Supported Hardware: Digi XStick Zigbee USB end-of-life April 2018?

WebThings
1

Over on the Supported Hardware wiki the “Digi XStick (ZB mesh version)” is listed as the supported option for Zigbee…

Here in Australia I found one supplier and upon emailing them for price and availability I received the following reply:

Lead time is 2-8 weeks. US$218.00 ex-GST, ex-freight (TBA, no address provided) and is subject to US dollar vs Australian @ $0.78565
Note: I believe this could be ‘End of life’ discontinued product in April 2018.

(I also saw it for ~US$70 on a couple of other US-based sites)

If this is to become a discontinued product in a couple of months has an alternative product been found?

Can anyone suggest any alternatives?

2

As I understand it our Zigbee adapter currently uses the xbee-api node module which is fairly specific to the serial protocol used by Digi products, see https://www.npmjs.com/package/xbee-api#supported-firmwares-and-devices for information about supported hardware.

We would need to implement support for another dongle, and not all of them provide the necessary documentation. We chose xbee because there was an existing open source implementation.

Ironically because Zigbee is more open than Z-Wave there are more manufacturers of Zigbee chips which are free to use different serial protocols. In contrast, most Z-Wave chips are made by Sigma Designs so use a consistent protocol.

I can’t see any information on Digi’s website suggesting this product is end of life, so it might be worth contacting them directly to clarify.

3

Thanks for the reply, I’ll shoot off an email to Digi to find out

A quick look around npm I discovered a handful of packages (and forks) of libraries that support the Zigbee CC253x series from TI, I’ll wait for a reply from Digi before going down this rabbit hole any further

4

I just received the following reply email from Digi:

Thank you for contacting Digi and interest in Digi product.

Regarding your message quoted below, please note that XU-Z11J will be discontinued and the last time buy date is 23 Mar. XU-A11 and XU-Z11 are still active products.

Cool, so the Mozilla IoT suggests the XU-Z11 and that is not being discontinued, only the XU-Z11J which is a localised Japanese version. At least my local distributor was partially correct, one of them is being discontinued :wink:

For reference:

XU-A11 - XStick USB Adapter, 802.15.4
XU-Z11 -XStick USB Adapter, Zigbee	
XU-Z11J - XStick USB Adapter, Zigbee for Japan (International)

Time to order XU-Z11 I think :tada:

5

Thanks for following up.

I wonder whether this will impact users in Japan, and whether that model is required for any other countries due to spectrum licensing or something.