This is a collection of VIs for easier interface with basic
CANopen client operations such as SDO upload, SDO download and PDO messages. Helper VIs for arbitrary mapping of dictionary objects to specific PDOs are also implemented. The project includes a quite crude implementation of the DSP-402 profile for handling motor drives in velocity and/or in position mode.
The library has been developed in LabVIEW 8.6.1. The real CANbus board used is a
KVaser PCIcanx HS so the library is based on the LabVIEW driver provided by KVaser.
Anyway port it to another device should be not difficult: there are only 4 VIs that use low-level calls. Just rewrite CAN open.vi, CAN close.vi, COB read.vi and COB write.vi using the new driver.
FeaturesThis library followed a pragmatic approach more than an academic one. This means I did not implement what required by the specifications, but what I needed for a project I was working on in that moment. In the following a list of features:
- low level CANbus supported (NMT, SYNC and raw COB messages);
- SDO download and upload;
- arbitrary PDO mappings, either for TxPDO or RxPDO;
- automatic heartbeat monitoring;
- synchronous and asynchronous version of SDO upload;
- automatic resolution of TxPDO messages to LabVIEW data;
- a bare DSP402 class for handling motor drivers with homing, velocity mode and profile position mode.
DrawbacksThe library is a partial implementation of what required to fully support the CANopen specifications. The major limitations include (but are not limited to):
- SDO messages are not fragmented in more than one CAN message, hence the payload is limited to 4 bytes;
- DSP-301 and DSP-401 are mixed together in the CAN open class;
- I am not particulary proud of the DSP 402 class;
- no fancy menu for calling the VIs.