May 20-22, 2008
ZigBee Expo, Santa Clara, CA. USA
Ember Booth # 319
Bob Gohn, Ember vice president of Marketing will present on two panels – “ZigBee in Homes” and “Smart Meters and Home Automation”

June 11, 2008
Sensors Expo, Rosemont, IL. USA
Skip Ashton, Ember vice president of engineering will present "Wireless Networks Go Green" at 11:15 AM

June 16-19, 2008
HITEC 2008
Ember Booth # 1935
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June 25-26, 2008
Zigbee Developer's Conference
Munich, Germany
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July 22-24, 2008
Wireless Japan, Tokyo
Ember in ZigBee Booth # B-296
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Ember announced its Smart Energy Suite (SES), a collection of embedded software, tools and silicon that dramatically simplifies the delivery of devices certified to the ZigBee Alliance’s Smart Energy (SE) Profile. The Smart Energy Profile defines the standard behaviors of secure, easy-to-use, Home Area Network (HAN) devices, which are critical components of emerging Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) deployments.

HANs connect thermostats, in-home displays, smart appliances, and other load control device to the utility network. AMI uses a smart electric meter or other energy gateway to enable continuous two way communications between utilities and HAN-based devices.

Ember has been working with AMI industry leaders within the ZigBee Alliance to accelerate delivery of Smart Energy Profile Certified products. Today, 12 vendors, including Cellnet+Hunt, Computime Limited, Comverge, Energate, Greenbox Technology, Itron, LS Industrial Systems, Co. LTD, National Technical Systems, PRI, Tendril and Trilliant have developed certified products based on Ember’s Smart Energy Suite. Ember has also partnered with Certicom, provider of the most secure public key scheme, to integrate the industry’s leading security and authentication technology into the Ember Smart Energy Suite. The Smart Energy Suite includes:

• A complete, fully certified ZigBee Smart Energy (SE) Profile reference application
• Ember’s AppBuilder tool for ZigBee SE certified device development
• Version 3.2 of the EmberZNet PRO networking stack, supporting the ZigBee PRO Feature Set
• Certicom’s Security Builder MCE (microcontroller edition) for ZigBee Smart Energy software
• Ember’s EM250 ZigBee system-on-chip and the EM260 ZigBee network co-processor

Click here for announcement

Click here for product details

Following the huge success of the first European ZigBee Developers' Conference last year, ZigBee is returning to Munich, Germany for its 2nd edition of the Developers' Conference. Ember along with its distributor for Central Europe Atlantik Electronik, and GmbH and partner Digi International is a Silver Sponsor of the event. Ember and Digi will hold a 3.5 hour hand on training session on June 24th and June 25th titled "Easy ZigBee Application Development with Ember AppBuilder and DIGI XBee"

Ember AppBuilder tool makes it easy to build certifiable ZigBee Home Automation or Smart Energy applications on top of the premier Zigbee PRO compliant stack and chipset. Participants at this workshop will use the AppBuilder tool to build ZigBee-compliant applications that can then be loaded, controlled and debugged using Ember InSight Development Kit and InSight Desktop network debug tool. Attendees and opportunity to discover the ease of use of the AppBuilder tool to develop ZigBee certifiable applications.

More details are available at the event website

ZigBee security supports two different types of security keys. Network keys are for general security of an entire system and link keys are used by the APS layer between any two devices for an additionally layer of security. Network keys are required by ZigBee and should be used for all systems. Link keys are optional for standard security but highly recommended. One thing to be careful of is that non-ZigBee PRO systems may not support link keys so interoperability is a concern when considering use of link keys. High security does require link keys.

The most common use of link keys is what is known as the trust-center link key, which is used for global communication between a device and the trust center. Depending on your system configuration, these can be preconfigured on each device at manufacturing or the joining device can acquire the trust-center link key when joining. These can also be configured to be hashed based on the joining node’s EUI-64. Remember that InSight Desktop also supports hashed keys; see preferences under the decoding tab. Finally, these can also be configured to be unique per device (not hashed), by keeping a key table on the trust center.

A lesser known use of link keys is for use at the application layer to provide additional security for messaging between any two devices. This unique link key support is provided via the security-library-link-keys library, which has to be linked in. These link keys can be either preconfigured via emberAddOrUpdateKeyTableEntry() or mediated via the trust center via emberRequestLinkKey(). Link keys can remain the same even after the network key has changed.

For more information on ZigBee security and link keys, see the ZigBee specification and chapter four of the Ember Application Developer's Reference Manual.

Daintree Networks partners with Ember to provide a deployment and management solution for ZigBee devices and networks. Daintree's Sensor Network Analyzer (SNA) software supports the Ember EM250 and EM2420 providing functionality including detailed measurements and graphical visualization of the whole network.

Recently added active device capabilities for the EM250 (when used with the SNA), mean that the EM250 can start/join a live network, interact with other devices on it, poll devices to gain information not available through passive "sniffing" alone, and send/receive ZigBee standard and proprietary messages. This functionality is particularly useful during network testing, installation and commissioning, and maintenance of ZigBee networks and devices.

If you have not previously evaluated the SNA software, you can go to www.daintree.net/register and use the registration code "ember_offer" to request a free 30-day trial. As a special offer to Ember customers, Daintree will mail one of their cool new “Introduction to ZigBee” posters to the first 50 people who register their SNA trial software. (This offer is valid until July 31, 2008.)