NEC, Skyley and Uniband Electronic Corporation (UBEC) have introduced development kits, including both software and hardware, that enable OEMs and system developers to develop low power, wireless peer-to-peer mesh networks ideal for the rapidly growing field of industrial and residential building management systems, lighting controls, automated meters, sensors, and security systems. The kits will be certified for compliance with the Enhanced ZigBee Standard, to be unveiled by the ZigBee Alliance early next year, as per a statement issued by the companies.
The Software Development Kit (SDK), co-developed by NEC Electronics and Skyley Networks, allows network development without the need for C programming, and includes a network sniffer, network viewer, node-setting tool and node monitor tool, claimed the company.
NEC informed that the hardware platform consists of evaluation boards based on All Flash microcontrollers by NEC Electronics, which is claimed to offer the flexibility of flash-based programming and better power consumption levels, combined with UBEC's UZ2400 transceiver device, which integrates a wireless RF transceiver operating at 2.4 gigahertz, physical layer baseband and media access control layer architecture.
After prototyping with the development kit, users can choose to develop their systems using any of NEC Electronics' family of flash-based microcontrollers, including the 8-bit 78K0, the 16-bit K0R, and the 32-bit V850ES microcontrollers. Evaluation boards for the 78K0 are available now, and additional boards for 78K0R and V850ES will be added in early 2007, NEC said.
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