Ember Corporation today added an entry-level
development kit to its toolkit portfolio to offer customers a range of
options for quickly designing ZigBee wireless networking capabilities
into their products.
The Ember JumpStart(TM) Developer Kit enables OEMs and systems
integrators to accelerate proof-of-concept prototypes for embedded
low-power, low-data rate wireless networking applications. The
JumpStart kit includes both hardware and software, and works with
multiple third-party microcontrollers.
“The new JumpStart Kit serves two objectives,” said Venkat Bahl,
Ember’s vice president of marketing. “It provides an entry-level
ZigBee development toolset that will appeal to a wider base of
manufacturers. Also, it lets experienced developers more quickly test
new ideas for applications with a smaller up-front investment. When
those prototypes are fully baked, customers can smoothly transition to
Ember’s full Developer Kit to refine and debug commercial-ready
products.”
JumpStart Kit components
The hardware package consists of six Ember development boards, a
serial cable, antennae and batteries. The software package includes
Ember’s ZigBee compliant EmberZNet(TM) networking stack, which
incorporates an easy application programming interface (API) that
shields customers from the intricacies of ZigBee networking, letting
them focus on their embedded applications. The API is consistent
across all EmberZNet products, providing a uniform development
environment for all the various EmberZNet development tools. It
contains libraries for mesh, star and hybrid-network topologies.
OEMs that want more customized capabilities than the ZigBee
standard supports can take advantage of an EmberNet(TM) variant of the
Ember JumpStart Developer Kit. EmberNet is Ember’s original
development suite for reliable and secure mesh networking
applications, which has fueled more real-world commercial products
than any other platform.
The JumpStart Kit includes a 30-day evaluation compiler license
and 60 days of technical support. When OEMs are ready to step up to
their commercial-grade development, they can seamlessly upgrade to
Ember’s full Developer Kit, which includes additional boards, and an
efficient interface to the carrier board with included
Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) injector for processing additional emulation
and debugging commands.
Pricing and availability
The Ember JumpStart Kit is available immediately with prices
starting at $4995.
About Ember Corporation
Ember Corporation develops ZigBee-based wireless semiconductor
solutions that help automate homes, make buildings consume less
energy, enable manufacturing plants to run with fewer breakdowns, and
keep the country’s borders and infrastructure safe and secure. With
more than 120 customers, Ember’s vision is to help create an “Internet
of things” by enabling the eight billion microcontrollers built into
products each year to support low-cost, low-power networking
applications in any industry. Headquartered in Boston with offices and
distributors worldwide, the company is a lead promoter of the ZigBee
Alliance and its technology is the National Technical Systems (NTS)’s
“Golden Suite” for testing the interoperability of all 802.15.4/ZigBee
products.
