---
id: canopen
version: "2.4.1"
license: MIT License Copyright (c) 2016 Christian Sandberg Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to… (full text in the JSON record)
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# canopen — CANopen stack implementation

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 947.2K/mo

## What it is and what it does

Canopen is a Python library that implements the CANopen industrial communication protocol, primarily designed for master-side applications that need to communicate with CANopen-compliant devices over a CAN bus. It abstracts the protocol's complexity into a Pythonic interface, handling the low-level CAN message formatting and state management while exposing high-level operations like reading/writing device variables via SDO (Service Data Objects), configuring and consuming PDO (Process Data Objects) messages, managing device state via NMT (Network Management), and synchronizing operations with SYNC messages.

The library depends on python-can for hardware abstraction, allowing it to work with multiple CAN interface types (socketcan, kvaser, PCAN, ixxat, vector, nican) through a unified API. It's intended primarily for testing, automation, and control tasks rather than as a fully standards-compliant implementation. Incomplete slave node support also exists for scenarios where your application needs to act as a CANopen device rather than a master.

Use it for:

- Automate testing of CANopen devices by scripting SDO reads/writes and PDO monitoring from a Python test harness.
- Build a control application that sends commands to and monitors status from industrial drives, motors, or I/O modules over CAN.
- Parse and load EDS files to dynamically configure PDO mappings and object dictionary access for heterogeneous device networks.
- Prototype a custom CANopen master or gateway application without implementing the protocol from scratch.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

A Python implementation of the CANopen standard that provides a master-oriented interface for communicating with CANopen devices over CAN bus networks, supporting SDO, PDO, NMT, SYNC, and other core protocol features.

Yes. Canopen is actively maintained, has no known vulnerabilities, installs with minimal friction, and is the standard Python choice for CANopen master applications. Install it if you need to communicate with CANopen devices over CAN bus; avoid it only if you require a fully slave-node implementation or are working in a non-Python environment.

## Install

pip install canopen
uv add canopen
poetry add canopen

## Installing canopen

Before you install: Low friction: pure Python wheel with a single runtime dependency (python-can). Active maintenance with recent releases and 563 repository stars.

License in practice: MIT License permits commercial and private use with minimal restrictions; you may use, modify, and distribute the code freely provided you retain the copyright notice.

Quickstart:

pip install canopen

import canopen
network = canopen.Network()
node = canopen.RemoteNode(6, '/path/to/object_dictionary.eds')
network.add_node(node)
network.connect(interface='socketcan', channel='can0')
device_name = node.sdo['Manufacturer device name'].raw
network.disconnect()

Requires a CAN interface (hardware or virtual) and a valid EDS (Electronic Data Sheet) file for the target device; python-can must be able to access the CAN bus.

Verify before relying:

- Whether the library's slave node support is mature enough for production use (described as 'incomplete' in the documentation).
- Performance characteristics when handling high-frequency PDO traffic or large object dictionaries.

## Package facts

- License: MIT License Copyright (c) 2016 Christian Sandberg Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to… (full text in the JSON record) (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 947.2K/month (top 5,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

CANopen protocol python, CAN bus communication library, CANopen master implementation, industrial device communication, SDO PDO NMT protocol, can-bus, industrial-protocol, hardware-abstraction

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