Product category:
Microprocessors, Microcontrollers and DSPs
News Release from: Texas Instruments (April 2001-March 2006) | Subject: MSP430F161x series
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 20 June 2005
Frugal MCU turns to ZigBee networking
Texas Instruments has collaborated with Ember Corp to unveil the world's lowest power consuming ZigBee networking and microcontroller (MCU) platform.
Texas Instruments has collaborated with Ember Corp to unveil the world's lowest power consuming ZigBee networking and microcontroller (MCU) platform ZigBee is a wireless, standards-based radio technology that addresses the unique needs of remote monitoring, control and sensor network applications including home control and awareness, building automation, industrial automation, asset management and homeland security
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 8 Nov 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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Ember has paired its EM2420 802.15.4/ZigBee-compliant semiconductor platform with TI's MSP430F161x series of ultra-low-power MCU for developers building ZigBee applications that require the lowest possible power requirements.
TI's MSP430 platform of MCUs will also support Ember's next-generation EM260T network processor, which debuted last week at the ZigBee Open House in Oslo, Norway.
The new dual-chip network module provides a complete, integrated MSP430 MCU, a radio and the ZigBee software platform for OEMs wishing to tap into the booming market for ZigBee/802.15.4 wireless sensing and control applications.
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To reduce the device's footprint and bill of materials (BOM), the MSP430F161x MCU series integrates all peripherals including high-performance analogue and up to 55Kbyte of Flash memory, which reduces the need for EEPROM.
The device also features on-chip, high-precision control peripherals such as a 12bit 200Ksample/s analogue to digital convertor (ADC) and a 12bit digital to analogue convertor (DAC) with a settling time of 1us.
"The MSP430F161x MCU series is a great partner with Ember's platforms because it sports highly integrated peripherals, such as its dynamic memory access (DMA) and digital to analogue (DAC) and analogue to digital convertors (ADC), that are high performance yet consume very little power", said Venkat Bahl, Vice President of Marketing, Ember.
"Our combined solution set gives OEMs everything they need to get into the ZigBee game, including the need for ultra-low-power low-cost simple programming and debugging, and fast time to market".
The MSP430F161x MCU series offers the industry's lowest current consumption with only 1.1uA standby mode with real-time clock operation, as well as a 300uA (1MHz) active mode that allows engineers to tune system clocking to meet precise power requirements.
With fast instruction execution enabled by a modern 16bit RISC CPU, a startup time of less than 6us from standby and a fully synchronised, high-speed system clock, the chip's total power consumption is 10 times lower than competing devices.
CPU power requirements are also kept to a minimum by the DMA controller which allows movement of data from one memory address to another without CPU intervention.
The DMA controller reduces system power consumption by allowing the CPU to remain in sleep mode without having to awaken to move data to or from a peripheral.
The device also features a flexible clock system with five low-power modes and a zero power brown out reset (BOR).
The 2.4GHz Ember EM2420 is the highest performing, most power-efficient radio transceiver in its class, providing a flexible, simple interface to a wide range of microcontrollers.
The new EM260 is a ZigBee wireless network processor for OEMs who have standardised on TI and other select MCU platforms.
The processor enables for the first time a ZigBee-compliant network node with "location awareness", which allows for easier commissioning, management and network subsegmentation.
The EM260 also has the highest RF output and Rx sensitivity for power consumption than competitive ZigBee products.
The EmberNet Developer Kit includes hardware, development tools, and software for embedded applications - everything needed to build intelligent, robust, decentralised device networks using Ember and TI devices.
The kit is available now and can be ordered from Ember at $4995 for the JumpStart Kit and $13,950 for the full developer kit.
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