Good ZigBee Dev Starter Kit Recommendation Help

Greetings,
I am looking to get started developing a short range low power device
that will consist of a controller and a device with a motor and
sensors.  I would like to use ZigBee as the wireless technology
solution to connect the controller to the device.  It meets the price
point and range that I need and the potential for mesh networking
opens other future opportunities.

I am curious if anyone can recommend an affordable entry into ZigBee
development.  Ideally I am looking for 2 ZigBee boards (Controller and
Motor/Sensors) and the option of using a desktop computer as another
node on the network.  Ideally I would like some sort of system on a
chip so I don't need to source another MCU, but I do need some sort of
A/D, D/A functionality, ideally something with PWM built in to support
controlling motor speed.  I am not too picky at the moment about the
underlying MCU (Freescale, AVR, whatever), a nice software stack for C
compiling and flashing the boards would be a very nice plus because
who likes fighting software when all you want to do is build
something.

If anyone has any opinions as to what is a good starter kit, or an
inexpensive entry point into developing this kind of system I would
very much appreciate hearing all about it.  I have been looking around
and see there are a variety of options but I am curious to hear about
peoples actual use experiences with various solutions.

Thank you for your help, it really is appreciated!

Regards,

Gadi

On Jul 14, 2:42=A0pm, Gadi <ggo...@gmail.com> wrote:

> If anyone has any opinions as to what is a good starter kit, or an
> inexpensive entry point into developing this kind of system I would

For inexpensive and turnkey, I think you will be hard pressed to find
something better than the Microchip MRF24J40MA. <http://
www.microchip.com/wwwproducts/Devices.aspx?dDocName=3Den535967> - each
module is type approved, $9 in single-piece quantity and it is ready
to drop into your circuit. Relatively simple to use and Microchip make
their stack source available free. It will not directly bolt onto a
PC, but it is not a difficult matter to make a serial-interfaced
bridge. Take three free sample PICs from Microchip's website and
you're there with three nodes for a total cost of $40 (plus some glue
- battery holder, caps, etc).

larwe wrote:
> On Jul 14, 2:42 pm, Gadi <ggo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> If anyone has any opinions as to what is a good starter kit, or an
>> inexpensive entry point into developing this kind of system I would
> 
> For inexpensive and turnkey, I think you will be hard pressed to find
> something better than the Microchip MRF24J40MA. <http://
> www.microchip.com/wwwproducts/Devices.aspx?dDocName=en535967> - each
> module is type approved, $9 in single-piece quantity and it is ready
> to drop into your circuit. Relatively simple to use and Microchip make
> their stack source available free. It will not directly bolt onto a
> PC, but it is not a difficult matter to make a serial-interfaced
> bridge. Take three free sample PICs from Microchip's website and
> you're there with three nodes for a total cost of $40 (plus some glue
> - battery holder, caps, etc).

For $99, you get it all from Atmel.
http://www.atmel.com/dyn/Products/tools_card.asp?tool_id=4291

Free zigbee stack to boot, with no royalties.