The wireless sensor nodes provide a building monitoring application with the provision of temperature, humidity and light sensors, coupled with switches and lights.

The nodes can be used as endpoints, routers, co-ordinators and gateways with a mix of standard and high-power modules that can be either mains AC or battery powered.

Each node also provides a RS232 serial port for configuration and monitoring.

The nodes are preconfigured with a building monitoring application that runs on Jennic's standard ZigBee network stack.

Nodes can be modified with Jennic's integrated developer environment allowing users to migrate towards their own application.

Following on from a phase of evaluation and prototyping ZigBee networks, the worldwide market is moving towards many companies undertaking trial networks in a variety of environments.

The ability to deploy systems with 100 or more nodes using Jennic's wireless microcontrollers with a standard product enables development effort to be focused on the customer applications rather than the underlying wireless technology.

Tony Lucido, VP marketing of Jennic, commented: 'Having provided ZigBee evaluation kits through 2006 we are now seeing many customers wanting to evaluate large-scale deployments of wireless sensor networks'.

'The key features customers require are stable, robust, wireless communication in a variety of challenging environments, particularly commercial buildings, industrial environments and co-existence with Wi-Fi networks'.

'A year ago Jennic addressed the market need for low-cost, easy development and we now complement this by simplifying large-scale deployments with mature, stable hardware and software.'

By Robert Hoskins

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