Ember (company)


Ember was an American company based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, which is now owned by Silicon Labs. Ember had a radio development centre in Cambridge, England, and distributors worldwide. It developed ZigBee wireless networking technology that enabled companies involved in energy technologies to help make buildings and homes smarter, consume less energy, and operate more efficiently. The low-power wireless technology can be embedded into a wide variety of devices to be part of a self-organizing mesh network. All Ember products conform to IEEE 802.15.4-2003 standards.

History

Ember was founded in 2001 by Andrew Wheeler and Robert Poor. Both were students at MIT when they founded Ember with $3 million in seed funding led by Polaris Venture Partners with DFJ New England, Stata Venture Partners, and Bob Metcalfe. The company began by making mesh networking software for other companies' microchips and has since evolved to manufacturing ZigBee compliant chips itself. In 2003 Ember released its first chip, the EM2420 which was fully compliant with IEEE 802.15.4-2003 standards. Since then, Ember has released the EM260 ZigBee network co-processor and the EM250, ZigBee system-on-chip, and EmberZNet ZigBee Software in 2005. In 2007, the EmberZNet PRO was launched to provide software that supports the ZigBee PRO Feature Set. The Smart Energy Suite and new versions of ZigBee Development Tools came out in 2008. In 2009 Ember released its third generation chips, the EM300 series.
In May, 2012, Ember was acquired by Silicon Labs.

Products

Ember produces Zigbee chips, software and development tools.

Chips