In cooperation with PEAK-System, the German company Embedded Systems Academy GmbH (EmSA) from Barsinghausen has published the self-configuring CANopen Controller Library for host applications and control programs that supports all CAN interfaces of the PCAN series. The library called CANopenIA-MGR provides immediate access to CANopen systems and does not require any knowledge of specific details. Thus, the host system can thus easily access all parameters in the network. This saves operators and developers long configuration processes and simplifies access to the programming interface. In addition, event messages provide additional safety, e.g. to be informed in case of an emergency or when a node is booted.
The network is automatically scanned and configured on startup to receive and transmit all relevant information. The programming interface allows access to all parameters of any device on the bus, based on the node ID and the entry in the object dictionary. The library then automatically selects the best CANopen communication method (PDO or SDO).
The self-configuring CANopen controller uses the PCAN-Basic DLL and can therefore be used on any Windows system with pre-installed drivers. A command line demo and programming examples for C++ and Java are provided. Examples with other programming languages are available on request from EmSA. A free trial version is available for download there.