Embedded Systems Academy

The CAN in Automation documents known as CiA447 describe how CANopen is used in automotive “add-on electronics” applications. These are electronics not added by the car manufacturer, but at a later point. Most common usage is for electronics used in taxis, emergency response vehicles and police cars.

Recently CiA447’s functionality was enhanced and especially the new power-down and wake-up procedures required a version step upwards, as they are not backward compatible.

Today, Daimler is the only manufacturer already offering cars with CiA447 interface. However, several other car manufacturers have already shown prototypes.

One of the biggest benefits of CiA447 is, that it offers add-on electronics access to some of the cars displays and buttons. In modern cars, there is typically no physical room to add electronics near the dashboard, as all space is used up. CiA447 allows “sharing” some of the cars displays and buttons, so that the electronic components themselves do not need to be mounted near the dashboard.

We at ESAcademy have now updated all our CANopen products for CiA447 to implement the latest V2.0 enhancements and changes. This includes our Micro CANopen source code solutions, our CANopen Magic line of analyzers and our CiA447 gateway simulator. Contact us, if you need to bring CiA447 to your electronics.