Ember demos world’s first multi-microcontroller ZigBee network

BOSTON and SEOUL, South Korea, Sept. 26, 2006 – Ember Corporation announced it will demonstrate this week at the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) in Boston and the ZigBee Open House in Seoul, Korea, how easy it is to ZigBee enable devices from a variety of manufacturers and have them operate as a low-power wireless mesh network.

Ember will show a lighting control network of devices powered by microcontrollers from a variety of vendors, including STMicroelectronics, Atmel, ADI, Microchip and SiLabs. The devices are paired with Ember’s EM260 ZigBee co-processor, running the EmberZNet™ ZigBee stack to form the network. The network also includes devices with Ember’s own EM250 system-on-a-chip (SoC).

The demo illustrates that OEMs don’t have to re-engineer their products to add low-power wireless communications capabilities. They can continue to use their preferred microcontrollers and development tools, while letting Ember’s EM260 handle the ZigBee networking through EZSP - a simple plug-and-play SPI interface to their chips. Existing products can be seamlessly migrated to become wireless ZigBee-enabled devices by simply adding the EM260 network co-processor and using a standard interface to the existing microcontroller.

“More than eight billion microcontrollers are shipped each year. We wanted to demonstrate how virtually any of those products can be ZigBee networked easily and quickly,” said Robert LeFort, CEO of Ember. “We want to make ZigBee ubiquitous by enabling customers to network any microcontroller of their choice and foster new breakthroughs in improved energy conservation, safety, and comfort in building and home automation applications, among others.”

The Embedded Systems Conference is being held at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, September 26 and 27 (Ember Booth #1228), and the ZigBee Open House will be held on September 28 at the JW Marriott Hotel in Seoul, Korea.

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 enables communication among embedded microcontrollers with standards-based wireless mesh networking semiconductors and software. Ember helps its customers to automate home appliances, lower energy consumption in buildings, keep borders and infrastructure secure, and control industrial processes, just to name four of the many diverse applications being developed by Ember’s more than 100 customers. Spun out of MIT in 2001, Ember is headquartered in Boston and has its radio development center in Cambridge, England and distributors worldwide. Ember is a lead member 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.

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