Low Design Effort

The ZeroG Wi-Fi I/O is a technology that is tightly integrated with major microcontroller providers. It includes software and hardware to simplify the design process in wireless networking. Adding Wi-Fi using ZeroG's Wi-Fi I/O requires minimal networking knowledge. It allows designers to take the module out-of-the box and bring up a Wi-Fi-connected prototype in as little as a few hours.

Tight Integration with major microcontroller providers ensures that a customer's investment in development tools, IP and code base is preserved, reducing design time. The first dev kit we've created works with Microchip MCUs:

• Software and hardware incorporate the Microchip TCP/IP networking stack
• Compatible with 8/16/32-bit product families PIC18®, PIC24®, PIC32® and dsPIC
• Development kits consist of Microchip development tools and software, ZeroG drivers and example application code

Production modules of ZG2100M will be shipped with certification from FCC, Japan and Canadian regulatory bodies across a variety of antenna configurations. Pre-scan data that is required for ETSI certification will be available.

Easy-Fi^® software suite contains APIs support infrastructure and adhoc modes, along with shared APIs for configuration and security settings ZeroG Easy-Fi^® software driver works with nearly any OS and nearly any microcontroller.

Low Power Consumption

The ZeroG Wi-Fi I/O contains dedicated on-chip power management hardware and software to achieve long battery life. The technology allows designers to reduce power consumption both on the ZG2100 and on the host microcontroller in order to meet the needs of a wide array of applications.

• Power-saving modes are optimized for long battery life. Battery life lasts as long as 10 years for "once-a-day-wake-up"
• Wireless architecture optimized for applications with low duty cycles and low bandwidth.
• The chip automatically goes on standby in between receive and transmit
  sessions, along with a "fast wake-up" call at the receipt of packet.
  • The Wi-Fi I/O automatically reduces power without intervention from host MCU
    No-host polling allows the host MCU to shut down while the chip remains active
  • The chip wakes up the host MCU at the receipt of data packets
• In many applications, the Wi-Fi I/O does not require the addition of external memory or an operating system, reducing overall system power consumption.

Low System Requirements

The combination of hardware and software from ZeroG is built from the ground up to allow embedded designers to add Wi-Fi with minimal system resources. The Wi-Fi I/O technology is architected for embedded systems and requires minimal system resources for memory footprint and processor cycles on the host microcontroller.

• On-chip hardware security accelerators for WEP/WPA/WPA2 reduce memory footprint and offloads host processor cycles
• On-chip MAC layer reduces cycles done by host processor
• No external memory required to run the Wi-Fi I/O. The host RAM requirement is as little as 2.8kB
• The Easy-Fi^® suite includes a very small and easily ported driver with a footprint that uses as little as a few hundred bytes of RAM from a host microcontroller, and less than 10kB of ROM.
• The driver includes a comprehensive suite of commands that allow it to easily run in small or no OS systems.

Low System Cost

ZeroG has created an embedded architecture where designers can minimize external components and I/Os used for an application, and in turn, reduce total system cost. Furthermore, system designers have the ability to reuse design architecture, reducing the cost of engineering efforts to bring a product to market.

• Supports low-cost 8-bit microcontrollers. ZeroG also support systems that use 16- or 32-bit MCUs.
• Add Wi-Fi without adding an OS and support an already existing OS
• No additional memory to integrate Wi-Fi
• Production modules will be shipped with certification from FCC, Japan and Canadian regulatory bodies across a variety of antenna configurations. Pre-scan data that is required for ETSI certification will also be available.