1. A Detailed Comparison:
IXXAT CANopen Stack vs. CANFestival CANopen Stack
Student: Ian Tracy
Faculty Advisor: Dr. John Lacourse
Professional Supervisor: Josh Pearl
Courses Involved: ECE562, ECE649, CS410
Current Date: 10/20/2012
Finish Date: 4/1/2012

2. CANopen
CANopen is a flexible higher layer communication protocol standard
Also is a device profile specification for embedded systems
Based on Controller Area Network (CAN) bus
Used in a verity of applications
Low cost high performance
Standardized by CAN in Automation (CiA)
Specification 301, 302

3. CANFestival Free CANopen framework
Initiated by Eouard Tisserant in 2001
Runtime code licensed LGPLv2
Provides an ANSI-C platform independent stack
Provides some GUI and command line tools to create a new node, and edit an object dictionary

4. The Problem
CANFestival is a free alternative to IXXAT’s CANopen Software
IXXAT’s hardware competitors support CANFestival
If IXXAT supports CANFestival it could possibly reduce software sales, but could increase hardware sales

5. The Goals
Write a wrapper layer that will allow CANFestival to work with IXXAT CAN hardware
Thoroughly test the CANFestival software stack for performance
Identify any CANopen features that are not implemented in CANFestival or the IXXAT CANopen stack
Determine which software is easier to use
Compare CANFestival running with IXXAT’s hardware to CANFestival running with a competitors hardware

7. Software Block Diagram
CANFestival Application
Wrapper layer
VCINPL. Dll
VCISRV.SYS
IXXAT Interface Hardware

8. Test Program
To determine how the CANFestival stack compares to IXXAT’s CANopen stack a test program will be written
Written as a C++ program and run on a separate test computer
3 different test iterations
Test CANFestival software with IXXAT hardware
Test IXXAT CANopen software with IXXAT hardware
Test CAN Festival software with a competitor’s hardware
Test Computer
CANopen stack
USB -CAN
CAN bus

9. Testing Performance
Test program will use timestamps generated from active CAN interface of test computer
Test a verity of CANopen messages
Test will place messages on bus at an increasing rate until an overrun is generated
Test for jitter of cyclically transmitted messages

10. Features Test
Test computer will assume role of client, while the computer running the CANopen stack will assume the role of server
Current Version of IXXAT test document has 20+ feature tests
All features tested are specified in CiA documents 301 and 302
Additionally, CiA has provided a list of the top 14 most erroneous CANopen implementations

11. Questions?