Meeting CANopen Special Interest Group Lift 2012-04

Treffen der CANopen Special Interest Group Lift 2012-04 On the 25th of April of 2012 took place in Nurnberg a meeting of the SIG Lift. The French company Sprinte, which produces and develops CANopen products since many years ago, participated for the first time.

After a presentation from Jörg Hellmich about the current Marketing arrangements, some new functions that should take the current stand of the normative a step further, in the future.

Bootloader
There should be in the future a method to read out and update the firmware and the parameter sets, that some manufacturers still use since some years. The technical details for it would be explained and some comfort functions added. With a standardised bootloader should be possible for the manufacturers to update the firmware and the parameter set with a software tool.

An application note for the bootloader should facilitate, in the future, the integration of these functions.

Fast Stop
Until now the lift controller has the possibility to send to the drive unit a fast stop-command. With the increasing interest about safety-related electronic solutions (PESSRAL), the controller should be able now to send a high priority 'Fast Stop' command to the gear in case of danger. The technical aspects were explained and will be included in the next version of the specifications.

RFIDs
There is already for 4 years a guideline from the company Schaefer about how to read the data from transponders or RFIDs and how to provide all devices on the bus. This guide was discussed from Böhnke + Partner and Schaefer and integrated in the firsts devices, as we could see in Interlift 2011 in Augsburg. The function description will be updated and included in the next version of the CiA 417. Then many standardized transponder systems, RFID cards or mobile phones can be used with NFC function to give priority calls, for example, to access control or to enter the password for maintenance.

Virtual Console
At the moment, there is the possibility of set a virtual menu on the bus, that may be represented on another device with a display. It is possible, for example, to operate the drive unit from the display of the lift controller.

The use of the virtual console is up to now limited to the transmission of text. However, more and more devices include graphic displays and set icons or symbols on them. To be able to do that, the functionality of the virtual console will be extended. The company Sprinte proposes the possibility of being able to configurate a lift with an smartphone using the CAN2BLUETHOOT-Gateway.

PlugFest
PlugFests take place regularly to test the interoperability of CANopen products. On them, the monitoring of the standards and the compatibility of the components are discussed. In addition, new features are analysed and specific tests performed, such as the maximum extent of the networks or the behaviour at extreme high bus loads.

On the upcoming PlugFest the behaviour when receiving emergency codes, the function of reading and writing parameter sets, the function of error counters to determine the bus quality and the function of the boot loader software update will be tested, as well.