Welcome to
CANbus.us

Everything about the CAN bus or Controller Area Network

 Title

This Page is dedicated to North American Users and Developers of Controller Area Network applications
Also see www.CANopen.us - everything about the higher-layer CAN protocol CANopen
NOTE: This is not the CiA.
The official, international CAN pages are maintained by the CiA (CAN in Automation users and manufacturers group)
www.can-cia.org

Visit CANopenStore.com
Upcoming ESAcademy Classes

CAN (also referred to as CANbus or CAN bus) is a network used in many every-day products consisting of multiple microcontrollers that need to communicate with each other. CAN is implemented in hardware in microcontrollers of more than 22 chip manufacturers. If you don't know much about the CAN bus, here is a historic summary of 15 years of CAN.

The original CAN specification from Robert Bosch is available for free:
www.can.bosch.com/docu/can2spec.pdf  

CAN provides a safe communication channel to exchange up to 8 bytes between several network nodes. Additional network functionality like which node talks to which others,  when to trigger transmit messages, how to transmit data longer than 8 byte - all of these functions are specified in so-called higher-layer protocols (in network terms, CAN is a layer 2 implementation - higher layers are implemented in software). Some of the more popular higher-layer CAN bus protocols are CANopen, DeviceNet and J1939.

A list of Frequently Asked Questions also covering CAN issues is available on CANopen.us.

External CAN bus links listed on this page:

CAN Books available in English

Controller Area Network
by Konrad Etschberger, 2001
Check reviews, pricing and availability: amazon.com

CAN System Engineering: From Theory to Practical Applications
by Wolfhard Lawrenz, 1997
Check reviews, pricing and availability: amazon.com

Embedded Networking with CAN and CANopen
by Olaf Pfeiffer, Andrew Ayre, Christian Keydel, 2003
www.CANopenBook.com
Check reviews, pricing and availability: amazon.com
  • Reading & Learning
    • Selecting a CAN controller
      There are some 22 or so chip manufacturers producing microcontrollers with on-chip CAN interfaces. Many differ substantially from each other - what are the selection criteria we can go by?
    • Betting on CAN and CANopen
      An article giving answers to questions like: In which market segments are CAN and CANopen used today? How many CAN nodes are out there? In which market segments will CAN and CANopen be used in the future?
    • It's Time To Implement Embedded Networking And Internetworking was published in Electronic Design and describes the development of a CANopen/Internet gateway implemented on an 8051 microcontroller.

 

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