How ready is ZigBee?

ZigBee modules are readily available nowadays. Assuming that they can all live up to their expectations, providing the network stack that allows wirelss sensor motes to be easily organised into a network fit for deployment, we will be seeing a host of software applications to be developed for wireless sensor networks this year. My concerns with ZigBee are, forget about large-scale or maybe even medium-scale sensors deployment, the ease of deployment of a ZigBee wireless sensor network and the lifetime of the network. Remember, there were a lot of hypes around multiple hops wireless ad hoc networks not that long ago when the concept was first put into trial. Don’t get me wrong, the potential of such networks is still there. But, under the constraints of current underlying technologies, the deployment of these networks for the applications initially expected of them is not as simple as the name of these networks would have you believed. Work is currently still on-going in this area, so I won’t be surprised if the ZigBee stack is still someway away from being ready for some serious applications. What I’m more interested in is better tools to diagnose a wireless sensor network as at the moment troubleshooting a network of these little motes when something goes wrong is still painfully difficult.