festo controller

[Ariel.]

Hello all,

I try to use cRIO and CANOpen to control FESTO motor (CMMS Driver)

is anyone have experience with this?

Thanks,

Ariel

[Sev_K]

Hi Ariel,

When it comes to communicating with CanOpen devices you have a couple of options:

1. You can get a NI 9881 1-Port CANopen Module for NI CompactRIO. After installing the NI-Industrial Communications for CANopen 1.0 you will be able to communicate with your CANOpen devices through this module. You can then use VIs from NI CANopen LabVIEW Library to get data into LabVIEW.

2.If you already have a CAN module you can use for communicating with your CANOpen device. This DevZone article has a example of CANOpen communication VI's that are built on top of regular CAN VI's. This resource might be helpful to you as well.

[Ariel.]

Good morning Sev and thanks for the reply,

Please let me explain the issue and tell few more details.

1. we have cRIO 9024, chassis 9112 and modul 9853. using LV2009 with RT, scann engine, FPGA and more (we can install all prodacts as academic).

2. rty to open and follow the canengine_canopen_ex_lv86.zip  and EPOS2 CAN driver example, and found them very complicated to follow the program flow or modify them to FESTO hadrware.

Ee need some fundamental instruction or examples so we can 'get back on the horse'/

Please advice

Regards

Ariel Weinstock

Technion

[Sev_K]

Hi Ariel,

This cRIO example (which is similar to the one you were looking at) provides basis functionality for sending PDO and SDO data. The VIs in the CANopencRIOPDODemo.vi follows the following logic.

1. You first initialize the CAN module FPGA for communication

2.  Write NMT data. The NMT (network Managment) is a service that you use to remotely control your slave (motor). You'll be able to set it to start remote node, pre-operational according to your program. A slave can only treat PDO (Process data Object) if it's started.

3, Write SDO (service data Object). SDOs change the configuration of your slave (enable/disable a PDO, a baud rate, etc). You configure the slave in the pre-operationnal mode.

4. Write NMT data to start the slave.

5. Read and write PDO data in a while loop.You can use PDO data to send target position, velocity, acceleration, desceleration.

6. Write NMT data to stop the slave.

Refer to the manual for your motor regarding specific SDO and PDO data that you need to send to and recieve from the motor for your application.

[EladAsh]

Dear Sev.

Following your conversation with Ariel, I'd like to ask weather the cRio example you stated supports the CIA 301 (version 4.02)  and CIA 402 (version 2.0) standards.

These are the standards required by the specific FESTO controller.

[Sev_K]

Hi,

The documentation for example above does not explicitly state that it supports either standard. (301 or 402). You would have to compare the standard specification with the way the PDOs and SDOs are programmed in this example. If there are any differences between this example and a particular standard you could reprogram this example to comply with the given standard. The  NI-Industrial Communications for CANopen driver for Windows, on the other hand, is already programmed with the support for the CiA-DS 301 standard. This driver comes with examples that you can use for the specific NI hardware that you have. The CiA 402 standard is not supported by this driver.

[A_A_ENG]

Hi

I want to control a festo motor controller  CMMS-AS-C4-3A-G2 which has a serial RS-232 port through the LABVIEW 

do you have a driver for that model?

Thanks in advance

[Cole_R]

Hi A_A_ENG,

It doesn't seem that we have a driver for that particular motor controller, however since this is a serial device you may want to try out NI-Serial.  You can download that driver here: http://joule.ni.com/nidu/cds/view/p/id/2056/lang/en

Just for future reference, you can find which drivers are available for third party devices here: http://www.ni.com/downloads/idnet/

Best of luck with your programming!

[IvoK]

Hi all, 

I'd like to ask. I think I just might be almost at the same situation as Ariel is. I work with Festo robot, but the current system is not reliable. Therefore we want to use labview and other products from NI to control to the robot (via CANopen). So far I have installed the real-time labview module at desktop PC and (as I expected) I found out that the present PCI-CAN board is not supported by NI. 

Now I have to make a decision which way we should go. As I see it there are these possibilities:

1. buy CompactRio with canopen module and replace current computer

2. buy NI PCI-CAN put it into the current computer

3. buy NI USB-CAN interface...

I suppose we will have to buy the NI labview canopen library to easily use those devices. Am I right ? 

Of course all those solutions have very different costs. Since I am new with NI, could you give me pros and cons of those solutions, I would be very grateful.

Thanks 

Ivo

[Haagen-Dazs]

Hi lvo,

I first would recommend posting CAN related questions on the forum that is linked below because more members familiar with our CAN products will be monitoring those forums.

http://forums.ni.com/t5/Automotive-and-Embedded-Networks/bd-p/30

That being said I think I would go with either option 1 or option 2. The USB CAN devices do have limitations and I think that for a new system you would go with PCI or cSeries. The big difference between the cRIO cSeries modules and the PCI devices is what you may do in the future. If you want to use this hardware for future applications you may consider going with a cRIO that you can scale with new modules in the future. If you don’t see this project changing much or reusing this hardware you may want to stick with the PCI.

Lastly, you are correct about the CANopen library costing and below is the link to the product page for the CANopen library.

http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/202614