Does the .NET Micro Framework support the CAN bus?

Question

I know that the .NET Micro Framework supports the I²C bus. Are there some libraries for CAN or CANopen too?

If not, does it support CAN without using other peripherals? Can I build CAN support myself?

Answer 1

The offerings from GHI support CAN through their .NET Micro extensions. See here for a development system.

Refer to the documentation here for details on the CAN implementation:

Answer 2

Support regarding CAN can be very specific to the hardware layer underneath. Does the chip have mailboxes? How many? Do they support extended IDs or just standard IDs? What sort of autorouting is supported by a mailbox / channel?

Basically, I think any libraries you might find are going to be tied specifically to a hardware interface.

You might want to take a look at National Instruments - they tend to provide robust libraries for their hardware, even if they aren't the cheapest.

Answer 3

I'm currently using a USB to CAN-bus adapter from IXXAT. They provide an up to date DLL, C# bindings and a Windows driver which I'm using to read and write data to a CAN-bus network.

Answer 4

You may want to use a specific CAN bus IC for your .NET Microframework development. For example, you could use the MCP2515 chip in conjunction with a Netduino. Someone already wrote a driver for this specific setup.