Ember and Computime offer fast, easy, affordable ZigBee platform

BOSTON, Sept. 19, 2007 – Ember, a provider of ZigBee networks for smarter, more energy efficient buildings and homes, and Computime announced they have teamed to offer OEMs a fast, easy and affordable way to bring ZigBee products to market. ZigBee is a global wireless industry standard designed for remote monitoring, control and sensor networks.

Computime, a Hong Kong-based electronic controls company, has developed a family of low-cost plug-and-play ZigBee modules based on Ember’s EM250 and EM260 chipsets and EmberZNet ZigBee software. The Computime CT-EM250 and CT-EM260 RF Transceiver Modules are low-power modules designed to embed wireless mesh networking capabilities into products for building and home automation, security and lighting controls, home appliance and alarms, remote monitoring and automatic meter reading applications. Computime will also offer fully developed, plug-and-play home automation and automatic metering products for consumers based on Ember’s ZigBee technology in the future.

“The CT Transceiver Module family is designed for companies that don’t want to deal with the complexities of RF design challenges and all of the steps involved in chip and board development, fine tuning and getting the product FCC certified,” said Robert LeFort, Ember CEO. “It’s a ready-to-go ZigBee platform to which customers can simply add their ZigBee applications and get to market quickly.”

Customers can also take advantage of Computime’s engineering and manufacturing services to gain faster time to market with a complete ZigBee solution that is designed, tested and built in Computime’s high volume manufacturing facilities.

Technical details
The CT-EM250 and CT-EM260 RF Transceiver Modules are compact surface mounted modules measuring just 20.32 x 25.52 x 3 mm (integrated antenna version) and 20.32 x 19.53 x 3 mm (external antenna version). They both integrate a 2.4GHz, IEEE 802.15.4-compliant transceiver with a 16-bit XAP2b microprocessor. They consist of integrated Flash and RAM memory and peripherals.

The module contains qualified RF hardware and enough processor power to run the EmberZNet stack or other ZigBee network stack (depending on version). ZigBee Coordinators (ZC), ZigBee Routers (ZR), and ZigBee End Devices (ZED) are all supported and are programmed onto the module together with a custom application.

“We partnered with Ember to combine our expertise in the design and manufacturing of building and home automation products with Ember’s best-in-class ZigBee chipsets and software,” said Bernard Auyang, CEO of Computime. “We wanted to offer the best available ZigBee technology at the lowest cost and with the fastest time-to-market simplicity.”

Pricing and availability
The CT-EM250 and CT-EM260 RF Transceiver Modules are available in volume shipments from Computime for less than $10 U.S., depending on quantity.

[an error occurred while processing this directive] About Computime
Founded in 1974, Computime is a global technology and manufacturing company that provides innovative automation and control solutions to their customers in the industrial, commercial and consumer markets. Headquartered in Hong Kong, Computime operates more than a dozen design, manufacturing and sales facilities in Asia, Europe and North America. Computime designs, manufactures and distributes products and systems with an objective to make people's lives safer, more productive and comfortable.

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 develops wireless sensor and control network technologies that help make our living and working environments safer, smarter, more comfortable and energy efficient. Ember’s ZigBee-based semiconductors and software enable communication between devices embedded in a variety of building and home automation products. Ember is headquartered in Boston and has a semiconductor 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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