from one SoC (server) to upgrade a client that is using a compatible SoC.
Here is the ‘what-if’ scenario that we would like to test:
The CC2538 supports both ZigBee and Thread. Today we are using ZigBee – but perhaps the industry has decided to move the Thread in the future. Is there a way to remotely update the firmware to accommodate Thread? In general, is there any way to update the firmware on the SoC itself wireless?
A: While the CC2538 supports both Zigbee and Thread, what you’re wanting is not supported for this device, as the CC2538 does not have TI OAD capabilities. However, the CC2538 does support Zigbee OTA Upgrade (TI OAD and Zigbee OTA Upgrade are able to co-exist, as they are two separate entities). With using Zigbee OTA Upgrade, you would have to develop your own proprietary BIM in order to perform the update wirelessly. Or upgrade manually through a serial upgrade.
However, with our new CC2652R and CC1352R devices, this is most definitely possible to do wirelessly, as this supports both Zigbee OTA Upgrade and TI OAD, which enables the ability to switch between different technologies via the BIM supplied.
//
Many moons ago, @JDRoberts noted that the official FCC certification for the Samsung V3 hub does include a “Thread Ant[enna]”, but if there’s any hope for that ever functioning is anyone’s guess.
