Embedded Systems Academy

Our CANopen and CANopen FD software is now available for the entire PCAN-MicroMod FD product line from PEAK-System Technik GmbH. The PCAN-MicroMod FD product line consists of several digital and analog I/O modules with housing and an embedded module suitable for integration into custom hardware developments.

PEAK offers these modules with “direct CAN (FD)” support. A configuration utility provided can assign inputs and outputs to CAN (FD) messages. That same configuration utility can now also be used to load and activate our CANopen or CANopen FD software. The activation process requires an activation code. The activation code is part of the delivery, when buying the devices from EmSA’s online store.

Once CANopen (FD) is loaded and activated, the devices implement the CANopen (FD) device profile for generic I/O devices. In CANopen FD mode, the dual bitrate of CAN FD is supported, allowing transmission rates in the data phase of up to 5Mbps.

Our YouTube channel now features a new PEAK hardware playlist. The first videos added today, show the CANopen software installation and activation process. Future videos will give further configuration examples.

The latest release of the MCUXpresso Software Development Kit from NXP now also includes a free version of the EmSA’s Micro CANopen FD library. The library is available for various microcontrollers of the LPC54xxx and LPC55xxx families. Support for the i.MX RT family will be added later this year.

The CANopen FD libraries are separated by support for devices and managers. The examples implement a generic input and output device as well as a minimal manager and control application. The libraries are fully functional besides a limitation on the number of PDOs and node IDs supported. The licence allows developers to integrate these libraries into commercial projects.

For more details on the CANopen FD libraries in MCUXpresso SDK, watch the introductory video by NXP:

Our youtube playlist “MCUXpresso Middleware course” now features a total of nine videos, including some in-depth tutorial on how to use the CANopen and CANopen FD libraries of the MCUXpresso SDK.

For more information about our CANopen and CANopen FD libraries for NXP, visit our dedicated web page at www.em-sa.com/nxp

A few months back, EmSA’s CANopen and CANopen FD libraries and protocol stacks were integrated into NXP’s MCUXpresso SDK supporting multiple NXP microcontroller families, inlcuding the LPC54xxx family. That MCU family was chosen by PEAK Systemtechnik for a number of industrial input and output devices.

The newly released PCAN-MicroMod FD DR CANopen Digital 1 is the first of their industrial I/O device integrating both CANopen and CANopen FD within the same firmware. All essential settings of the DIN-Rail mountable device are made with turn dials: selection of CANopen or CANopen FD modes, bitrates and node id used.

Typical use cases include future proofing CANopen systems by already choosing CANopen FD capable devices and quickly adding generic I/O devices(s) to custom, embedded CANopen FD networks.

The device passed the official CiA CANopen conformance test. The CANopen FD test is pending.

For more information, see the PEAK product page.

NXP and EmSA are inviting you to the one hour seminar “Accelerate Development of Robust Network Communications with CANopen and CANopen FD” on Tuesday April 21st 2020. This webinar is a hands-on session about customized CANopen (FD) development on NXP MCUs.

In the hands-on part, we take the CANopen (FD) device/slave example included with the NXP MCUXpresso SDK and use the free CANopen Architect Mini software utility to modify and configure the CANopen (FD) communication of the device. Code modifications are made using the MCUXpresso SDK to support the custom generated CANopen (FD) object dictionary entries. Click here to register for this webinar.

The webinar requires some basic CANopen (FD) and MCUXpresso knowledge. See our courses at www.em-sa.com/video to learn the basics about these technologies.

February 24, 2020 – Embedded Systems Academy (EmSA) and NXP® Semiconductors announce the integration of the free-to-use EmSA Micro CANopen libraries into the NXP MCUXpresso Software Development Kit (SDK) for developing with NXP’s microcontrollers (MCU) and crossovers based on Arm® Cortex®-M.

For years, many MCUs have been equipped with the Controller Area Network (CAN) interfaces including CAN FD. These interfaces are optimized for embedded communication and make it easy to transmit and receive single messages.

“To take full advantage of the capabilities of such interfaces, middleware communication protocols are required,” says Olaf Pfeiffer, General Manager of EmSA. “One of the most
popular protocols for embedded CAN applications is CANopen, for which EmSA has delivered its Micro CANopen software for more than 20 years, and remains highly used among embedded developers.”

Free-to-use versions of EmSA’s Micro CANopen library are now fully integrated into the MCUXpresso SDK for a selection of NXP LPC MCUs and i.MX RT crossover MCUs.

“This integration further simplifies the process of prototyping and integrating sophisticated and reliable communication into embedded systems.” said Brendon Slade, director of MCU ecosystem for Edge Processing at NXP Semiconductors. “For most systems, the libraries can be used in production without further licensing.”

One of the first adopters is PEAK-System Technik: Their industrial I/O module PCAN-MicroMod FD is based on NXP’s LPC54000 MCU series and uses a variation o

f EmSA’s Micro CANopen libraries. “Using a proven CANopen (FD) protocol implementation for our I/O devices greatly reduced our development time and opens up additional use-cases for our customers.”, says Uwe Wilhelm, General Manager of PEAK-System Technik.

For more information about the NXP microcontrollers currently supported by EmSA’s free to use CANopen libraries and video tutorials, visit www.em-sa.com/nxp

About MCUXpresso SDK
Available in downloads based on user selections of MCU, evaluation board and optional software components, the MCUXpresso SDK merges customization and quality in a suite of production-grade runtime software. Complete with pre-integrated RTOS middleware, stacks and middleware, reference software, and MISRA-compliant drivers analyzed with Coverity® static analysis tools, it’s the ultimate software framework and reference solution for application development with NXP MCUs and crossover MCUs based on ARM® Cortex®-M cores.

About Embedded Systems Academy
Embedded Systems Academy (EmSA) is an NXP gold partner and has locations in Barsinghausen, Germany and San Jose, California. EmSA provides tools, training and services for planning, implementing, debugging, commissioning and testing of embedded networking technologies including CAN, CAN FD, CANopen, CANopen FD, CiA447, J1939 and others. EmSA’s tutors Olaf Pfeiffer, Christian Keydel and Andrew Ayre published two books about CAN, CANopen and security on CAN systems. They regularly publish related articles and papers for various international conferences.

Contact
Embedded Systems Academy GmbH
Olaf Pfeiffer
info@esacademy.de

Over the last years we published more than 50 articles, papers, books, webinars and we also continuously updated our training materials. However, some of the training material and especially scientific papers only reach a small percentage of the embedded community. Therefore we decided to publish more free educational videos to reach more of you. As a start we created several playlists on our EmSA Youtube channel. These include:

• CANopen FD Intro:
  Introductory videos to CANopen FD, also covering some basics like an introduction to the CANopen Object Dictionary concept
• CAN (FD) Security:
  Video collection about CAN and CAN FD security challenges and solutions
• MCUXpresso Middleware:
  Video collection about NXP’s MCUXpresso and CANopen libraries included

We plan to publish more videos in the upcoming month, further focusing on CAN, CAN FD, CANopen, CANopen FD topics including introductory videos as well as in-depth technology classes.

Please subscribe to the channel to stay informed about new videos published.

This year we present multiple papers at the upcoming Embedded World (25th to 27th of February in Nuremberg, Germany) and the international CAN Conference (17th to 18th March in Baden-Baden, Germany). Chris and I will be talking with our partners of NXP Semiconductors, PEAK

-Systemtechnik and the Hochschule Offenburg about CAN (FD) security and CANopen (FD) Smart Bridging. In our security papers, we examine how different existing and CAN capable security methods can best complement each other. With SmartBridgingFD we show how classical CANopen devices or networks can easily and transparently be mixed with newer CANopen FD installations. As classical CANopen and CANopen FD are not compatible on the bitrate level, they can not share the same CAN wiring. However, the SmartBridgeFD allows combining classical CANopen and new CANopen FD networks into one large logical network.

At the Embedded World, you can see the SmartBridgeFD integrated into the CANopen FD demonstrator at the CiA booth (hall 1 booth 630). Another of our CANopen (FD) demos will be displayed at NXP Semiconductors (hall 4A booth 220), as our CANopen software is now part of NXP’s latest SDK. Our CAN hardware partner PEAK Systemtechnik is in hall 1 (booth 483).

The Embedded World conference program is now online, we are in Session 2.1. The program for the international CAN Conference is here, our papers are in Session IV and VII.

Our authors Christian Keydel and Olaf Pfeiffer published an article in the current CAN newsletter, summarizing the current status of CAN security specifications.

Please follow the link above for more details.

Excerpt:

End of June 2019, the CiA association hold a phone conference for safety and security issues. Holger Zeltwanger gave the participants an update regarding “base documents”. When defining security solutions for Classical CAN, CAN FD, or CAN XL systems, it would be preferable to not start from scratch defining security basics for embedded systems or embedded communication systems. Unfortunately, the current draft of ISO 21434 “Road Vehicles – Cybersecurity engineering” does not seem to be suitable, as it is very generic and not yet completed. It is more of a guideline what designers and developers need to keep in mind when designing a “secured” vehicle.

Another document suggested is the “Baseline Security Recommendations for IoT” by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity. Until the next meeting, CiA will review and report, if that document is suitable to be referred to also by CiA documents. CAN XL is still in an early specification phase and the related special interest group, recognizing the possibility for security features in hardware to be part of future CAN XL controllers, therefore suggested adding security features to CAN XL first. One of the discussed options is a blacklist/whitelist scheme like the one implemented by the NXP secure CAN transceiver family. Such a scheme can eliminate several potential attack vectors at once if all participants in a CAN (XL) network actively support it. Once we see which security features made it into the CAN XL specification (and hardware), we can review if any of these can still be applied to CAN FD, too, for example on the transceiver level.

However, potential CAN controller specific hardware security features will most likely not be suitable to migrate back into CAN FD, so protocol based security solutions are still required.

Darmstadt and Hannover, June 12th, 2019. PEAK-System Technik GmbH (www.peak-system.com) and Embedded Systems Academy GmbH (www.esacademy.de) have deepened their partnership to provide common CANopen, CANopen FD, and J1939 solutions. For more than 15 years, Embedded Systems Academy GmbH (EmSA) has offered numerous CANopen software products including monitors, analyzers, simulators, configurators, and protocol stacks for the CAN (Controller Area Network) hardware of PEAK-System Technik GmbH (PEAK). Building on that partnership, PEAK has now become a shareholder and partner of EmSA.

“By formally joining the PEAK Group of companies, we can now more easily share resources and are better positioned to streamline development processes that involve both CAN hardware and software,” says Olaf Pfeiffer, General Manager of Embedded Systems Academy GmbH.
Current projects of PEAK and EmSA include CANopen (FD) generic input and output devices, CANopen (FD) protocol libraries, security options for CAN and diagnostics and test systems for CANopen (FD) and J1939.

“The deepened partnership with EmSA will provide our hardware customers with a variety of easy-to-use software products for CANopen, CANopen FD, and J1939 applications,” says Uwe Wilhelm, General Manager of PEAK-System Technik GmbH. “We’ll announce our new joint CANopen and CANopen FD solutions on our websites and blogs over the coming months.”

Our tutors Christian Keydel and Olaf Pfeiffer published their next security article in the CAN newsletter. This one is about “making security work” for already deployed CAN systems with limited MCU resources available.

Excerpt:

Some things appear to have not changed significantly in the past 20 years of Embedded Systems programming. Back then we would start developing minimal solutions for clients that wanted to add CANopen using “as few resources as possible”. Today, clients want to add CAN security to an already deployed system and again, often with only minimal resources available. Same situation, different technology.

The biggest change compared to unsecured CAN communications is the added security information, and the question is where in the CAN frames we want to put it. In networks that only use 11-bit-identifier CAN frames, like virtually all CANopen systems do, it is convenient if secure frames use a 29-bit CAN identifier instead, as illustrated in figure 1 “Adding security information to a CAN frame”. In the available extra 18-bits long “security record” we can then put a 10-bit signature and some control information. This method greatly simplifies mixing non-secure and secure CAN communications – a secure frame then still uses the same lower 11-bit portion of the 29-bit CAN identifier as the unsecured frame would, and the added security record can be easily recognized. The 18-bit record comprises a 2-bit truncated key refresh counter, a 6-bit truncated timer value and the 10-bit Micro CANcrypt signature. As all devices synchronize their refresh counter and timer locally, the truncated information is enough for receivers to internally maintain the full counter and timer values.

In comparison to CANrypt, Micro CANcrypt uses a simplified key synchronization method. Figure 2 “The Secure Key Sync cycle” illustrates how four event messages use the extended security record to share information. Here the extended security record contains a 16-bit timer and a 16-bit random value. These synchronised messages are used once per second to share / create an initialization vector (IV) for a dynamic, current key from the session key and to synchronize a 16-bit timer value and an 8-bit key refresh counter. A block cipher is used to generate the dynamic key from a shared symmetric permanent key using the IV generated in each cycle.

For more details, read the original article in the CAN Newsletter June 2019