On the heels of last week’s debut of the industry’s first ZigBee-on-a-chip solution, Ember today
introduced at the ZigBee Open House event a network processor version
of the same product family for OEMs that prefer to build ZigBee
applications using popular third-party microcontrollers (MCUs). ZigBee
is a wireless network standard that solves the unique needs of remote
monitoring and control, and sensor network applications.
The new Ember EM260(TM) network processor provides all of the
advanced ZigBee wireless networking features and functionality as
Ember’s next-generation EM250(TM) ZigBee-on-a-chip, but in conjunction
with application microcontrollers from Atmel, Texas Instruments and
others. The EM260 is designed for OEMs who have standardized on a
particular microcontroller, or who wish to tap into the booming ZigBee
wireless market quickly without having to rewrite and port their
application code to a new platform. It’s also well suited for certain
larger, processor-intensive ZigBee applications that would benefit
from a dedicated MCU.
“The EM260 gives OEMs great flexibility in using the MCUs and
tools in which they’ve already invested a significant amount of time,
training and development expertise,” said Alf Bogen, Atmel’s AVR
managing director. “The Atmel/EM260 platform lets OEMs leverage that
investment to get up and running quickly on a next-generation ZigBee
network and MCU integrated chipset.”
The EM260 platform enables for the first time a ZigBee-compliant
network node, which allows for easier commissioning, management and
network sub-segmentation. It also has the best in class RF
characteristics and lowest power consumption along with an integrated
hardware AES 128-bit encryption engine using a true random number
generator.
The EM260 features EmberZNet(TM) 2.0, a major new release of
Ember’s networking stack featuring a number of Ember enhancements that
extend ZigBee functionality, simplicity and performance. Beyond full
support for the ZigBee standard, EmberZNet 2.0 supports application
profiles for home controls as well as user-defined network
applications. It also features an Ember transport layer to provide
more reliable wireless communication between nodes and enable
distributed bindings. The Ember transport layer, along with Ember’s
application programming interface (API), also makes it easy for
Ember’s existing customers to port their EmberNet(TM) applications to
the new ZigBee platform.
New tools
The EM260 features a new development kit with unique software
tools to further accelerate customers’ time to market. Ember WorkBench
provides a suite of tools for developing and debugging embedded ZigBee
applications. It combines an Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
with distributed network debugging and visualization tools. Developers
can connect to their target devices, effortlessly control their
application, upload firmware and collect debugging information across
multiple devices simultaneously.
“Ember is building the pervasive standard for embedded wireless
networking,” said Venkat Bahl, Ember’s vice president of marketing.
“Our next-generation platform is based on years of extensive wireless
networking experience from real-world implementations. The new
platform gives OEMs a fully integrated, one-stop-shop solution that
shields them from everything except what they do best: building
applications.”
Pricing and availability
The Ember EM260 will be available this summer and costs less than
$3.50 per unit in high volumes.
About ZigBee: Wireless Control That Simply Works
The ZigBee Alliance is an association of companies working
together to enable reliable, cost-effective, low-power, wirelessly
networked, monitoring and control products based on an open global
standard. The ZigBee Alliance is a rapidly growing, non-profit
industry consortium of leading semiconductor manufacturers, technology
providers, OEMs, and end-users worldwide. Membership is open to all.
Additional information can be found at www.zigbee.org.
About Ember Corporation
Ember Corporation develops ZigBee-compliant 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 platform is the National Technical Systems’ (NTS)
“Golden Suite” for 802.15.4/ZigBee interoperability testing. For more
information, please visit www.ember.com.
