New NI CANopen Library Extends Connectivity for LabVIEW

NEWS RELEASE – April 4, 2006 – National Instruments today announced the release of its new CANopen LabVIEW Library, making it easy for engineers to create industrial control and measurement applications with connectivity to hundreds of industrial CANopen devices, including motion drives, sensors and distributed I/O. The new library is a collection of high-level, easy-to-use NI LabVIEW functions that convert high-speed NI Series 2 Controller Area Network (CAN) devices into fully functional CANopen master interfaces.Engineers can use the graphical LabVIEW application programming interface (API) included in the CANopen LabVIEW Library to create CANopen master applications that conform to the CAN in Automation (CiA) DS301 standard. CANopen, a higher-level protocol based on the CAN physical layer, was developed as a standardized embedded network with highly flexible configuration capabilities. Originally designed for motion control applications, the CANopen protocol is common in many industry segments including medical equipment, off-road vehicles, public transportation and building automation.The CANopen LabVIEW Library also works with the NI SoftMotion Controller for CANopen motion drives, helping engineers easily add any CANopen I/O onto their motion CANopen networks. The NI SoftMotion Controller is a soft motion engine that helps engineers interface between NI-Motion driver software and distributed intelligent drives. Engineers now can program CANopen-based Accelnet and Xenus drives from Copley with the easy-to-use NI-Motion API in LabVIEW.National Instruments, a leading provider of CAN hardware and software tools, offers CAN interfaces on a variety of platforms, including PCI, PXI, PCMCIA and NI CompactRIO. NI interfaces are available with high-speed, low-speed/fault-tolerant, single-wire and software-selectable physical layers. For more information on any of the NI CAN products, including the CANopen LabVIEW Library, please visit www.ni.com/can.About National InstrumentsFor 30 years, National Instruments (www.ni.com) has been a technology pioneer and leader in virtual instrumentation – a revolutionary concept that has changed the way engineers and scientists in industry, government and academia approach measurement and automation. Leveraging PCs and commercial technologies, virtual instrumentation increases productivity and lowers costs for test, control and design applications through easy-to-integrate software, such as NI LabVIEW, and modular measurement and control hardware for PXI, PCI, PCI Express, USB and Ethernet. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NI has more than 3,800 employees and direct operations in nearly 40 countries. For the past seven years, FORTUNE magazine has named NI one of the 100 best companies to work for in America.

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