Communication rate on IXXAT CAN@net II interface module

[Dumbledore]

I am currently working on a project where we are using a Maxon EPOS2 50/5 drive along with a brushless DC motor, 50W EC brushless motor with inbuilt hall sensors and encoder.  We are planning to use Labview to develop some control algorithms and control the drive.  The EPOS2 unit supports CAN and we are proposing using an IXXAT CAN@net II interface which has supporting Labview vi's.  I just want to clarify if I use Labview to control the EPOS2 drive, will I be able to access data (current, voltage rotational speed etc.) and control the drive at data rates up to 10kHz? Where are the bottle necks, system limitations likely to be? Computer FSB speed, memory and cpu speed limitations?

[Andrew McL]

Hi Dumbledore,

Thank you for contacting National Instruments. I have had a look at both of the two 3rd Party pieces of equipment that you are speaking about: Maxon EPOS2 50/5 and the IXXAT CAN@Net II device.

Regarding whether or not you can access the data points such as Current, voltage & rotational speed - this would depend entirely whether or not your EPOS2 50/5 gives back that information. If there are CAN messages that can be sent to this device that will return these messages then you will be able to read that data. I would recommend contacting the manufacturers of this piece of equipment to verify if you can get this data back over CAN.

Again, assuming that the IXXAT CAN@Net II device will return all of your CAN messages back over Ethernet then I can see no reason whatsoever why you wouldn't be able to get the data back that you require. I would check with the manufacturers of this piece of equipment to find out the maximum Bus speed of their particular CAN interface. It would also be worth asking Maxon about this too.

In terms of the likely bottle necks, I should have thought that the limiting factor would be the speed of your ethernet connection. If you are running this on a private network with only the PC connected to the IXXAT device, you should have no problem. If however this is part of a larger LAN, you may experience delays due to network traffic which is not a LabVIEW/Hardware fault, it is simply a problem with large LANs.

As far as I can tell though, you should have no problem using this setup.

Many thanks,