CANopen on PC with USB to D-Sub

[dkfire]

Do you know what level of CANopen you need?

If you only need to look for some TPDO and do a little NMT to get the sensor up and running, then you should be able to implement that in LabVIEW.
Of course you need to know a little about CAN and CANopen messages, that you need to do anyway. 

And for that you could just use a NI USB CAN module. (That is what I'm doing)

And CANopen is "just" a protocol on a CAN network.

Any module that can read a CAN bus can handle CANopen or any other CAN protocol.

[David-Baratheon]

I did wonder why I would need any extra hardware for CANopen besides any CANbus hardware.

But NI have a designated CANopen module for the cRIO so I am not sure how that physically differs from their CAN module. I assumed there was something being implemented in hardware or there was a certain type of CAN used for CANopen (I know there is fast and slow CAN and I think some other characteristics that can vary as well).

I think the USB-CAN intreface is really cheap so unless there is a module that costs less then it should be ok I think. I wonder why they have a CANopen specific module if all of the CANopen elements are implemented in software. The other issue is whether any of the CAN modules would be compatable with a cDAQ.

I am not sure regarding the level of CANopen, I don't actually know what TPDO and NMT is so I guess I will have to do some reading. I don't fully understand what data I will be pulling out of the sensor or if there is a specific subsection of the CANopen data I need. I knew absolutely nothing about CAN until a few days ago so its all very new to me but I will try wrap my head around it. I am slowly getting there 

[Dennis_Knutson]

I don't have any experience with CANopen, only CAN. I don't know why the protocol is only supported on cRIO, PXI, and PCI. Perhaps those are the only hardware interfaces that have been tested and verified. It seems to me that these are built on the newer XNET driver. If you are really concerned, get the PCI version.

[David-Baratheon]

Anyone have any idea what I do with the .EDS file?

[GerdW]

Hi David,

read it using any text editor you like!?

They just contain a list of CANopen objects. I'm sure I mentioned that before…

[David-Baratheon]

Sorry I meant what do I use it for in my application? As in does the LabVIEW code need to read it?