Hitachi teams with Ember to enter ZigBee sensor market

By Control Engineering Staff January 9, 2006

Boston, MA and Las Vegas, NV —Hitachi WirelessInfo Venture Co. (HW)—a division of Hitachi Ltd. formed in July 2005—is working with Ember Corp. to develop a family of ZigBee-based sensors for use in a variety of wireless monitoring, sensing and control applications.

HW is developing ZigBee wireless sensor and control modules based on Ember’s ZigBee compliant platform. The new modules will be marketed to other Hitachi business units, including Hitachi Electronics Services Co. and Hitachi Urban Development, as well as other OEM companies. HW plans to adopt Ember’s next-generation EM250 system-on-a-chip in 2006.

HW is developing both standard and application-specific ZigBee modules using Ember chips and software. These include wireless applications for:

Ember develops tiny, low-power ZigBee systems for wireless sensing and control networks. Ember EM250 is an 802.15.4/ZigBee system that integrates a programmable microprocessor, RF radio, network protocol stack and memory into a single tiny chip. Ember said that its ZigBee systems are already used in a variety of industrial applications, such as automatic meter reading and asset management.

For more information visit: / https://www.ember.com

— Richard Phelps , senior editor, Control Engineering