Mr. Grammer: Sure. Ember is a three-year-old company that derived out of DARPA-funded work done at MIT by Robert Poor and Andy Wheeler. They developed an algorithm with mesh configuration for device-to-device networking. Ember, the company, was formed in January of 2001. Ember has taken in approximately $28 million of financing. One of the early investors was Bob Metcalfe who is well known for basically inventing Ethernet and founding 3Com Corporation. We received venture financing in March of 2001 followed by another round in 2002. We currently have 32 employees. Our investors include Polaris Venture Partners, GrandBanks Capital, DFJ New England, DFJ ePlanet, and RRE. The company has been shipping products since July of last year. We have over 80 customers in various stages of pilot and production. We currently ship a family of RF radios with our software networking solution and offer evaluation kits, both modules and software.
TWST: So, in other words, you provide someone with the product who then
provides a product to the consumer. Is that how this works?
Ms. One example is a company called Sensitech located in Beverly,
Massachusetts. They are one of the leading suppliers of temperature
reading for cold chain management. Produce, pharmaceuticals, ice cream,
or any cold product that's shipped in a container truck needs to be
monitored to make sure the temperature stays within range. The current
problem container trucks have is that when they pull in today to a
loading dock, each shipment has to be unloaded and then they pull out
the temperature tracking device, and then they download the information.
The ideal solution would be to pull into a loading dock, open the doors,
and immediately allow the temperature devices to wirelessly communicate
to a reader at the loading dock, and therefore, before they even unload
one pound of goods, they would be able to determine whether everything
was acceptable within the temperature range or not. And then if it had
not been, they could send it right back. So, that's one application.
Other customers, which are not yet announced, are focused on the
applications of connecting lighting, thermostat, temperature control in
building automation as well as in home automation. We also have been
doing some work with environmental monitoring, and we have some early
projects on the military side.
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