CANopen and the Internet-of Things

An article in the CAN Newsletter (4th issue of 2018) describes the results of the Special Interest Group (SIG) Internet-of-Things (IoT). The SIG is close to release the CiA 309-5 specification.

The CiA 309-5 document specifies, how CANopen embedded network users can access local and remote CANopen networks using web protocols and communication services such as Restful HTTP, Websocket, and MQTT (will be supported next).

“On application level CiA intends to offer function-oriented services. Using these new services the application-specific, harmonized, functions can be initiated, monitored, and controlled. The functions are CANopen communication services and parameters mapped with logical addressing into Restful HTTP or Websocket. The functions are requested/collected either straight or through the cloud using an existing Internet infrastructure. The requester/ collector is the web-based application while data provided is the application server located in the CANopen IoT gateway. For example the CANopen IoT gateway may either tunnel HTTP requests/responses straight to the web app or through the cloud. In case of the cloud, the communication path has to comprise the edge gateway having all tunneled data prepared for cloud-conform processing. The example of the local communication would include a CANopen IoT gateway, which contains the IoT and CANopen functional parts and manages the interaction between them. The CANopen functional part communicates with the CANopen embedded network while the gateway provides the data obtained there to the other gateway functional parts.”

Download the complete article in PDF format here or the full magazine.