Jennic ships 1000th IEEE802.15.4 and ZigBee evaluation kit

Jennic has announced that it has shipped 1000 of its IEEE802.15.4 and ZigBee wireless microcontroller evaluation kits. The kits provide all the software and hardware tools to enable product designers to develop and monitor complex tree or mesh network topology wireless sensor networks using the company’s JN5121 wireless microcontroller.

Jim Lindop, CEO of Jennic, commented, “The market has moved considerably in the last year – from one of evaluation of the standards and technology, to one of end-product development for real-life applications. This milestone for Jennic is a great testament to both our progress in the market as well as the uptake of the IEEE802.15.4/ZigBee standard in wireless sensor networks. We are seeing demand evenly spread throughout the territories we are active in – Asia, North America, and Europe. In 2007, we anticipate many end-product announcements and volumes taking off.”

Kirsten West, principal analyst at WTRS, a wireless technology market research firm, commented, “Wireless control networking is a concept whose time has arrived. After decades of discussion followed by sporadic wired control network growth, the market finally has both the infrastructure within reach as well as the economic drivers in place to make this sea-change possible. Many OEMs are positioning themselves in preparation for ZigBee-enabled product launches, and over the next 12-18 months true product shipments will emerge.”

The applications that the Jennic evaluation kits are being used for are diverse and go far beyond the usual building control and industrial automation environments that might be expected for wireless sensor networks. Jim Lindop added, “There are also a myriad of other uses being found for our kits – like parking meters, AMR (automatic meter reading), street lighting and many cable replacement situations, like keyboards and audio point-to-point systems. Our evaluation kits and applications support make it easy for our customers to develop successful products.”

Jennic’s evaluation kits contain a controller board with display and four sensor boards. They include a home automation demonstration system that monitors data from temperature, humidity and light level sensors and displays the results on the controller’s LCD display, while commands sent between the nodes activate control signals. This example system can be used directly as the basis for many product developments.

The software development environment includes a complete tool suite for application development, including compiler, assembler, debugger and flash programmer. Library builds for coordinator, routers and end-devices with different network configurations are provided. A comprehensive documentation package is backed by extensive support from Jennic’s website and its team of experienced applications engineers.