A: If you are selling your node to 3rd parties as CANopen® compliant or if you purchase a CANopen® node from a 3rd party a CANopen® conformance certificate gives both parties the extra insurance that the part actually behaves as specified. So if 3rd parties are involved (either selling or buying) CANopen® nodes should really be certified.

For in-house applications where all CANopen® nodes come from the same manufacturer a conformance test would not really be required. However, if several engineers, teams or departments are involved a conformance test can help especially in the debug and test phase to confirm that a particular node really behaves as expected.

The only difference in these two scenarios is that if 3rd parties are involved the conformance testing should be done by an independent 3rd party such as the CiA (CAN in Automation): www.canopen.org/canopen/conformance

For in-house applications, the conformance testing can also be purchased and performed internally. The CANopen® conformance test is sold byNational Instruments.