October 21-22, 2008 Metering Russia, St. Petersburg, Russia

November 5-6, 2008 Energy Efficiency & Sustainability Symposium, Atlanta, GA

Bob Gohn will present “Wireless Networks go Green” at 1:40 PM on November 5th

November 5-6, 2008 Remote 2008, Atlanta, GA

Bob Gohn, Ember vice president of marketing will be on a panel titled "Wireless Communications...so many decisions" at 8:50 AM on November 5th

He will also present “Leveraging the ZigBee Wireless Standard for AMI Networks” at 9:20 AM on November 6th

November 11-14, 2008
Electronica, Munich, Germany

David Egan, Ember director of product marketing will present “HANs lend a hand in home energy management” at 1:30 PM on November 13th

January 8-11, 2009
CES 2009, Las Vegas, NV

Registration Free
through November 1, 2008

Ember's ZigBee development tools let users create functionally rich, high performance ZigBee applications within the confines of Ember's fully integrated, ZigBee System-on-Chip (SoC). The new Ember InSight Desktop 2.0, xIDE 2.0 Development Environment and AppBuilder tools sport new features that speed and simplify development of sophisticated ZigBee PRO applications, such as ZigBee Smart Energy (SE)-based devices that include ECC Security for device authentication, Energy Services Portal functions and in-the-field bootloading.

This high performance toolset together with EmberZNet PRO networking software make the Ember EM250 the only true system-on-chip platform supporting the ZigBee PRO Feature Set that can accommodate even the largest, highest performing ZigBee applications.

“Quality and rich features have always set Ember apart,” said Joel Young, senior vice president of research and development and CTO, Digi International, a leader in device networking for business. “While other ZigBee vendors have not been able to keep up with the increasing demand for more application code space, Ember has made it possible to accommodate even the most sophisticated energy application on a single chip.”

Click Here to view full announcement
Click Here for product information

Possibly the single most important feature of any embedded wireless product is a boot loader. A boot loader enables the system to be upgraded in the field, either to support bug fixes, or to add features. The most important design considerations of a boot loader involve the available local storage and the time and complexity of the upgrades. Ember has defined two different high-level types of boot loaders in order to describe the major differences available. 

An “application boot loader” is one where the system board has enough local memory to store an entire copy of the application. In this case, the boot loader firmware does not need to support the radio hardware directly. The running application can receive the new firmware as normal data, and store it off in the local memory storage. In ZigBee networks, this means that the transmission of the new firmware can go over the mesh, multi-hop. Also, all of the different devices in the network can be upgraded in any order. Either at a specified time, or after a special command, the boot loader copies the new application in to program memory, and then resets into the new application.

A “stand-alone boot loader” is one where the boot loader firmware does support the radio hardware directly. Usually, this support would only be one-hop so the network needs to handle getting the new firmware to within one hop of each target. In a system where all of the nodes are the same, with a possible exception of the gateway (e.g., a sensor network), the system can boot load the closest nodes first, and then each node can clone itself to nearby nodes. In a system where there are different types of nodes, some other method must be used, such as sending the packets across the mesh to a nearby node, which can then send the message the last hop as a boot loader packet. In a system with this kind of boot loader, care needs to be taken with upgrades, especially ones which are not over-the-air compatible with previous revisions. In general, it is safest to boot load the nodes that are the most hops away from the gateway first, and work inwards from there.

Hybrid systems are also possible, where some nodes do have enough memory to use an application boot loader and others must use the stand-alone boot loader. This extra memory can also be used as a staging area for some nearby node running the stand-alone boot loader. Also, systems using the network co-processor model with an em260 must also take in to consideration boot loading the network co-processor firmware as well as the application firmware. For more information on this or other concerns with boot loaders, please see chapter 7 of the Application Developer’s Reference Manual.

Skyworks Solutions, Inc. has partnered with Ember to develop the industry’s first portfolio of ZigBee front-end modules (FEM) targeting applications such as smart meters in energy management, home area networks (HAN), and industrial automation. Skyworks is an innovator of high performance analog and mixed signal semiconductors enabling mobile connectivity.

Skyworks SKY65336 is a fully integrated Front-End Module with integrated LNA for ZigBee applications. The 8 x 8 mm Multi-Chip Module (MCM) contains a selectable transmit and receive path, and integrated baluns to allow for simple connectivity to a 2.4 GHz transceiver.

Skyworks SKY65337 is a high-efficiency 2.4 GHz Transmit/Receive Front-End Module for ZigBee applications. The small 8 x 8 mm Multi-Chip Module (MCM) contains a 2400-2490 MHz high-efficiency transmit path and a low-loss bidirectional path. The bidirectional path can be used to directly connect the antenna port to a directional RF port.

The transmit path in both FEMs consists of a harmonic filter and high efficiency Power Amplifier (PA) capable of providing +20 dBm of power at the antenna port. Also included is an internal balun to allow use of differential input signals

Click Here for more details.