TI achieves certification of ZigBee® Alliance's Smart Energy™ 1.1 profile implementation

TI's new Z-Stack™ 2.5.0 will help developers easily, efficiently unleash a wider range of interoperable, consumer-friendly home area network products

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Texas Instruments Incorporated

Aug 03, 2011, 10:55 ET

DALLAS, Aug. 3, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) (NYSE: TXN), the industry leader in highly integrated connectivity solutions and a Promoter member of the ZigBee® Alliance, today announced that it achieved ZigBee Certified status for its ZigBee Smart Energy™ 1.1 standard implementation, recently introduced by the ZigBee Alliance. TI is pleased to announce the availability of its new Z-Stack™ 2.5.0 with support for ZigBee Smart Energy 1.1, geared towards home area networks (HAN). Proving its leadership in the development of low-power wireless applications such as industrial monitoring and control, smart metering, building automation and more, TI's ZigBee Smart Energy 1.1 profile gives developers the confidence and means necessary to interoperate with various implementations. TI's Z-Stack 2.5.0 with ZigBee Smart Energy 1.1 is available royalty-free to all using TI's ZigBee-compliant hardware platforms. For more information, visit www.ti.com/zigbee-pr.

"TI is committed to staying ahead of the game in the connectivity space, and we are thrilled to provide our customers with the latest features of ZigBee Smart Energy 1.1," said Laurent Giai-Miniet, managing director, Low-Power RF business unit, TI. "Our new Z-Stack 2.5.0 will unleash a wider range of interoperable, consumer-friendly HAN products for monitoring things such as energy consumption – a key requirement for the U.S. Department of Energy Smart Grid program and initiatives out of the European Union. We will also continue to deliver Smart Energy-compliant software for future generations, including the forthcoming SEP 2.0."

"As a leader in the Smart Grid industry, Sensus is pleased to work with TI in driving greener utilities and energy production worldwide," said David Ayers, vice president of engineering at Sensus. "The Sensus iCON® smart meters use Smart Energy 1.1 to deliver information that helps consumers make better decisions on when and how they can save energy. This is a pivotal step in smarter energy consumption, and – together with TI – we are dedicated to continued advancements in this space."

Key features and benefits: TI's ZigBee Smart Energy 1.1-compliant solutions
Features	Benefits
Complete ZigBee solutions set includes proven, cost-effective, easy-to-use hardware, software and sample applications	All-in-one package speeds development time, enables designers to bring end products to market more quickly and efficiently Eliminates requirements of an engineer to write code for Smart Energy end products, which reduces development time by about two working months
Fully compliant ZigBee PRO feature set, IEEE 802.15.4 Medium Access Control software (TIMAC), high-performance radio and sample applications	Drives lower-cost installation for wireless devices to provide end-to-end date communication system Ensures interoperability and consistency with growing portfolio of IEEE 802.15.4 products and platforms Enables excellent coexistence with WLAN and Bluetooth® technologies, and other 2.4 GHz solutions
Backwards compatibility with ZigBee-certified products using ZigBee Smart Energy 1.0	Allows customers to use existing hardware, which saves time and decreases costs in the upgrade to ZigBee Smart Energy 1.1
Addition of new feature sets, including: Fast polling, energy price acknowledgement, block tariff, multi-energy service infrastructure devices, tunneling of other protocols, over-the-air (OTA) updates, and more	Enables interoperable, lower-power, greener devices Provides customers with more extensive information on energy consumption than proprietary solutions available today OTA upgrade enables in-field upgrades of HAN devices to future versions of ZigBee Smart Energy specifications
Extensive worldwide support and a vast selection of development tools, via TI and TI's Developer Network	Ensures 24/7 support to ease design cycles Provides access to third-party resources to help with debugging and product fine-tuning

TI's products and rich history in the ZigBee market

TI's Z-Stack is an industry-leading, Golden-Unit status ZigBee protocol stack, aimed at the growing portfolio of IEEE 802.15.4 products and platforms. The protocol is compliant with the ZigBee 2007 specification, supporting both ZigBee and ZigBee PRO feature sets on various TI hardware platforms such as the CC2530 system-on-chip, ultra-low-power MSP430™ microcontroller + CC2520 transceiver, and Stellaris® Cortex™-M microcontroller + CC2520 transceiver. The high-performance radios feature excellent coexistence with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth® technologies, along with other 2.4GHz-based solutions.

With more than 15 years in the smart metering market, TI delivers leading-edge system products, software and tools for grid infrastructure, utility metering, power line communications (PLC), and home and building automation development. TI delivers state-of-the art ZigBee solutions for smart grid and other markets, and will continue to bring new ZigBee developments to market in the future.

Tools, availability, packaging and price

The Z-Stack 2.5.0 is available today from TI's website, royalty-free to all using TI's ZigBee compliant hardware platforms. TI's ZigBee development kits are available on TI's e-store. The kits contain additional nodes for experimenting with the mesh capabilities of ZigBee, and are preprogrammed with a ZigBee demo application, giving customers ZigBee directly out of the box. A specific kit also demonstrates the concept with a CC2530 running the Z-Stack and a small MSP microcontroller running the application code.

Find out more about TI's ZigBee, Smart Grid and wireless connectivity solutions:

TI's ZigBee solutions: www.ti.com/zigbee-pr
TI's E2E™ ZigBee online forum: www.ti.com/zigbee-forum
TI's Smart Grid solutions: www.ti.com/smartgrid
TI's wireless connectivity solutions: www.ti.com/wirelessconnectivity

TI provides the industry's broadest portfolio of mature, low-power wireless connectivity solutions. With expertise in more than a dozen technologies, TI ensures customers the best-suited wireless connectivity for every type of application. TI's product portfolio is complemented with the support and tools that customers and developers need to quickly and easily bring wirelessly connected designs to market. Visit the company's Wireless Connectivity Portal for an overview of TI-supported technologies, the full product portfolio, and example use cases.

About Texas Instruments

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SOURCE Texas Instruments Incorporated