Introduction to the CAN Bus

Posted 18 Aug 2003 at 13:41 UTC by steve

Many of the embedded controllers and other chips used by robot builders include support for the Controller Area Network (CAN) bus. But what is it? And can it be used for anything interesting? Embedded.com provides a short introduction and overview on the subject, titled A short trip on the CAN bus. You'll learn that CAN is the most widely used bus architecture in automotive design. Interestingly CAN defines only the physical and data-link layer protocols, leaving the higher-level protocols to the user. This can lead to incompatibility but, fortunately, there are a couple of standard protocols that can be adopted. Embedded.com offers a second article comparing the two most common CAN bus protocols, CANopen and MicroCANopen.

CANBUS, posted 18 Aug 2003 at 20:26 UTC by blueeyedpop » (Master)

I have been using CANBUS on the IsoPod for a few months now. There is a thread in their forum with my test code in it. I have been playing with it primarily for my robotic centipede.

12 Motors

6 56803 DSP processors

I went with CANBUS not because the IsoPod can't handle PWM for 12 H- Bridges, because it is capable of that easily. I did it to simplify the wiring harness. Right now the only wires common to all of the 6 modules that make up my centipede's body are ground, Can-H, Can-L. Otherwise, there would be a bundly the size of a baby's arm running from stem to stern.

see Centipede movies and piccies New pictures of the actual CANBUS implementation will be posted soon

Centipede, posted 18 Aug 2003 at 20:52 UTC by jstrohm » (Observer)

Cool pics and movie. Nice bot!

I was wondering what happened to all those motors., posted 18 Aug 2003 at 21:22 UTC by earlwb » (Master)

I was wondering where all those motors you had were going. Pretty neat. I see you gotta watch it close, it looks like it's trying to escape. :) Thanks for sharing.