The latest release of OpenCAN introduces a user's request for runtime support for switching between CAN 2.0b extended and standard, as well as several bug fixes. Autonomous message polling now completely empties the receive queue every time a device is polled. A bug in the Windows PCAN plugin was fixed that caused the device to continuously send a single message, and a confusing compiler warning when using the MingW compiler on Windows was fixed.

Currently, no issues are known to exist in the OpenCAN API core and plugins. Issues may remain in Testbench, but no major issues are known to exist.

You can download the latest version of OpenCAN from the OpenCAN website.

In an effort to bring OpenCAN to production-ready status several critical bugs have been fixed along with minor improvements to the documentation and Testbench. The OpenCAN core was left unchanged, but the most critical bug was a crash in Testbench if no device plugins are loaded. Two bugs were also fixed in the PCAN plugin for Windows. The first, not correctly setting the baud rate, and the second, not correctly reporting the status of the connection to the device. Testbench was improved by increasing the drawing speed of the receive message windows.

Currently, no issues are known to exist in the OpenCAN API core and plugins. Issues may remain in Testbench, but no major issues are known to exist.

You can download the latest version of OpenCAN from the OpenCAN website.

OpenCAN has received a much-needed update, version 0.5. Both the API and Testbench have received major updates. Support for multiple devices has been improved by making it easier to request a specific device as well as making plugin and device information more clear. Support for changing the baud rate and displaying message timestamps was added to Testbench. Nearly the entire UI for Testbench was cleaned and polished. The documentation was also updated to include more information on compiling, installing and using OpenCAN.

String processing efficiency has been increased by using Qt's fast concat. So, OpenCAN requires at least Qt 4.6 and is written and tested using Qt 4.7.

You can download the latest version of OpenCAN from the OpenCAN website.

OpenCAN 0.4 is another major release with changes to the API and Testbench. There was one addition to the API, support for providing and accessing device and plugin information such as descriptions, version, manufacturer, etc. The addition is aimed mainly at providing more information to user interfaces using OpenCAN.

The Testbench application received a major update. The user interface was given an overhaul so that multiple send and receive windows can be opened at one time, which alone makes sending different messages much easier. Now you can also set up multiple receive windows for watching different devices and messages by specifying a filter based on the message id and data for each window, or simply show all received messages. These updates make Testbench a much more useful tool for CAN networking with or without OpenCAN.

You can download the latest version of OpenCAN from the OpenCAN website.

OpenCAN 0.3 was released today. This release is considered a more major release than the last as there are additions to the API to support user-friendly descriptions of devices. Previously, the only way for a user to differentiate between devices was the system's device name or via additional code written for each application. So this update improves usability and maintenance.

To gain a small increase in performance I analyzed the use of the data structures in OpenCAN and converted some from QVectors to QLists. I also cleaned up the QMake project files for Win32/64 so that compiling is less of a hassle. Documentation for the API changes was added along with a few other changes.

You can download the latest version of OpenCAN from the OpenCAN website.

I released OpenCAN version 0.2 today which removes a delay in the startup of the OpenCAN driver for PEAK PCAN Linux devices. The OpenCAN driver included a short delay after starting the devices to prevent the driver from crashing and hanging the controlling application. However, the issue was only present in version 6.19 of the driver and version 6.20 fixes the issue, adding a short delay back in.  So I removed the no-longer necessary delay to increase the responsiveness when starting devices using the OpenCAN driver. None of the other OpenCAN drivers included an extra delay. I also made a few minor changes to the documentation.

You can download the latest version of OpenCAN from the OpenCAN website.

I've written many pieces of software in the past that utilize Controller Area Network (CAN) communication. Some software was written for Windows and some software was written for Linux. Plus each CANbus device requires different code and libraries to control the device and several applications required support for multiple devices. So I began using the Qt library from Trolltech (Nokia) to simplify development by creating a shared codebase for Windows and Linux. Over time I've rolled that code into a simple API so that I can easily add support for CAN communication to software. Later I added dynamically-loaded plug-ins to support new CANbus devices without modifying the software. 

Today I released the software as the OpenCAN platform. OpenCAN is open source software licensed under the LGPL. So you can support GPL and proprietary CAN device drivers and use OpenCAN in free and proprietary software. You don't have to look far to find software using OpenCAN. CreateX is one piece of software that implements CAN communication using OpenCAN. 

For more information and to download the code visit the OpenCAN website.