CANopen is a kind of network protocol based on CAN bus and has been used in various applications, such as vehicles, industrial machines, building automation, medical devices, maritime applications, restaurant appliances, laboratory equipment & research. It allows for not only broadcasting but also peer to peer data exchange between every CANopen node. The network management functions specified in CANopen simplifies the project design. Besides, users also can implement and diagnose the CANopen network by standard mechanisms for network start-up and error management. By the device model, any CANopen device can effectively access or get the conditions relating to the I/O values and node states of other devices in the same network. Generally, a CANopen device can be modeled into three parts.

Communication

This function unit provides the communication objects and the appropriate functionality to transport data items via the underlying network structure.

Object Dictionary

The Object Dictionary is a collection of all the data items which have an influence on the behavior of the application objects, the communication objects and the state machine used on this device.

Application Program

The application comprises the functionality of the device with respect to the interaction with the process environment

Features

• Configuration for the entire network.
• Easy access to all device parameters.
• Device synchronization.
• Cyclic and event-driven data transfer.
• Up to 128 nodes can be participated in the same CAN network.
• High transmission speed.
• Open architecture.
• CANopen is maintained by CiA (http://www.can-cia.com/).