Fourth-generation ZigBee hits the streets

Ember has begun customer shipments of its EM250 ZigBee system-on-a-chip (SoC), tools and software.

Ember has begun customer shipments of its EM250 ZigBee system-on-a-chip (SoC), tools and software.

ZigBee is a wireless network standard that solves the unique needs of remote monitoring and control, and sensor network applications.

The EM250 is Ember's fourth-generation embedded wireless mesh networking platform.

The 802.15.4/ZigBee-based semiconductor system integrates a programmable microprocessor, RF radio, network protocol stack and memory into a tiny, single-chip solution smaller than a shirt button (7mm on a side).

It offers companies building ZigBee-enabled products dramatic reductions in component size, cost and power consumption, while having twice the wireless range of competitive ZigBee SoCs.

Moreover, the chip's diminutive size and power needs enable ZigBee capabilities to be embedded into products never before possible.

The EM250 semiconductor system delivers long range and reliable coexistence, and includes a low-power 16bit microcontroller, 128Kbyte of Flash memory, 5Kbyte of RAM, 2.4GHz radio and Ember's EmberZNet 2.1 software.

EmberZNet 2.1 is a ZigBee-compliant networking stack that also features a number of unique enhancements that extend ZigBee functionality, simplicity and performance.

These include support for mobile nodes, large/dense networks, as well as a transport layer to provide more reliable wireless communication between nodes and enable distributed bindings.

The EM250 has the resources required to serve as a ZigBee co-ordinator node, a full function device (FFD) or a reduced function device (RFD).

Ember's new single-chip platform enables self-organising, self-healing wireless networks on which ZigBee applications can be easily built and deployed.

The technology is already designed into numerous products from major companies.

France's Schneider Electric is architecting the chip into electricity and automation management products.

And France Telecom is designing a wireless monitoring system with the platform.

"Low-power wireless technologies, like Ember's EM250 ZigBee system-on-chip, are making possible new services that will open up new markets", said Gabriel Chegaray, Project Manager at France Telecom.

"The EM250 delivers exceptional performance".

"Ember is setting the standard for embedded wireless networking, with its industry leading ZigBee platform".

Low-power single-chip solutions like the EM250 ZigBee are making possible new wireless services that are opening up new markets for OEMs.

The EM250 delivers exceptional performance for these customers, which has caused Ember to become the leading provider of ZigBee platforms.

The EM250 is complemented by best-in-class tools for rapid application development and debugging.

The Ember InSight development environment enables OEMs to build embedded wireless applications for their products quickly and reliably.

The InSight EM250 development kit includes hardware, network development and debugging software, compiler and EmberZNet 2.1 for embedded applications, all delivered in a single, integrated development environment "Ember's powerful InSight Development Environment provides a vastly superior and easy application programming interface that shields us from the intricacies of ZigBee networking, enabling us to focus our efforts on designing solid applications", said Marc Bruel, Manager of Research and Development with Schneider Electric.

"And EmberZNet software has for long been universally recognised as the most reliable and features rich ZigBee networking stack".

The InSight EM250 Development Kit costs $10,000 in the full version, and $2,500 in the JumpStart version.

Both kits have begun shipping under allocation and availability will ramp up in April.

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