Zigbee PAN IDs

Zigbee offers an easy way for small electronics projects to communicate wireless, be it with each other, or a computer with a zigbee board.

To allow multiple Zigbee networks to coexist, each "set" of Zigbee devices needs to be programmed with a PAN ID.

The popular Xbee devices are factory defaulted to PAN ID 0x3332, so they will form a single big network unless reconfigured. To prevent this, it's recommended to reconfigure your Zigbee device, so projects from different members won't interfere with each other.

We recommend ACKspace members to register their PAN IDs to prevent most conflicts. Members with multiple Zigbee "sets", are encouraged to register consecutive PAN IDs. New registrants are encouraged to keep a "buffer" between existing registrations.

As a rule of thumb, a fairly nice way of a generating your own PAN ID, would be to do a CRC16 checksum of your nickname.

The standard PAN ID is a 16 bit identifer, usually noted in HEX:

• 0x3332 Xbee factory default
• 0xDEF9 [Pmjdebruijn Pascal de Bruijn]
• 0xFFFF Zigbee broadcast