Hi all
I think you really should go for ZigBee.
Everybody is now hopping in like Ember, STM, Atmel, even TI that bought chipcon....
But from my own expertise, you should stay out all those vaporwares....
I mean by ember, atmel, ti/chipcon, st and freescale......
You pay a lot, NDAs, volume requirementes, third party $tack ( Figure 8 )... not worth really.
And they never deliver the chips ( one year waiting for ember single chip ) or like freescale, lots of bugs in foundry and most require controller+radio chip.
Get
EVERYTHING what you need form
JENNIC www.jennic.com, a trully friendly and accessible company, that has already 4 years in expertise in this stuff.
A single TQFP package dual chip ( IBM foundry, si+sige ) with os in rom, 64k ram, full zb stack. 2 D/A, 6 A/D, 6 SPI, 2 RS, 2 Comparators, etc + etc....
Has hardware MAC and AES 128....
All you need to do is customize your application.
Get the JN513X Product brief and get awed!
www.jennic.com/products/download_brief.php
Minimum mount = CPU + Antenna + Serial EEPROM + ETC from U$8 and bellow on quantities.
Free GNU compiler and stack, you pay just for the chip
They sell also ready assembled modules that you may add to your board, but some U$22 each...
Get the demo kit, you will love it, easy to use and program, no clumsy JTags you just need an RS232.
Also comes with a network program that is really worth!
And remember, ZigBee is becomming the standard in industrial / home / fire / security control
Lots of stuff being manufactured by vendors....
You will soon find lots of control programs and interfaces for anything you need, e.g.: distributed audio for home theathers
Stay tunned!
Best
PadsPCB