Dual Stepper Motor Controllers on a CAN Bus

[diarmaede]

Hello All,

 

Friends of mine are working on a project involving controlling many dual-stepper motor assemblies, using LabVIEW as the main control code running in the control hub computer.  The stepper assemblies will be located remotely, up to several hundred feet away from the control hub.  I suggested that they consider using a CAN bus for communications, and they seem interested.

Can any of you recommend drop-in stepper motor controllers for this application that will integrate easily with LabVIEW and NI-CAN?

Is CAN the right com bus for this application?  If not, what would you suggest?  What else should my friends be considering?

Many thanks in advance for any suggestions you can provide.

Sincerely,

Forbes Black

[diarmaede]

Hello All,

 

Friends of mine are working on a project involving controlling many dual-stepper motor assemblies, using LabVIEW as the main control code running in the control hub computer.  The stepper assemblies will be located remotely, up to several hundred feet away from the control hub.  I suggested that they consider using a CAN bus for communications, and they seem interested.

Can any of you recommend drop-in stepper motor controllers for this application that will integrate easily with LabVIEW and NI-CAN?

Is CAN the right com bus for this application?  If not, what would you suggest?  What else should my friends be considering?

Many thanks in advance for any suggestions you can provide.

Sincerely,

Forbes Black

[Spicy_Mystery]

Hi diarmaede,

What kind software will be controlling this - will you use SoftMotion?  We have CAN cRIO modules, although it seems like you would have to have a cRIO for each robot.  Are you considering any other wireless network solutions that can transmit control signals?  The cRIO would accept an ethernet line from those, too.   Other than CAN I'm not sure what else we offer - there are third party wireless solutions that might be better suited to this.

[diarmaede]

No decision has been made as to what software will be controlling this, other than wanting to use LabVIEW for as much control code as possible.  Open to all com solutions at this moment, wired or wireless.

[diarmaede]

Just looked at Softmotion information page.  That looks VERY promising.  I am still a babe in the woods here.  I have built all my LabVIEW motion control code from the ground up at this point.

[Spicy_Mystery]

Hi diarmaede,

If you have already decided you want to use LabVIEW for as much of the control as possible, then SoftMotion seems like the logical choice.  It's simply a module that works within LabVIEW, so it would work nicely with the rest of your code and you wouldn't have to worry about any 3rd party drivers or getting it to work with different software.  As far as the connectivity goes, however, it would take a good deal of programming to get SoftMotion to work with our CAN C-Series modules - you would have to create your own custom FPGA interface.  It's possible but difficult.  However, if you accomplished this, you would have CAN communication with the control power of SoftMotion.

[diarmaede]

I have written a lot of CAN code in LabVIEW, so I am fairly confident I can do this.  Realistically, the remote locations will probably use an embedded CAN controller rather than an NI CAN module, so that is my big question mark at this point.  I need to shop around and see what is available in terms of OTS embedded CAN controllers.

Thanks for the heads up on SoftMotion.  That looks very promising.

[Spicy_Mystery]

Hi diarmaede,

No problem!  As you progress with your work, feel free to post more SoftMotion questions here on the forums and our Applications Engineers will be around to help.  Good luck with your project!