CANopen on PCIe-8510

[raphael.wittwer]

Hello forum

is there a way to implement CANopen on the PCIe-8510? I have a project which had CAN from the start, but CANopen was added recently.

I found the software solution "CANopen Library Toolkit", unfortunately it does not say wheter it is compatible or not (but from context it isn't):

https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA00Z000000P6yhSAC&l=de-CH

This package seems to only support C-series CAN and PXI CANopen cards:

https://www.ni.com/de-ch/support/downloads/drivers/download.ni-industrial-communications-for-canopen...

Any suggestions? Is there a library from a 3rd party maybe if not from NI?

Thanks, Raphael

[GerdW]

Hi Raphael,

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@raphael.wittwer wrote:

is there a way to implement CANopen on the PCIe-8510? I have a project which had CAN from the start, but CANopen was added recently.

I found the software solution "CANopen Library Toolkit", unfortunately it does not say wheter it is compatible or not (but from context it isn't):

https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA00Z000000P6yhSAC&l=de-CH

This package seems to only support C-series CAN and PXI CANopen cards:

https://www.ni.com/de-ch/support/downloads/drivers/download.ni-industrial-communications-for-canopen...

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Sure there is a way to use CANopen with a PCIe8510…

That CANopenLibrary toolkit from NI is ancient and officially only supported upto LV2010. (Yes, 2010!) It's one of the reasons I still use LV2011 on several testbenches…

To use that toolkit with your PCIe8510, which is a XNET device, you will have to install the additional "NI-CAN support for XNET" to be able to also use the older NI-CAN driver - as that NI-CAN is a prerequisite for the CANopenLibrary. If you really want to go this way you should be warned: there are bugs in this combination of XNET + NI-CAN support for XNET + CANopenLibrary for this special kind of hardware! (Atleast for the PCIe8512, which I use. Another reason why I still use LV2011 for those testbenches.) You also have to keep in mind you CANNOT mix NI-CAN and CANopenLibrary usage for the same CAN port…

IndustrialCommunications only support a limited set of hardware, your PCIe8510 doesn't belong into that group (AFAIK)…

XNET on its own doesn't implement the CANopen protocol.

But: you can implement CANopen on your own as it is based on the CAN protocol. There is a FPGA-based reference implementation which you can use as an example. Basically I did the same based on NI-CAN to get rid of the CANopenLibrary. I guess you can also implement it directly with XNET, but I don't have experience with that driver.

[TheEngineeringBear]

Hey @Raphael

I completely understand the desire to stay "free" and figure it out, but just want to make sure you're aware of the officially supported card: https://www.ni.com/en-us/support/model.pci-8531.html

Good luck!

[raphael.wittwer]

Thanks for the input!

@GerdW: I am looking into this, unfortunately LV2010 seems to work only until Win7, the only Windows I am allowed to install is Win10. I am thinking about a VM if I don't have another solution in a few weeks. Unfortunately the delivery times are a bit longer than normal due to chip shortage..

@Ben: I ordered one of those, thanks for the tip! The issue is that delivery times are weeks at best, atm it looks like beginning of July for this card..

In the meantime we will try to use CAN to send CANopen packets to get my UUT to write data to the bus, I will outline this here in case it really works.