Protocol Dialog Box

National Instruments hardware for Controller Area Network (CAN) is used by both NI-CAN and NI-DNET (DeviceNet) software.

You can view each CAN card in MAX with either DeviceNet or CAN features. To change the view of a CAN card in MAX, right-click the card and select Protocol. In this dialog, you can select either DeviceNet for NI-DNET, or CAN for NI-CAN.

Use of NI-DNET is restricted to port 1 (top port) of Series 1 CAN cards. The Protocol selection is not available for Series 2 CAN cards. When a 2-port Series 1 CAN card is selected as the DeviceNet protocol, only the top port is enabled. For more information on hardware in CAN kits and DeviceNet kits, refer to Chapter 2, DeviceNet Hardware Overview, in the NI-DNET User Manual.

To develop applications for the NI-CAN or NI-DNET Application Programming Interface (API), you must install API components such as documentation and examples. The software components for both APIs are available within either the NI-CAN or NI-DNET installer. Launch the setup.exe program for the installer in the same manner as your original installation (CD or ni.com download). Within the installer, select both NI-DNET and NI-CAN components in the feature tree.

When you right-click a port in MAX and select Properties, the resulting Interface selection uses the syntax CANx or DNETx based on your protocol selection. Regardless of which protocol is selected, the number x is the only relevant identifier with respect to NI-CAN and NI-DNET functions. For example, if you select DNET0 as an interface in MAX, you can run an NI-DNET application that uses DNET0, then you can run an NI-CAN application that uses CAN0. Both applications refer to the same port and can run at different times, but not simultaneously.