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CANopen continues to gain acceptance as a robust protocol for use in a variety of industries and applications. As this expansion occurs into new applications, the general-purpose I/O (input/output) devices required by these applications are starting to push up against the limits of the CANopen Device Profile that describes them - CiA 401 (CAN in Automation). In this paper, the author proposes some improvements to this venerable standard which will allow for a whole new generation of I/O devices to take full advantage of the CANopen protocol, without being unduly constrained by vestiges of the first generation which may no longer be needed. Changes to default PDO (Prozessdatenobjekt) mapping, harmonizing the current behavior differences between analog and digital devices, and making sense of the Device Type object are all examined.