ZBOSS Development CommunityDevelop and maintain the ZBOSS Zigbee stack

ZOI, formerly the ZBOSS Open Initiative, is now Zone of IoT, home to two development communities: ZBOSS and OneNR+ (coming soon). The ZBOSS Development Community continues with the same proven collaborative development and licensing model.

About the ZBOSS Development Community

The ZBOSS Development Community is a community of companies with a shared understanding of the value of a common, Zigbee® PRO software platform to overcome, together, the challenges around interoperability, security, testing, and optimization of Zigbee-enabled products and solutions.

Achieving lasting interoperability across the vast smart device ecosystem from dozens of different manufacturers is a constant challenge. ZOI addresses this challenge by creating a shared platform, utilized and maintained by chipset vendors and consumer product companies from across the ecosystem. This greatly reduces issues of interoperability, simplifies development for manufacturers, and lowers R&D costs for ZOI members.

The main goal of the Development Community is to provide IoT market players with a proven, reliable, and highly interoperable Zigbee software protocol stack, required development tools, and infrastructure to establish a solid ground for effective collaboration on the unified Zigbee PRO software platform.

ZBOSS

ZBOSS is a hardware agnostic, cross-platform, high-performance Zigbee software protocol stack developed by DSR Corporation. DSR is an original pioneer of the IoT market, with a proven track record and broad expertise in the wireless industry and beyond. DSR’s Zigbee portfolio stretches back to 2009 and has resulted in substantial amount of Zigbee and wireless-related problem-solving experience around the globe.

ZBOSS features cross-platform support, multi-tasking, fixed memory footprint, OS-less configuration, and an easy-to-use API. It is an official Zigbee stack for Nordic Semiconductor and ON Semiconductor, and also supports multiple SoCs, MCUs, and transceivers from Texas Instruments, Qorvo, ARM, Telink, UBEC, Microchip, and other chip vendors. Moreover, multiple Zigbee 3.0 certified products are powered by ZBOSS. Over 200 smart devices from more than 40 vendors have been tested, successfully, for interoperability with ZBOSS.

ZOI members get access to DSR’s market-proven ZBOSS stack code base, along with all of the necessary tools and support to make integrating the stack with new chips and consumer products simple. This joint effort allows for the development of a unified software platform for Zigbee-enabled smart devices and makes it the most interoperable Zigbee software stack solution on the market.

By accessing ZBOSS source code, chipset vendors and consumer product companies will be able to make any necessary changes to the stack to speed up the product development process and make it more streamlined and effective.

ZBOSS Features

Hardware-agnostic
Cross-platform: use OS layer for minimum effort porting
Linux, Windows, RTOS, bare metal support
Flexibility: 2.4 GHz and SubGHz radio support
Fixed memory footprint: does not use dynamic memory allocation, resulting in predictable memory budgeting
Optimized memory usage: for use on target devices with low RAM capacity
Easy-to-use API: inter-layers API uses primitives similar to the ones defined in the Zigbee and 802.15 standards
Certified by the Connectivity Standards Alliance: Zigbee 3.0 r21, r22 and r23
Supported profiles: Zigbee 3.0, Zigbee 4.0 and Smart Energy 1.4
GreenBOSS, a Zigbee Green Power stack that enables Zigbee Green Power devices to securely join a Zigbee network

What's Included

Gain access to in-development versions of ZBOSS and have a certifiable stack as soon as new Zigbee features are introduced. Hit the market in step with all of the biggest players!

Zigbee Networking Layer

Zigbee PRO 2023 (CSA Golden Unit)
Zigbee PRO 2023 (r23) regional SubGHz (CSA Golden Unit)
Zigbee PRO 2017 (r22)(CSA Certified)
Zigbee PRO 2017 (r22) SubGHz
Zigbee PRO 2017 (r22) regional SubGHz (evaluation version)

Profiles and Feature Sets

Zigbee 3.0 (provided with multiple Zigbee 3.0 certified devices)
Zigbee 4.0
Smart Energy 1.4
Work With All Hubs (WWAH) (passed internal and test harness testing)
Zigbee Cluster Library (ZCL) v8
OS-less, Linux, Zephyr, and Real-time OS support
Touchlink
Zigbee Sub-GHz
Zigbee Direct, with CSA Golden Unit status for ZDD and ZVD
Zigbee PRO 2023 Security Enhancements - Dynamic Link Key, Device Interview, Trust Center Swapout & More

Development Tools

Network Simulator
ZBOSS Development Tools
Test Suite for automated testing (test driver and verification framework)
Continuous Integration (CI) Infrastructure (Docker based)
MAC and Zigbee PRO Certification Tests
Regression Test Suite
Smart Energy 1.4 Certification Tests
Samples
Established testing and CI infrastructure spanning certification, functional/regression and unit testing across multiple target platforms

Product Sheets

Why Join the ZBOSS Development Community

Zigbee-specific benefits

Access a stack core that is always up-to-date according to the latest Zigbee standards
Enable new hardware platforms and get them Zigbee PRO certified, with no limits
Enable your customers to quickly build Zigbee Direct-enabled products
Enable your products to support Zigbee Direct functionalities

ZOI is NOT Open-Source

ZOI provides members with royalty-free access to market-proven Zigbee wireless stack source code; rather than open-sourcing the software to the general public. ZOI’s “member-source” approach ensures continued investment into, and collaboration on, the ZBOSS stack, meaning ZOI members are always in front of the newest Zigbee releases and are able to contribute to stack enhancements directly; getting to market faster and with a better product. In addition to membership fees being re-invested into stack maintenance and development, ZOI allows members to determine the direction of the stack. In this way, ZOI addresses the need for a robust, well-maintained, royalty-free Zigbee stack, in a market where a full-featured, open-source option doesn’t exist.

How the Community Works

Governance and execution

A Steering Committee of Core-level members prioritizes and approves the roadmap
DSR staffs the development and support teams
Member companies license and deploy the technology
Members can optionally contribute features and fixes to the main branch

Already a ZOI member?

Your existing ZOI participation becomes the ZBOSS Development Community
ZBOSS continues as an actively developed and supported technology
Non-royalty licensing, source access, updates and engineering support remain core principles

Membership Levels

ZOI encourages all members to contribute to the ZBOSS source code quality and evolution, regardless of membership level. In the same vein, suggestions for new feature development are also acceptable from any member of the initiative.

The ultimate effect and prioritization of the aforementioned contributions will depend on the membership of that particular ZOI member. The more senior the membership level adopted, the greater the access that is provided, and the more influence that member has within the ZOI community.

Core

This level is the best fit for cutting-edge development on the most modern, and widely-used Zigbee-enabled platforms.

The Core level implies the top level of engagement, where the member appears on the cutting edge of ZBOSS stack development and takes part in the steering committee, influencing the direction of feature development. The position allows taking part in feature development of the most recent revision(s) of Zigbee specification, as well as stabilization and certification activities in the context of already adopted revisions.

Core level members constitute the body of ZOI Steering Committee with ability to:

Define the ZOI roadmap
Influence ZOI task planning
Have a deciding say in new feature development and priorities
Take part in development with the ability to influence the ZBOSS prospective* version’s (successor of mainstream version) ultimate shape; such as feature implementations, architectural solutions, etc.

Observer

This level is best suited for the development of mainstream Zigbee enabled platforms.

The Observer level's main purpose is to be able to produce custom branded SDKs/libraries based on the stable ZBOSS stack source code. This provides additional avenues for end product quality improvement or new product/service development. This level also has access to all ZBOSS versions released by ZOI member companies.

Observer level benefits beyond those of the End Developer role:

Issue custom branded Zigbee aware and ZBOSS based SDKs/libraries
Sub-license ZBOSS based SDKs/libraries in binary form to third parties.
Issue free annual passes for ZOI Guest members

End Developer

This level is best suited for the development and maintenance of Zigbee enabled products and solutions.

The End Developer level of ZOI membership is for end-product production teams. This level gains access to stable ZBOSS versions as well as all ZBOSS versions released by ZOI member companies.

End Developer level benefits beyond those of the guest role:

Access to time-proven, quality Zigbee stack source code
Participate in quality improvement for the ZBOSS stable version:
Implement/contribute bug-fixes
Suggest/develop architectural solutions
Compile any accessible ZBOSS source code; as is, or appropriately modified.
Distribute the resulting binaries solely as incorporated in the Member Products
Certify new Zigbee platforms with CSA, based on the member's own HW or any other Zigbee compliant HW.

Limited End Developer

This level is best suited for the maintenance of Zigbee enabled products and solutions.

The Limited End Developer membership level positions ZOI members as an end-product production team. The access to the source code in ZOI for this membership level is limited to a single version of source code released by a particular vendor.

Limited End Developer level benefits beyond those of the Guest role:

Take part in quality improvements of vendor-granted ZBOSS versions:
Implement/contribute bug-fixes
Suggest/develop architectural solutions
Compile vendor-granted ZBOSS source code; as is, or appropriately modified.
Distribute the resulting binaries solely as incorporated in the Member Products.

ZOI Guest

The ZOI Guest membership level is best suited for end-product production teams. This level provides access to a specific ZOI-ZBOSS code version in READ ONLY mode. This access is restricted to a single version of source code released by a particular vendor (a Core or Observer level member who grants the guest-access pass).

Guest level benefits:

Analyze ZBOSS source code to better understand end product details
Get familiar with sample applications and ZBOSS programming best practices
Compile vendor-granted ZBOSS source code; as is, or appropriately modified
Get access to debugging information
Run Zigbee-enabled applications in a simulated Zigbee environment

Features

	Core	Observer	End Developer	Limited End Developer	ZOI Guest
Get access to a single version of source code, released by a vendor	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Get access to all released versions of source code	✓	✓	✓
Get access to a stable version of source code	✓	✓
Get access to a prospective version of source code (only for ZA members)	✓
Submit Pull request (wherever they have access to)	✓	✓	✓	✓
Submit NFD	✓	✓	✓	✓
Vote and prioritize NFD	✓
Certify new platform	✓	✓
Sublicense ZOI product to a third party	✓	✓
Verification testing / CI infrastructure / Test results access	✓	✓	✓	✓
Participate in Steering Committee	✓	✓	✓	✓
Vote in Steering Committee	✓
Binaries use license with its product	✓	✓	✓	✓
Number of accounts	10	5	3	1	1
Free annual source code access passes (to a vendor branch)*	10	5	n/a	n/a	n/a

*Customer receiving Free Annual Pass shall have a contractual commitment to a minimal shipment of 5M copies of product with ZOI software in it — like chipsets, and etc.

Membership Fees

First YearInitiation fee + Annual fee

Following YearsAnnual fee

Join the ZBOSS Development Community

Talk to the ZOI team about the right membership level for your company.

Request Membership Information →