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Overview

The CAN to USB transceiver fills a void in traditional CAN bus solutions - the lack of a readily available and inexpensive CAN bus interface for the display modules. There are four problems with existing solutions:

  1. Serial-to-CAN interfaces are too slow - they are generally limited to 115Kbps, and while we can slow down the CAN bus to support this speed, it's not always desirable - more speed means higher message density is possible (more sensors on the line).
  2. PCMCIA CAN bus interfaces are rare, and driver support is not universal between Windows and Linux. Although Galileo's software developers will focus on Linux applications, we do not want to preclude the use of an iPaq or similar.
  3. CompactFlash interfaces are very hard to find.
  4. Commercial USB solutions are expensive - often several hundred dollars.

Galileo's CAN to USB transceiver is inexpensive - approximately $35 including the PCB if an inexpensive board proto shop such as Olimex is used. It supports full CAN bus speed of 1Mbps with appropriate software setup on the USB host side (about three lines of code in Linux). And it levels the playing field. Many displays suitable for Galileo use provide USB ports already, and support for those that do not can generally be added cheaply and easily by installing a PCMCIA or CompactFlash card. By using USB as the intermediary, it is much easier to obtain access to the CAN bus.

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News

07/02/04 - The v2 module is complete, and prototype PCB boards and components to fill them have been ordered. We expect delivery by 07/20, and there will be no news until then.

Visit the Files section of this site to download the schematic, PCB layouts, parts lists, and code files for the transceiver.