Is it possible to use Wi-Fi adapters for communicating with ZigBee devices? Wi-Fi and ZigBee both use the 2.4 GHz range, so the radio hardware should be identical, right?
Since I can not find any information on this in the web, I suppose there must be some problem, or this is a real stupid question. Are the phy and MAC layers hardwired in Wi-Fi adapters? The rest is software anyway, right?
There is this answer: Can I implement ZigBee with generic hardware?
It says:
You could, but you'd need a radio transceiver with compatible frequency range, modulation, and data rate.
Is IEEE 802.15.4-2003 so different to 802.11-1997, for example, that hardware is not exchangeable? The frequency is the same, so is the modulation, DSSS.