Lowest power ZigBee solution to ship next month

Ember’s ZigBee compliant radio platform paired with Texas Instruments’ “ultra low-power” MSP430 MCU reduces cost and design time for embedded ZigBee applications

BOSTON — Ember Corporation announced that the industry’s lowest power ZigBee™ networking platform, which it developed jointly with Texas Instruments Inc. will start shipping next month. ZigBee is a wireless, standards-based radio technology designed for remote monitoring, control and sensor network applications including home control and awareness, building automation, industrial automation, asset management and Homeland Security.

Ember also announced that customers have already attended training at Ember to get an early start in the development of wireless applications based on the new platform, which is currently undergoing final quality assurance testing. These include a sensor application being developed by a U.S. government defense agency, and a wireless, wearable, non-intrusive monitor for the healthcare and eldercare markets being developed by AFrame Digital, a Virginia based healthcare products and technology company.

The new ZigBee platform integrates Ember’s proven and ZigBee compliant EM2420 radio transceiver, and EmberZNet software platform with TI’s 16-bit MSP430F1612 microcontroller (MCU) into a complete, dual-chip ZigBee/802.15.4 solution. It is designed for OEMs building ZigBee applications that require the lowest possible power requirements, as well as for companies who have already standardized on the TI MCU and wish to ZigBee-enable their products quickly and easily.

The 2.4 GHz 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 low power TI MCU will also be paired with Ember’s recently announced EM260, network processor solution which will be available early next year.

The MSP430F1612 ultra-low-power MCU offers the industry’s lowest current consumption with only 1.1 micro-amps standby mode with real-time clock operation, as well as a 300 micro-amps (1 MHz) active mode that allows engineers to tune system clocking to meet precise power requirements. With fast instruction execution enabled by a modern 16-bit RISC CPU, a start-up time of less than six microseconds from standby and a fully synchronized, high-speed system clock, the chip’s total power consumption is 10 times lower than competing devices.

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.

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