Controller Area Network (CAN) Interfaces
NI CAN Series 2 Interfaces for PCI, PXI, and PCMCIA
• Hardware timing and synchronization
with NI data acquisition, vision,
and motion devices
• 100% bus load; for up to 1 Mb/s
• ISO 11898-compliant for standard
(11-bit) and extended (29-bit)
arbitration IDs
• Philips SJA1000 CAN controller
• Available in high-speed,
low-speed/fault-tolerant,
and single-wire versions
• Hardware timestamping
• Intel 80386EX microprocessor
for timed CAN frame transfer
• Optical isolation up to 500 V
• Import Vector database files
with NI-CAN
Operating Systems
• Windows 2000/NT/XP/Me/98
• LabVIEW Real-Time
Recommended Software
• LabVIEW
• LabWindows/CVI
Other Compatible Software
• C/C++
• Visual Basic 6
Application Software (included)
• Bus monitor utility
Driver Software (included)
• NI-CAN
Overview
CAN interfaces meet the physical and electrical requirements for in-
vehicle automotive networks based on CAN. All CAN interfaces
include NI-CAN device driver software, with which you can import
CAN channels from Vector database files or create them in an
easy-to-use utility and program using a high-level API. With a
National Instruments CAN interface and NI-CAN software, you can use
a desktop, industrial, or notebook PC running Windows for a variety
of CAN applications, including automotive testing and diagnostics,
prototype design, factory automation, and machine control.
cables to take advantage of synchronization. For PCI boards, you can
use a RTSI bus cable to share the signals. For PCMCIA-CAN, a
synchronization cable connects external timing and triggering signals
to the card to achieve synchronization between PCMCIA-CAN and
PCMCIA, USB, or PCI data acquisition hardware.
LabVIEW Real-Time Compatibility
PCI and PXI CAN hardware works with LabVIEW Real-Time running
on a PC or a PXI controller for deterministic control. You can download
your existing NI LabVIEW application to the target without specialized
real-time OS programming knowledge. The real-time performance and
synchronization mean you can use a standard PC or PXI chassis for
applications such as rapid control prototyping, hardware-in-the-loop
testing, and data logging.
CAN Bus and Analog Data Synchronization
Recent advances in automotive test applications demand tighter
integration of CAN and other measurement devices. In many
applications, you need to synchronize the physical parameters
measured in time to correlate the data. You can program this
synchronization in software, but OS latency sometimes introduces
unacceptable delays for certain automotive test applications.
National Instruments CAN, data acquisition, vision, and motion
boards for PCI are equipped to share timing and triggering signals.
In a system, a CAN board can share timing and triggering signals
with data acquisition, image acquisition, or motion control boards,
basing their actions on these signals. Determinism is maintained
between the trigger signal and the desired response because timing
and triggering signals are handled in hardware. The host PC software
interacts only to retrieve the data once it is acquired or to write
new data.
Synchronization is available for PXI, PCI, and PCMCIA-CAN
devices. For PXI modules, the timing signals are shared in the PXI
trigger bus on the backplane; therefore, you do not need additional
Common Hardware
All National Instruments Series 2 CAN devices use the Intel 80386EX
microprocessor to handle communications directly on the interface
device. The 80386EX provides a dedicated environment for reliable,
high-performance CAN communications protocol stack execution.
Because acquisition and transmission timing occur on the board,
CAN frames are not lost due to OS activity such as hard drive
access, mouse movements, or virus scans. The physical layer of all
National Instruments CAN devices fully conforms to the ISO 11898
physical layer specification for CAN and is optically isolated to 500 V.
You can interface to the CAN bus using a 9-pin male D-Sub (DB9)
connector. The Philips SJA1000 CAN controller implements typical
ISO 11898 CAN functionality and offers additional functionality to aid
in system development, such as listen-only mode, sleep/wakeup mode,
error counter access, and self-reception (echo) mode.
NI [ NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS CORPORATION ]
