Cogent CIF Driver

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Cogent CIF Driver

Introduction

The Cogent CIF Driver provides a detailed software interface to a wide range of fieldbus interface cards from Hilscher. This driver greatly simplifies the task of writing code to access data from fieldbus devices using the Hilscher CIF interface cards.

Specifications

The Cogent CIF Driver has the following specifications:

Interface Card	Works with the following interface cards: Hilscher CIF30 (ISA) Hilscher CIF 50 (PCI) Hilscher CIF60 (PCMCIA) Hilscher CIF104 (PC104)
Operating Systems	Cogent CIF Drivers are available for: Linux kernel 2.2.5 and later. QNX 6.1.0 and later. QNX 4.25 and later.
Fieldbus Protocols	DeviceNet Profibus Modbus Plus ControlNet Interbus CANopen ASi
PC Interface	ISA, PCI, PC104, PCMCIA
Software Interface	Works with the Cogent API.


	OS Support: - Linux - QNX 6 - QNX 4 Licensing Info Hilscher Web Site

Features and Benefits

Support for all CIF cards.
The same driver program supports all types of CIF card (DeviceNet, Profibus, Modbus Plus, ControlNet, Interbus, CANopen and ASi). You still need a license for each card you run, but you don't have to worry about maintaining different device drivers.

Support for all card bus types.
The driver supports Hilscher CIF30 (ISA), CIF 50 (PCI), CIF60 (PCMCIA) and CIF104 (PC104) format cards.

Download card configuration at startup.
The driver can download configuration data to the card. This will benefit those developers who have a large number of cards to configure in duplicate systems. Simply configure the card in Windows and then copy the config file to QNX or Linux. The driver can then be instructed to load the card configuration on startup. This means that you will not have to load each card into Windows just to configure it.

Shared memory interface.
Send and receive data through a shared memory interface.

Send/Receive/Reply QNX message based interface.
Programs can send a receive data through a C language API using QNX messaging.

Linux based programs have access to the QNX message interface thanks to the Linux SRR module that is loaded as part of the Linux installation procedure. Cogent provides the SRR module free as part of our efforts to deliver a more dynamic programming environment for Linux. Click here for more details on the Linux SRR module.

Simple ASCII command interface.
Programs can send ASCII commands to the driver to reconfigure or query the driver.

Interactive command interface.
The developer can send ASCII commands directly from the command line making debugging and testing much easier.

Binary message interface.
This is a higher performance messaging interface used to get raw memory block data from the card. This mode implements block transfer modes for reading block data from the interface card.

(Name,Value) abstraction.
The driver abstracts data to (name, value) pairs.

Polling or IRQ driven.
The driver can operate in either polled or interrupt drive mode.

Auto-detection of multiple cards.
Driver can auto-detect how many cards are installed and can automatically discover what type of cards are present.

Fault reporting.
The driver reports driver, card and bus faults.

Card introspection.
The driver can query the card to tell you it's configuration.

DataHub support.
The driver contains direct support for the Cascade DataHub in Linux and QNX.

Driver Watchdog.
The driver emits a heartbeat signal that can be used by programs to detect if the driver has failed.