CAN

Introduction

If you're thinking about using the CAN protocol on your drone, this guide will walk you through using our UCANS32K146 to create a CAN interface.

Since there isn't a native CAN bus on the NavQ, we can use a protocol called SLCAN to communicate CAN messages across a UART connection. We have built a binary for the UCANS32K146 that acts as an SLCAN transfer layer. This means that we can add a CAN bus to NavQ by just connecting the UCANS32K146 to the UART3 port.

Setting up SLCAN on NavQ

To enable SLCAN on NavQ, run these commands:

$ sudo modprobe slcan
$ sudo slcand -o -t sw -s8 /dev/ttymxc2 -S 115200
$ sudo ip link set up slcan0

Now you can use SocketCAN or python-can to send and recieve CAN messages over the slcan0 interface. As an example, here is how to send a CAN message from the command line:

$ cansend slcan0 123#deadbeef

Flashing your UCANS32K146 with the SLCAN conversion binary

Follow the guide at the link below to flash the SLCAN binary to your UCAN board: