A smattering of hardware gadget resources:

• Think Geek
• SparkFun
• USB Gadgets
• Nexus
• Klear Gear
• Gadgetz4All

Widget platforms:

• Windows Gadgets
• Google Gadgets
• Yahoo Widgets
• Mac Dashboard
• FirefoxIt (though this may never come to fruition)
• Wikipedia widgets article

An alternative approach to ambient information, Chumby will undoubtedly be very cool. I hope they do very well. I am certainly going to get one! They plan to be open, hackable, extensible. They are already starting a collection of widgets.

Jennic sells through Digikey, and offers some pretty comprehensive solutions, at least at first glance.  They make a 32bit micro with Zigbee radio, which need very few additional components.  These sell for $12/1, $4/1k.  They sell a dev kit for $500 which has four sensor modules, a main controller module, a GNU-based C++ dev env, and the Daintree network analyzer software.  Pretty nice!  Here is their getting started manual and their getting started page, with links to lots of internal resources.

I need to read the docs to see if the system is really easy enough to use.  And if the stack, which is presented as a separate product, is included with the software dev kit.  Digikey doesn’t list it separately.  Yes, turns out the stack and GNU tools and compiler and IDE all come royalty free with the dev kit.  Digikey sells the micro built into a tiny module with integrated chip antenna and preprogrammed with their Zigbee stack into ROM, and 120kB serial flash for user program, for $25/1.

Their datasheet says:

“A Software Developer Kit (SDK), free from Jennic’s website, provides a comprehensive Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to facilitate the development of application code. The kit includes a C compiler, graphical and command-line debuggers, assembler/linker and flash programmer. Libraries are included with the SDK that drive the peripherals of the JN5139 wireless microcontroller. They enable applications to call library functions via a simple Application Programming Interface (API). Applications developed on this kit can be directly loaded onto the module memory to implement production solutions.”

This is a nice way to go, I think.  It could do pretty much everything.  Next, compare to the MaxStream solution: which is easier and more flexible?

Wireless Watch and LinuxDevices both report on SquidBee, an open source Zigbee mote initiative out of Spain. OpenBee is an initiative on SourceForge, but appears dead (last update 2005). MeshNetics has opened a version of its MAC layer. Mississippi Sate U offers a Zigbee subset free for personal use. Nordic and Dynastream have hardware for an alternate point-point system optimized for battery.