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.

MicroCANopen Plus and MicroCANopen Plus Add-in Manager have been updated. The highlights in the new version of the embedded CANopen stack are:

• More clarity and easier maintenance in user-configurable files by dividing call back functions into multiple files
• More flexibility by adding many more data call backs for SDO accesses
• Framework support to guard Object Dictionary entries with auto-generated minimum and maximum values from EDS/DCF file

Customers with ongoing maintenance agreement with us are entitled to a free upgrade. In this case, please download the new version from

CANopenStore.com/support.php

using the activation code(s). For those projects using auto-generated code, also update CANopen Architect EDS to the latest version.

The process to update embedded firmware libraries that become part of a bigger project can be complicated. For that reason, we have developed tools and to ease this on-time task.

Contact us if you are interested in obtaining or need assistance in performing the update.

The number of product developments supporting the automotive standard for ‘add-on devices’ CiA447 is on the rise.

The standard supports electronic devices used in taxis, emergency response vehicles and other governmental service vehicles. Typical components include roof bars (light & sound), radios, control units, taximeters, printers and similar devices.

Using a CiA447 gateway, automotive manufacturers like Daimler already provide access to the vehicles internal data today. The standard allows sharing some of the car’s resources like switches and displays with CiA447 devices. A steering wheel button can be used as the PTT (push to talk) button for a radio, which in return can use the car’s display to show channel numbers, volume settings or such. Read more…