January 15, 2007 -- National Instruments (www.ni.com) has announced the release of its USB modules for high-speed and low-speed/fault-tolerant Controller Area Network (CAN) and Local Interconnect Network (LIN) monitoring, logging and testing.
The company says the modules combine the quality and performance its CAN software and hardware with the benefits of high speed USB technology. Via a synchronization option, the modules are designed to afford engineers a portable means of connecting PCs to CAN and LIN devices and networks for device validation, test and in-vehicle data logging.
The company says its USB-847x interfaces' synchronization option allows it to share start triggers and timestamps with other USB CAN and LIN interfaces, as well as with data acquisition, vision and motion devices such as NI's CompactDAQ and bus-powered M Series multifunction data acquisition modules for USB.
Users can synchronize CAN and LIN data with multiple types of measurements with microsecond resolution. An engineer conducting an in-vehicle noise, vibration and harshness test, for example, can monitor sensors and then determine the state of ECUs on the network if test thresholds are exceeded.
The USB-8476 LIN interfaces are the first LIN devices released by NI. LIN, a single-wire communication bus, is efficient way of networking automotive smart sensors and actuators that do not require the bandwidth and versatility of CAN. The LIN interfaces can function in master, slave and monitor modes and are fully compatible with 1.3, 2.0 and J2602 LIN standards.
All six of the interfaces support Hi-Speed USB technology. An onboard hardware buffer, combined with the 40x improvement in bandwidth of Hi-Speed USB over full-speed USB, ensures that the USB modules do not drop frames, even while transmitting and receiving 100% bus loads at speeds up to 1 Mbit/sec. The interfaces are bus-powered, with integrated transceivers and a captive USB cable, for rugged plug-and-play functionality.
"Using National Instruments LabVIEW and the new USB CAN interface, I was able to quickly develop a suite of robust and easy-to-use applications that record vehicle bus data, which will be used by field personnel and test engineers," offers Scott Sirrine, lead product engineer at Eaton Corporation (www.eaton.com), a diversified industrial manufacturer. "The design is ideally suited for field use, and the price of the USB CAN interface was essential in keeping the total cost under budget and will allow us to deploy the application throughout our field."
The USB modules include the NI-CAN driver software for rapid application development. Via a frame-based API, engineers using the software can develop and operate applications in a variety of programming environments, including National Instruments' LabVIEW, LabWindows/CVI and Measurement Studio, as well as Microsoft C/C++ and Visual Basic. Additionally, the driver software includes a CAN and LIN bus monitoring utility for immediate, out-of-the-box monitoring and logging of bus data to disk, according to NI.
