MCUs from XMOS supported with CANopen and Modbus soft interface

U.K. based microcontroller chip maker XMOS has added Modbus and CANopen xSOFTip blocks to its xCORE family of multicore microcontrollers. CANopen and Modbus are the communications standards adopted in fieldbus communication in industrial control systems.

CANopen and Modbus is available from XMOS in both Ethernet/TCP and serial/RTU variants. The other interface standards offered by XMOS includes CANbus, RS485 and LIN, as well as standard and time-stamped Ethernet.

“The serial fieldbus and industrial Ethernet markets are highly diversified,” commented Paul Neil, VP Product Management, XMOS. “xCORE is the only platform that allows embedded designers to choose the exact set of interfaces and control capabilities required for their application, while working in an easy-to-use C-based programming environment. Our customers have the freedom to combine communications interfaces and protocols, jitter-free and timing-deterministic control and high-performance DSP for complex control loops; and that freedom means they can create products that would otherwise be impossible to build.”

Recently CAN in Automation (CiA) has released the version 3.0 of the LSS specification (CiA 305). It standardizes the node-ID and bit-rate assignment via the CANopen network. LSS is often used in outdoor applications, where CANopen devices just provide the CAN interface and no other possibility to configure node-ID and bit-rate.