Project Connected Home over IP

What is it?

Project Connected Home over IP is a new Working Group within the Zigbee Alliance. This Working Group plans to develop and promote the adoption of a new, royalty-free connectivity standard to increase compatibility among smart home products, with security as a fundamental design tenet.

How will it work?

Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance joined together to promote the formation of the Working Group. Zigbee Alliance board member companies IKEA, Legrand, NXP Semiconductors, Resideo, Samsung SmartThings, Schneider Electric, Signify (formerly Philips Lighting), Silicon Labs, Somfy, and Wulian are also on board to join the Working Group and contribute to the project.

The goal of the Connected Home over IP project is to simplify development for manufacturers and increase compatibility for consumers. The project is built around a shared belief that smart home devices should be secure, reliable, and seamless to use. By building upon Internet Protocol (IP), the project aims to enable communication across smart home devices, mobile apps, and cloud services and to define a specific set of IP-based networking technologies for device certification.

The industry Working Group will take an open-source approach for the development and implementation of a new, unified connectivity protocol. The project intends to use contributions from market-tested smart home technologies from Amazon, Apple, Google, Zigbee Alliance, and others. The decision to leverage these technologies is expected to accelerate the development of the protocol, and deliver benefits to manufacturers and consumers faster.

The project aims to make it easier for device manufacturers to build devices that are compatible with smart home and voice services such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant, and others. The planned protocol will complement existing technologies, and Working Group members encourage device manufacturers to continue innovating using technologies available today.

We’re sure you have questions. Here are some answers.

Why IP?

Today there is no widely adopted open standard for smart home which is built upon IP and yet IP is the protocol of the internet and is the most common network layer used in our homes and offices. With IP, messages can be routed across networks independent of the physical and link layers underlying them and there are ample battle tested algorithms and infrastructure for performing routing, switching and firewalling in robust and resilient ways. On top of IP, you inherit well-known transport protocols like TCP and UDP. Consequently, IP is an ideal way to deliver end-to-end security and privacy in communication between a device and another device, app, or service.

There are a large number of IP-bearing networks today, designed for different use cases. Since the protocol is built upon IP, its message traffic should be able to flow seamlessly across different kinds of networks.

Many Smart Home devices use proprietary protocols today, requiring them to be tethered to a home network using dedicated proxies and translators. By building upon IP, some of these devices may instead be able to connect directly with standardized networking equipment.

You mentioned IP-based networking technologies. Which ones will Project Connected Home over IP focus on? Which ones might be enabled later?

The Project will define a specific set of IP-based networking technologies for device certification. We expect that compliant devices must implement at least one supported technology and not necessarily all.

The goal of the first specification release will be Wi-Fi, up to and including 802.11ax (aka Wi-Fi 6), that is 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax; Thread over 802.15.4-2006 at 2.4 GHz; and IP implementations for Bluetooth Low Energy, versions 4.1, 4.2, and 5.0 for the network and physical wireless protocols.

The Project Connected Home over IP Working Group will likely also embrace other IP-bearing technologies like Ethernet, Cellular, Broadband, and others.

Some companies might focus their product offerings on the protocol over Wi-Fi/Ethernet, while others might target the protocol over Thread or BLE, and still others might support a combination. Please contact individual companies to find out what their intentions are for future product support.

Consumers

How will the Project benefit consumers?

The Project aims to improve the consumer experience of trying to use smart home products that aren’t compatible with each other. We believe that the protocol has the potential to be widely adopted across home systems and assistants such as Amazon Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant, and others. If the Working Group succeeds with this goal, customers can be confident that their device of choice will work in their home and that they will be able to setup and control it with their preferred system.

Will my current smart home products still continue to work as they do today?

Yes. Amazon, Apple, and Google are committed to continue support for consumers and their existing products.

Developers

How will the Project benefit developers?

The Project aims to make it easier for developers to build a device that is compatible with smart home services such as Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Google Assistant, and others. This may include a proposed standard for lifecycle events such as provisioning/onboarding, removal, error recovery, and software update.

I’m developing new products today. How does the Project affect my development path?

The planned protocol will complement existing technologies, and Working Group members encourage device manufacturers to continue innovating using technologies available today. Join the Working Group to learn more about the planned protocol and when it will be available.

Will current smart home products continue to work?

Yes. Amazon, Apple, and Google are committed to continue support for developers and their products.

Will they also be compatible with the new protocol?

The focus of the Project will be on new products. For developers interested in joining the effort, please join the Project Connected Home over IP Working Group.

What is the relationship between the Zigbee Alliance, Zigbee the protocol, and Project Connected Home over IP?

The Zigbee Alliance develops and manages several technologies, including Zigbee and Project Connected Home over IP. The Project uses Internet Protocol (IP) rather than the Zigbee transport and networking protocol. Project CHIP and Zigbee are two separate protocols.

When will the specification be available?

To quicken development, the Project intends to start with components of market-tested technologies, modified as needed. The Working Group has a goal to release a draft specification and a preliminary reference open source implementation in late 2020.

What is the open-source approach that the Working Group intends to take?

To accelerate the development of the protocol, and deliver benefits to manufacturers and consumers faster, the Working Group will start with components of market-tested technologies from Amazon, Apple, Google, the Zigbee Alliance, and others. Any open source code the Working Group chooses to incorporate will be copied into the Connected Home over IP open source project and will be modified as needed.

By developing an open source project in conjunction with the creation of the specification, the architecture can be prototyped and tested in real world use cases. At the end of the process, adopters can use this same code to speed up their product development.

What are the market-tested smart home technologies being contributed?

The Project intends to leverage development work and protocols from existing systems such as:

Amazon’s Alexa Smart Home
Apple’s HomeKit
Google’s Weave
Zigbee Alliance’s Dotdot data models

Will the Project attempt to standardize smart home user interfaces?

No. The Working Group at this time does not intend to standardize smart home user interfaces such as voice assistants, smart displays, or desktop and mobile apps.

Is the Zigbee Alliance still developing the Zigbee protocol today and will it continue once a new protocol is launched by Project Connected Home over IP?

Yes, the Zigbee Alliance and its members are continuing to drive the development and growth of the Zigbee protocol, both today and after the launch of the Project’s protocol. Those developing Zigbee products today will continue with confidence.

I’m interested. How do I join this effort?

The Working Group welcomes and invites device manufacturers, silicon providers, and other developers across the smart home industry to participate in and contribute to the development of this new standard. If you’d like to get involved or receive updates, fill out the form below.

Open Source

The reference implementation of the new standard, and its supporting tooling, will be developed and maintained on the GitHub open source platform for all aspects of the specification. Please stay tuned for more information.

Join the effort.

The Working Group welcomes and invites device manufacturers, silicon providers, and other developers across the smart home industry to contribute to the development of this new standard. If you’re interested in contributing to the development of Project Connected Home over IP, please reach out to help@zigbee.org to learn more about Zigbee Alliance Membership. If you want to stay informed, please submit your information to join the interest list.

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