Virtual CAN bus

Virtual CAN bus. Send CAN messages over a virtual can bus.

Use case

A virtual can bus can be useful during development of a CAN based system.

Usage

Server

To start the virtual CAN server, use the rust implementation:

$ cd rust/server
$ cargo run --release -- --port 18881

Python

To use this from python, install the python-can package, and next the virtualcan module:

$ pip install python-can
$ cd python
$ pip install .

Now, from python, use the virtualcan interface as follows:

import can

bus = can.Bus(interface='virtualcan', channel='localhost:18881')
bus.send(can.Message(arbitration_id=13, data=[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]))

C++

Refer to the C++ demo.

To build the C++ demo, use cmake:

$ cd cpp
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake ..
$ make
$ cd demo
$ virtualcan_demo.exe

Roadmap

• C++ implementation of TCP client
• Rust implementation of TCP client/server
• C# implementation of TCP client

Design

The zero-m-can server listens to port 5555 (req-rep) and port 5556 (pub-sub). Messages are encoded as msgpack data.

API:

• get_version() -> int
  • get the version of this protocol. Current version: 1
• new_client() -> str
  • Create a new client name. Returns the client name.
• send_message(client: str, id: int, extended: bool, data: list[int]) -> int
  • Send a message on the bus for the given client. Given are an id, extended marker and data.