CANopen Interface?

[Cold Fusion]

What have I gotten myself into? I got my AMC DX15co08 servo drives today and found out they connect with Canopen, not rs232. Do I need a pci card to use the Canopen software they provided? If so, how much is something like that?

[rustyolddo]

Just a quick question, why didn't you go with the Gecko drivers? Saw that you were selling two of them.

--C

[Cold Fusion]

Actually, I've decided to keep the Geckos and sell the AMC drives. After some research I found out that the CAN setup is too complicated, and that the simple Geckos will work much better.

[rustyolddo]

Sounds like a good plan to me. Simple is better.

[Halfnutz]

OK, so I'm the fool that got stuck with the DX15C08's. Anyone have any experiance with this CAN intertface? I allready have 3 of these for the cost of one Gecko, so I'm pretty much sold on the whole idea. I can pick up a CAN interface off eBay, I geusse, but does anyone out there have any experiance with the DX15C08's or the CAN interface and protocal? I kinda like the idea of a high speed network connecting all my controllers, so maybe it will be fun. Plus the graphing and plotting functions are kinda cool, plus I want to use both AC and DC motors so Geckoes are out of the question.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[unterhaus]

I'll probably be working on this soon. Building an arm for our segway rmp robots

[Halfnutz]

Great, keep me posted, meanwhile I'm sniping for CAN adapters.....

[unterhaus]

can adapters: the most expensive serial port known to man. For something designed to be cheap, the adapters are highway robbery. New usb adapters go for around 130USD.

We will probably be using Kavasser pcmcia adapters which go for about $1000. Crazy.

[Halfnutz]

What a crock! The least expensive way to talk to these is a 350.00 CAN card from IXXAT. I quickly contacted the people I got the drives from, and thank God I can return 2 for full refund. Oh well, I got stuck with one useless drive, at least its not three! The CAN thing is great, but not worth more than 50 bucks to me. I'll continue trolling eBay, but its unlikely I'll ever find one there.

Anybody wanna buy a really nice servo drive......

[gavztheouch]

Just a thought but will these usb CAN cables, designed to connect to cars work with connecting to these drives. This one in the link it about £40 but you can get them as low as £4.99?



http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ELM327-interfa...3A1%7C294%3A50

[jalessi]

If anyone has a Win-XP driver for a ESD CAN-PCI / 266 interface please email me.

ESD will not send a driver, there support is terrible.

jalessi@aol.com

Thanks,

Jeff...

[warrenb]

Originally Posted by Halfnutz What a crock! The least expensive way to talk to these is a 350.00 CAN card from IXXAT. I quickly contacted the people I got the drives from, and thank God I can return 2 for full refund. Oh well, I got stuck with one useless drive, at least its not three! The CAN thing is great, but not worth more than 50 bucks to me. I'll continue trolling eBay, but its unlikely I'll ever find one there. Anybody wanna buy a really nice servo drive......

The AMC DX series are for OEMs but can be used the same as any other controller. You can use regular step dir commands using your parallel ports. I used surplus DX on my CNC. For $15 a piece it's worth buying the extra bit of money for the interface. I don't use any of the extra features but one of these days (like so many other things) I will get around to implementing the built in homing and limits and the other IOs on these controllers.

http://www.easysync-ltd.com/index.ht...arget=d20.html

$88