Posts from — July 2010

I’ve been busy lately with a variety of tasks, including buying a car.  I’d enjoy car buying if I had a big budget and was looking at fun cars like a Mini Cooper S Convertible (my semi-practical dream car), but buying a used car for my wife is another matter.

But since it’s been too long since my last post, here are some quick notes:

• The next post on the Eagle PCB and Alibre series is in progress
• I recently picked up a Applicom DirectLink DRL-CNO-PCU CANOpen card.
  • Applicom is now part of Brad which is part of Molex.
  • Anyway, the DirectLink card is a PCI plug in card with a CAN connector (DB9F, first time I’ve seen that) and some sort of x86 processor.  The CANOpen stack is run on the DirectLink board; there’s no need to run a CANOpen stack on the PC side (e.g. CANFestival).
  • DirectLink cards are available for a variety of interfaces (e.g. DeviceNet, Profibus), and share a common API.  They’re meant to be used to interface fieldbuses with SCADA and soft PLC applications.
  • However, I noted that the CANOpen software does show support for DS402 (motion profile).
  • One nice plus is that the software will scan the network for CANOpen devices.  So if I have a CAN device with unknown ID and baud rate, I can just change the baud rate and then let the DirectLink card figure out the CANOpen ID.
  • I plan on writing more about this card, after I finish my current series.
• I managed to get over to Maido Stationery, and pick up some more JDM pens and a 0.3mm Kuro Toga pencil, so I’ll be doing another pen post soon.