Product Brief
TI, Ember team on low-power ZigBee chipset
6/15/2005 11:29 AM EDT
MANHASSET, N.Y. — Texas Instruments Inc. has announced a collaboration with Ember Corp. to unveil the lowest power consuming ZigBee networking and microcontroller platform.
Ember (Boston, Mass.) has paired its EM2420 802.15.4/ZigBee-compliant semiconductor platform with the MSP430F161x series ultra-low power MCU from Texas Instruments (Dallas, Texas) 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 EM260 network processor.
The dual-chip network module provides a complete, integrated MSP430 MCU, a radio and the ZigBee software platform. To reduce the device's footprint and bill of materials, the MSP430F161x MCU series integrates all peripherals including high-performance analog and up to 55 KB of flash memory, which reduces the need for EEPROM.
The device also features on-chip, high-precision control peripherals such as a 12-bit, 200 ksamples per second (ksps) analog to digital converter (ADC) and a 12-bit digital to analog converter (DAC) with a settling time of 1 microsecond.
The MSP430F161x MCU series offers what TI claims is the industry's lowest current consumption of 1.1 microamps, a standby mode with real-time clock operation, as well as a 300 microamp active mode that allows system clock tuning to meet precise power requirements.
The 2.4 GHz Ember EM2420 provides a flexible, simple interface to a wide range of microcontrollers. The EM260 is a ZigBee wireless network processor for OEMs that have standardized on TI and other select MCU platforms. The processor enables a ZigBee-compliant network node with "location awareness," allowing for easier commissioning, management and network sub-segmentation.
Ember also offers a developer kit with hardware, development tools, and software for embedded applications, in a JumpStart version priced at $4,995 and full developer version priced at $13,950.
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