Ember’s small sparks-A Boston startup is igniting networks with embedded wireless processors.

In the networking industry, fatter pipes cure all ills. But a countermovement is taking shape under the "small is beautiful" banner, eschewing the relentless pursuit of broadband. Wireless personal area networks are paragons of simplicity: low-cost, low-power devices lashed together in networks that draw on the embedded processors in industrial equipment, buildings, cars, and home appliances.

By Martin LaMonica RedHerring.com

While studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, Robert Poor designed a new kind of network in which distributed devices detect each other and organize ad hoc networks over radio transmitters. He teamed up with fellow MIT grad student Andy Wheeler, and the result was Ember, a Boston startup founded in 2001. The company raised a $3 million first round last year led by Polaris Venture Partners and another $5 million in February.

Commercial sites like oil refineries and high-rise buildings are littered with thousands of embedded switches, valves, and controls. Wiring them manually is costly–up to $10 per foot–and potentially dangerous. Ember’s pitch to customers is that embedded radio processors are cheaper than wired controls. "Little tiny devices don’t have much to say–but there’s a lot of them," says Mr. Poor. In the first field test, wireless sensors were placed under rocks in Hawaii to monitor endangered species.

Ember has adopted 802.15.4, the wireless standard favored by diversified giants like Eaton and Honeywell, which manufacture everything from hydraulic brakes to thermostats, as well as by the chip vendors Adcon Telemetry, Motorola, and Philips Semiconductors.

Ember will license and sell its radio-cum-processor cards, which are expected to ship in September, for industrial automation, buildings, and military applications. But the company’s real ace is its EmberNet software, which enables devices to self-configure a wireless network. A developer initiative invites programmers to find innovative homes for wireless sensors.

In July, having tackled thorny technical issues, like radio interference in a water filtration plant deployment, Ember pulled in Jeffrey Grammer, a chip industry veteran and former VC, as CEO. Mr. Grammer sees many parallels between Ember today and 3Com in the early ’80s, when Ember board member Robert Metcalfe was 3Com’s CEO. Early customer demand dictated market growth, which in 3Com’s case was for a new networking protocol called ethernet. Ember’s mission is similar: to be the standard for embedded wireless networking. Now that’s thinking big.

http://www.herring.com/mag/issue117/4143.html