Date: September 9th 2005

PRODUCT NEWS

Updates to PCANopen Magic Pro and PCANopen Magic ProDS with bug fixes and tweaks are now available. Existing customers within the support period can download their copies by going to http://www.canopenstore.com/support and entering their activation code.


BETA TESTERS WANTED

We are looking for beta testers for our upcoming Electronic Datasheet editor, called CANopen Architect EDS. We anticipate that beta versions will be available towards the end of September. Testers must be actively involved or looking to be immediately involved in using and editing EDS files. Participation is limited, and beta testers submitting feedback may qualify for a free copy of the first release.


FAVORITE CANOPEN APPLICATIONS

The Electric Motor Glider Antares - http://www.lange-flugzeugbau.de/english/menu/menu-prod.htm

The CANopen network in this plane has a total of 4 nodes and is used to control the retractable propeller powered by a brushless AC motor. The lever used for control is a CANopen angle transducer by Novotechnik. Using a lithium-ion battery system the Antares can climb a total of 3000m (9000ft) with one charge without thermal lift (which is a glider's natural way of climbing).

Note that products featured in the Favorite CANopen Applications section are not sold or endorsed by Embedded Systems Academy, Inc.


TOOL TIPS

The PCANopen Magic professional line of products also offers access through the command line and batch files. The following is an example of a batch file that verifies if nodes 1, 2 and 3 are present in the network and if they are, they are switched to operational.

If used with PCANopen Magic Pro, create a file chknet_a.bat in Program Files\PCANopen Magic Pro\Batches and copy the following into the file (for example using Notepad)

@ECHO OFF
REM PCANopen Magic script to verify if nodes 1, 2 and 3 are present
REM If they are present, send all nodes to operational
ECHO ############################################
ECHO ##### PCANopen Magic Script - CHKNET A #####
ECHO ############################################

REM Second, check for nodes 1 to 3
:STARTOVER
..\pcomagicpro "HARDWARE(PEAK USB-CAN,COP125) ODREAD(1,0x1000,0,n1_type.bin)
ODREAD(2,0x1000,0,n2_type.bin) ODREAD(3,0x1000,0,n3_type.bin)"
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO ERRNODES
ECHO ##### Nodes 1, 2 and 3 are present, now start all nodes
..\pcomagicpro "HARDWARE(PEAK USB-CAN,COP125) NMT(0,START)"
GOTO ALLDONE

:ERRNODES
ECHO ##### Error - Not all nodes were found!
ECHO ##### Reseting all nodes now, press any key to try again...
..\pcomagicpro "HARDWARE(PEAK USB-CAN,COP125) NMT(0,RESET)"
PAUSE
GOTO STARTOVER

:ALLDONE
ECHO ##### Script ended
ECHO ############################################