CANBed FD - Arduino CAN-FD Development Kit

This CANBed-FD adopts MCP2517FD CAN Bus controller with SPI interface and MCP2542FD CAN transceiver to achieve the CAN-BUS capability. With an OBD-II converter cable added on and the OBD-II library imported, you are ready to build an onboard diagnostic device.

Features

• Compact size design: 56x41mm overall dimension
• Support two CAN protocols: CAN-FD and CAN 2.0
• High-performance CAN Bus chip: MCP2517FD as CAN controller and MCP2542 (MCP2557) as CAN receiver
• Flexible CAN Interface: Industrial standard 9-pin sub-D connector or 4-pin terminal, 2 x 4-Pin Grove connectors Compatible with the Grove ecosystem
• Wide power input range from 7-28V and stable 5V/1A output

CANBed FD is a CAN FD dev board with an Atmega32U4 microcontroller inside, which has 32KB of Flash and 2.5KB of RAM. The operating frequency is 16MHz, which can meet most embedded applications. There's an Arduino Leonardo bootloader inside the Atmega32U4. If you have used the Arduino IDE, programming will not be a problem for you.

CANBed FD uses MCP2517FD as CAN controller and MCP2542 (MCP2557) as CAN receiver, which are high-performance CAN Bus chips, that can work in both CAN 2.0 and CAN FD protocols at the same time. There is a Micro USB connector on the board, through which you can program the board or supply power to the board. There is one I2C, one UART, one SPI interface, 3 analog input interfaces, and 8 digital IO on the board.

This CANBed-FD Arduino CAN-FD Development Kit adopts MCP2517FD CAN Bus controller with SPI interface and MCP2542FD CAN transceiver to achieve the CAN-BUS capability. With an OBD-II converter cable added on and the OBD-II library imported, you are ready to build an onboard diagnostic device.

What's more, the is an ATmega32U4 with Arduino Leonardo bootloader on the board, you can use Arduino IDE to program the board easily.

What is CAN-BUS?

CAN stands for Controller Area Network, it is used to allow microcontrollers and devices to communicate with each other within a vehicle without a host computer which allows for control and data acquisition. These devices are also called Electronic Control Units (ECU) and they enable communication between all parts of a vehicle.

Today, you can find up to 70 ECUs in a modern car. CAN is a serial communication bus designed for industrial and automotive applications. For example, they are found in vehicles, farming equipment, industrial environments, etc.

How does CAN-BUS work?

The fuel level, door sensors, odometer, and many more parts of a car have to communicate with each other somehow, and CAN BUS is what they used to do. These CAN-compatible components, which are called “nodes” are connected with a 3-string copper wire, with no central router to govern the flow of data. Every node can hear the messages of every other node.

Every node has an ID, where the ones with the higher priority ID can have the priority to “talk” first while the others “listen”. This is to ensure that there are never two nodes talking at the same time. The biggest benefit of CAN-BUS is to be able to just connect components without having to worry about signal routing.

Learn more about CAN-BUS here.

Specifications

Hardware Overview

1. GPIO - 9x2 I/O Pin OUT
2. Micro USB connector for programming
3. SPI - ICSP connector
4. CAN RX/TX Indicator
5. DB9 connector or Terminal for CAN Bus
6. Switch for the 120Ω terminal resistor for CAN Bus
7. Grove connector for UART
8. Grove connector for I2C
9. Reset

CAN Bus Family in Seeed

CAN-BUS series product selection reference is provided here. The table compares NEW-Release LoRa-E5 CAN, CANBed v1, CANBed FD, CANBed M4, and CANBed RP2040 in terms of MCU, protocol, memory, and interface, etc.

Part List