The CAN bus is a serial communication protocol used in automotive and automation applications. The guys at ucandevices.pl have designed a solution around Orange Pi Zero board that allows you to log CAN bus data or act as a bridge between the CAN bus and Ethernet or WiFi. They call it “CAN Ethernet converter, CAN Logger, Linux CAN computer”. Sorry, no shorter name that I could find…
uCAN (pronounced micro CAN) CAN Bus board specifications:
- Main Board – Orange Pi Zero with Allwinner H2+ quad core cortex-A7 processor, 256 MB RAM
- Network Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi
- Can Bus – 2-pin terminal block; support for CAN version 2.0 support
- Power Supply – DC 5V/2A via micro USB port
- Dimension – 50 x 50 x 20 mm
The device comes pre-load with Debian distribution provided by Armbian plus various CAN tools. The getting started video below shows uCANTools web interface programmed with Node.js and running by default on the board, and explains how to use sockets instead to access the CAN data.
You can find the source code for uCANTools on Github, and the other pre-installed tools are based on can-utils package available from Debian repository.
uCAN CAN Ethernet converter is normally sold on Tindie for $50 plus shipping, but right as I was about to finish this article the price switched to $150 with the message “This seller is on vacation. Please return after Oct. 14, 2017 to purchase this awesome product!”. Oh well…
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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So, that price probably means you had waste your time writing about a product that will be out of line, if not end of life! 😉
I wonder how robust this device is regarding high load on the CAN bus.
I played with a Raspberry Pi, but it dropped CAN frames on high load. In the end a real µC (https://github.com/dominikholler/UsbCanNode) worked very well.
Back to $50 now