TickTock
Well-known member
Partlist, links, and assembly instructions can be found below:
Wiki
User Guide
I know... Do we really need another CANbus monitoring project? Well, I wanted to make something a little more powerful and flexible with better display capabilities. I didn't like having to choose between EVcan for battery data and CARcan for braking and controls. Gary Giddings turned me onto the mbed LPC1768 which comes with two independent can busses and CANary was born. Eventually, hopefully soon, I will share all my schematics, source code, PCB design, and 3d drawings free of charge if anyone is interested. By keeping it modular, it should work for most vehicles using the CANbus interface with a tweak to the software and connector.
After exploring a number of different displays I finally settled on this one. The touch screen is a nice plus so no exposed buttons.
For the enclosure, I wanted to play around with 3d printers since that would allow me to make a custom fit for the tapered space above the center console and angle the two displays toward the driver but mostly because I think they are cool. I was, however, unable to convince the wife that we needed a 3d printer (she saw right through the "do it for the children" tactic) so I sent the design to http://www.shapeways.com. It cost me $88 to print one so not exactly cheap but they were cheaper than the other print shops I priced out. I don't expect the finish to be great but I am hoping an exacto and some sandpaper will clean it up. Will find out in a few weeks.
Meanwhile, I have the schematic bread-boarded out with some basic code to log all traffic on both busses to a thumbdrive using Gary's .alc format. No cool graphics yet, but am able to monitor the messages (this will be one of the modes available for analysis but probably not what I want running while I am driving). I have to acknowledge Gary for his great suggestions and even snippets of code. Really helped me get off the ground faster.
Have some PCBs on the way too. Been a few years since I've done a project like this and I was amazed as how cheap PCBs have become. $31 to have 10 boards printed and shipped. Hopefully everything will go together as planned. Anyway, I'll post progress and pics here as things move along.
Wiki
User Guide
I know... Do we really need another CANbus monitoring project? Well, I wanted to make something a little more powerful and flexible with better display capabilities. I didn't like having to choose between EVcan for battery data and CARcan for braking and controls. Gary Giddings turned me onto the mbed LPC1768 which comes with two independent can busses and CANary was born. Eventually, hopefully soon, I will share all my schematics, source code, PCB design, and 3d drawings free of charge if anyone is interested. By keeping it modular, it should work for most vehicles using the CANbus interface with a tweak to the software and connector.
After exploring a number of different displays I finally settled on this one. The touch screen is a nice plus so no exposed buttons.
For the enclosure, I wanted to play around with 3d printers since that would allow me to make a custom fit for the tapered space above the center console and angle the two displays toward the driver but mostly because I think they are cool. I was, however, unable to convince the wife that we needed a 3d printer (she saw right through the "do it for the children" tactic) so I sent the design to http://www.shapeways.com. It cost me $88 to print one so not exactly cheap but they were cheaper than the other print shops I priced out. I don't expect the finish to be great but I am hoping an exacto and some sandpaper will clean it up. Will find out in a few weeks.
Meanwhile, I have the schematic bread-boarded out with some basic code to log all traffic on both busses to a thumbdrive using Gary's .alc format. No cool graphics yet, but am able to monitor the messages (this will be one of the modes available for analysis but probably not what I want running while I am driving). I have to acknowledge Gary for his great suggestions and even snippets of code. Really helped me get off the ground faster.
Have some PCBs on the way too. Been a few years since I've done a project like this and I was amazed as how cheap PCBs have become. $31 to have 10 boards printed and shipped. Hopefully everything will go together as planned. Anyway, I'll post progress and pics here as things move along.