Fieldbuses education using training systems designed with state-of-the-art technologies

The industrial communication networks or fieldbuses have experienced a great growth due to the complexity achieved by the automation systems in several areas (industrial control, automotive, aircrafts, ships, home automation, etc.). Therefore, it is very interesting and essential to use starter and training systems that can be applied in the educational process of technical degree courses. Thus, students can acquire a practical knowledge about the different fieldbus protocols existing in the market. This paper describes the design of different nodes that constitute a starter and training industrial network with application in the teaching of the CAN (controller area network) protocol. These nodes have been designed and developed by the authors using different state-of-the-art technologies, looking for an educational purpose. The starter and training CAN network that is described in this paper is made up of one monitoring station (protocol analyser), one control module, one device based on the microcontroller 8751, one device based on reconfigurable circuit (FPGA: field programmable gate array) and several input/output devices based on the integrated circuit P82C150 SLIO-CAN.