The VScom USB-CAN is an adapter from USB to CAN. It connects a PC via the USB interface to the CAN bus. Since current computers all have several USB ports, the installation is simple. Even the previous standard of USB 1.1 with 12 Mbit/s max. speed is sufficient to connect the VScom USB-CAN to a computer.
CAN bus is widely used in industrial applications as well as in automotive monitoring and control. The VScom USB-CAN can be used to monitor the data traffic in such installations, as well as sending control information. The performance of VScom USB-CAN is among the best available in the market of CAN-on-USB products.
Since hardware-based automatic flow control is implemented at the interface between the CAN controller and the PC, the data reliability is very high.
• The ASCII conversion protocol is useful in developing and testing any configuration. Users just open the serial port via a Terminal Program, and have a simple way to talk to the CAN controller. The same way they can also transmit and receive CAN frames.
• Applications programmed by users load the library (DLL), which transparently handles the ASCII conversion. Programmers handle only the CAN frames and status, they do not have to care about the ASCII conversion in their applications. This API is supported in C/C++, C#, VB.NET, Delphi and LabVIEW.
• USB-CAN also supports CANFestival, an Open Source CANopen Framework. CANopen is a CAN-based higher layer protocol that is used in various application fields, such as medical equipment, offroad vehicles, maritime electronics, railway applications or building automation. CANopen unburdens the developer from dealing with CAN-specific details such as bit-timing and implementation-specific functions. It provides standardized communication objects for real-time data, configuration data as well as network management data.
• CANHacker, a tool for analyzing and transmitting frames on the CAN BUS, is included in the product package.
• A set of Mapper DLLs simulates CAN hardware from other manufacturers. Users configure their system for those products or the USB-CAN adapter as a replacement. So existing software will use the USB-CAN without replacing the application or modifying it.