python-can

The python-can library provides Controller Area Network support for Python, providing common abstractions to different hardware devices, and a suite of utilities for sending and receiving messages on a CAN bus.

python-can runs any where Python runs; from high powered computers with commercial CAN to usb devices right down to low powered devices running linux such as a BeagleBone or RaspberryPi.

More concretely, some example uses of the library:

• Passively logging what occurs on a CAN bus. For example monitoring a commercial vehicle using its OBD-II port.

• Testing of hardware that interacts via CAN. Modules found in modern cars, motocycles, boats, and even wheelchairs have had components tested from Python using this library.

• Prototyping new hardware modules or software algorithms in-the-loop. Easily interact with an existing bus.

• Creating virtual modules to prototype CAN bus communication.

Brief example of the library in action: connecting to a CAN bus, creating and sending a message:

#!/usr/bin/env python

"""
This example shows how sending a single message works.
"""

import can


def send_one():
    """Sends a single message."""

    # this uses the default configuration (for example from the config file)
    # see https://python-can.readthedocs.io/en/stable/configuration.html
    with can.interface.Bus() as bus:

        # Using specific buses works similar:
        # bus = can.interface.Bus(bustype='socketcan', channel='vcan0', bitrate=250000)
        # bus = can.interface.Bus(bustype='pcan', channel='PCAN_USBBUS1', bitrate=250000)
        # bus = can.interface.Bus(bustype='ixxat', channel=0, bitrate=250000)
        # bus = can.interface.Bus(bustype='vector', app_name='CANalyzer', channel=0, bitrate=250000)
        # ...

        msg = can.Message(
            arbitration_id=0xC0FFEE, data=[0, 25, 0, 1, 3, 1, 4, 1], is_extended_id=True
        )

        try:
            bus.send(msg)
            print(f"Message sent on {bus.channel_info}")
        except can.CanError:
            print("Message NOT sent")


if __name__ == "__main__":
    send_one()

Contents:

Installation

Install can with pip:

$ pip install python-can

As most likely you will want to interface with some hardware, you may also have to install platform dependencies. Be sure to check any other specifics for your hardware in CAN Interface Modules.

GNU/Linux dependencies

Reasonably modern Linux Kernels (2.6.25 or newer) have an implementation of socketcan. This version of python-can will directly use socketcan if called with Python 3.3 or greater, otherwise that interface is used via ctypes.

Windows dependencies

Kvaser

To install python-can using the Kvaser CANLib SDK as the backend:

1. Install Kvaser’s latest Windows CANLib drivers.

2. Test that Kvaser’s own tools work to ensure the driver is properly installed and that the hardware is working.

PCAN

Download and install the latest driver for your interface:

• Windows (also supported on Cygwin)

• Linux (also works without, see also Linux installation)

• macOS

Note that PCANBasic API timestamps count seconds from system startup. To convert these to epoch times, the uptime library is used. If it is not available, the times are returned as number of seconds from system startup. To install the uptime library, run pip install python-can[pcan].

This library can take advantage of the Python for Windows Extensions library if installed. It will be used to get notified of new messages instead of the CPU intensive polling that will otherwise have be used.

IXXAT

To install python-can using the IXXAT VCI V3 or V4 SDK as the backend:

1. Install IXXAT’s latest Windows VCI V3 SDK or VCI V4 SDK (Win10) drivers.

2. Test that IXXAT’s own tools (i.e. MiniMon) work to ensure the driver is properly installed and that the hardware is working.

NI-CAN

Download and install the NI-CAN drivers from National Instruments.

Currently the driver only supports 32-bit Python on Windows.

neoVI

See neoVI.

Vector

To install python-can using the XL Driver Library as the backend:

1. Install the latest drivers for your Vector hardware interface.

2. Install the XL Driver Library or copy the vxlapi.dll and/or vxlapi64.dll into your working directory.

3. Use Vector Hardware Configuration to assign a channel to your application.

CANtact

CANtact is supported on Linux, Windows, and macOS. To install python-can using the CANtact driver backend:

python3 -m pip install "python-can[cantact]"

If python-can is already installed, the CANtact backend can be installed separately:

python3 -m pip install cantact

Additional CANtact documentation is available at cantact.io.

Installing python-can in development mode

A “development” install of this package allows you to make changes locally or pull updates from the Git repository and use them without having to reinstall. Download or clone the source repository then:

python setup.py develop

Configuration

Usually this library is used with a particular CAN interface, this can be specified in code, read from configuration files or environment variables.

See can.util.load_config() for implementation.

In Code

The can object exposes an rc dictionary which can be used to set the interface and channel.

import can
can.rc['interface'] = 'socketcan'
can.rc['channel'] = 'vcan0'
can.rc['bitrate'] = 500000
from can.interface import Bus

bus = Bus()

You can also specify the interface and channel for each Bus instance:

import can

bus = can.interface.Bus(bustype='socketcan', channel='vcan0', bitrate=500000)

Configuration File

On Linux systems the config file is searched in the following paths:

1. ~/can.conf

2. /etc/can.conf

3. $HOME/.can

4. $HOME/.canrc

On Windows systems the config file is searched in the following paths:

1. %USERPROFILE%/can.conf

2. can.ini (current working directory)

3. %APPDATA%/can.ini

The configuration file sets the default interface and channel:

[default]
interface = <the name of the interface to use>
channel = <the channel to use by default>
bitrate = <the bitrate in bits/s to use by default>

The configuration can also contain additional sections (or context):

[default]
interface = <the name of the interface to use>
channel = <the channel to use by default>
bitrate = <the bitrate in bits/s to use by default>

[HS]
# All the values from the 'default' section are inherited
channel = <the channel to use>
bitrate = <the bitrate in bits/s to use. i.e. 500000>

[MS]
# All the values from the 'default' section are inherited
channel = <the channel to use>
bitrate = <the bitrate in bits/s to use. i.e. 125000>

from can.interface import Bus

hs_bus = Bus(context='HS')
ms_bus = Bus(context='MS')

Environment Variables

Configuration can be pulled from these environmental variables:

• CAN_INTERFACE

• CAN_CHANNEL

• CAN_BITRATE

• CAN_CONFIG

The CAN_CONFIG environment variable allows to set any bus configuration using JSON.

For example:

CAN_INTERFACE=socketcan CAN_CONFIG={"receive_own_messages": true, "fd": true}

Interface Names

Lookup table of interface names:

Name	Documentation
"socketcan"	SocketCAN
"kvaser"	Kvaser’s CANLIB
"serial"	CAN over Serial
"slcan"	CAN over Serial / SLCAN
"ixxat"	IXXAT Virtual CAN Interface
"pcan"	PCAN Basic API
"usb2can"	USB2CAN Interface
"nican"	NI-CAN
"iscan"	isCAN
"neovi"	neoVI
"vector"	Vector
"virtual"	Virtual
"canalystii"	CANalyst-II
"systec"	SYSTEC interface

Library API

The main objects are the BusABC and the Message. A form of CAN interface is also required.

Hint

Check the backend specific documentation for any implementation specific details.

Bus

The BusABC class, as the name suggests, provides an abstraction of a CAN bus. The bus provides a wrapper around a physical or virtual CAN Bus. An interface specific instance of the BusABC is created by the Bus class, for example:

vector_bus = can.Bus(interface='vector', ...)

That bus is then able to handle the interface specific software/hardware interactions and implements the BusABC API.

A thread safe bus wrapper is also available, see Thread safe bus.

Autoconfig Bus

class can.Bus(channel, can_filters=None, **kwargs)

Bus wrapper with configuration loading.

Instantiates a CAN Bus of the given interface, falls back to reading a configuration file from default locations.

Construct and open a CAN bus instance of the specified type.

Subclasses should call though this method with all given parameters as it handles generic tasks like applying filters.

Parameters

• channel (Any) – The can interface identifier. Expected type is backend dependent.

• can_filters (Optional[Sequence[Union[CanFilter, CanFilterExtended]]]) – See set_filters() for details.

• kwargs (dict) – Any backend dependent configurations are passed in this dictionary

Raises

• ValueError – If parameters are out of range

• can.CanInterfaceNotImplementedError – If the driver cannot be accessed

• can.CanInitializationError – If the bus cannot be initialized

API

class can.BusABC(channel, can_filters=None, **kwargs)

The CAN Bus Abstract Base Class that serves as the basis for all concrete interfaces.

This class may be used as an iterator over the received messages and as a context manager for auto-closing the bus when done using it.

Please refer to Errors for possible exceptions that may be thrown by certain operations on this bus.

Construct and open a CAN bus instance of the specified type.

Subclasses should call though this method with all given parameters as it handles generic tasks like applying filters.

Parameters

• channel (Any) – The can interface identifier. Expected type is backend dependent.

• can_filters (Optional[Sequence[Union[CanFilter, CanFilterExtended]]]) – See set_filters() for details.

• kwargs (dict) – Any backend dependent configurations are passed in this dictionary

Raises

• ValueError – If parameters are out of range

• can.CanInterfaceNotImplementedError – If the driver cannot be accessed

• can.CanInitializationError – If the bus cannot be initialized

__iter__()

Allow iteration on messages as they are received.

>>> for msg in bus:
...     print(msg)

Yields

Message msg objects.

Return type

Iterator[Message]

RECV_LOGGING_LEVEL = 9

Log level for received messages

channel_info = 'unknown'

a string describing the underlying bus and/or channel

fileno()

Return type

int

property filters: Optional[Sequence[Union[can.typechecking.CanFilter, can.typechecking.CanFilterExtended]]]

Modify the filters of this bus. See set_filters() for details.

Return type

Optional[Sequence[Union[CanFilter, CanFilterExtended]]]

flush_tx_buffer()

Discard every message that may be queued in the output buffer(s).

Return type

None

recv(timeout=None)

Block waiting for a message from the Bus.

Parameters

timeout (Optional[float]) – seconds to wait for a message or None to wait indefinitely

Return type

Optional[Message]

Returns

None on timeout or a Message object.

Raises

can.CanOperationError – If an error occurred while reading

abstract send(msg, timeout=None)

Transmit a message to the CAN bus.

Override this method to enable the transmit path.

Parameters

• msg (Message) – A message object.

• timeout (Optional[float]) – If > 0, wait up to this many seconds for message to be ACK’ed or for transmit queue to be ready depending on driver implementation. If timeout is exceeded, an exception will be raised. Might not be supported by all interfaces. None blocks indefinitely.

Raises

can.CanOperationError – If an error occurred while sending

Return type

None

send_periodic(msgs, period, duration=None, store_task=True)

Start sending messages at a given period on this bus.

The task will be active until one of the following conditions are met:

• the (optional) duration expires

• the Bus instance goes out of scope

• the Bus instance is shutdown

• BusABC.stop_all_periodic_tasks() is called

• the task’s CyclicTask.stop() method is called.

Parameters

• msgs (Union[Message, Sequence[Message]]) – Message(s) to transmit

• period (float) – Period in seconds between each message

• duration (Optional[float]) – Approximate duration in seconds to continue sending messages. If no duration is provided, the task will continue indefinitely.

• store_task (bool) – If True (the default) the task will be attached to this Bus instance. Disable to instead manage tasks manually.

Return type

CyclicSendTaskABC

Returns

A started task instance. Note the task can be stopped (and depending on the backend modified) by calling the task’s stop() method.

Note

Note the duration before the messages stop being sent may not be exactly the same as the duration specified by the user. In general the message will be sent at the given rate until at least duration seconds.

Note

For extremely long running Bus instances with many short lived tasks the default api with store_task==True may not be appropriate as the stopped tasks are still taking up memory as they are associated with the Bus instance.

set_filters(filters=None)

Apply filtering to all messages received by this Bus.

All messages that match at least one filter are returned. If filters is None or a zero length sequence, all messages are matched.

Calling without passing any filters will reset the applied filters to None.

Parameters

filters (Optional[Sequence[Union[CanFilter, CanFilterExtended]]]) –

A iterable of dictionaries each containing a “can_id”, a “can_mask”, and an optional “extended” key.

>>> [{"can_id": 0x11, "can_mask": 0x21, "extended": False}]

A filter matches, when <received_can_id> & can_mask == can_id & can_mask. If extended is set as well, it only matches messages where <received_is_extended> == extended. Else it matches every messages based only on the arbitration ID and mask.

Return type

None

shutdown()

Called to carry out any interface specific cleanup required in shutting down a bus.

Return type

None

property state: can.bus.BusState

Return the current state of the hardware

Return type

BusState

stop_all_periodic_tasks(remove_tasks=True)

Stop sending any messages that were started using bus.send_periodic.

Note

The result is undefined if a single task throws an exception while being stopped.

Parameters

remove_tasks (bool) – Stop tracking the stopped tasks.

Return type

None

Transmitting

Writing individual messages to the bus is done by calling the send() method and passing a Message instance. Periodic sending is controlled by the broadcast manager.

Receiving

Reading from the bus is achieved by either calling the recv() method or by directly iterating over the bus:

for msg in bus:
    print(msg.data)

Alternatively the Listener api can be used, which is a list of Listener subclasses that receive notifications when new messages arrive.

Filtering

Message filtering can be set up for each bus. Where the interface supports it, this is carried out in the hardware or kernel layer - not in Python. All messages that match at least one filter are returned.

Example defining two filters, one to pass 11-bit ID 0x451, the other to pass 29-bit ID 0xA0000:

filters = [
    {"can_id": 0x451, "can_mask": 0x7FF, "extended": False},
    {"can_id": 0xA0000, "can_mask": 0x1FFFFFFF, "extended": True},
]
bus = can.interface.Bus(channel="can0", bustype="socketcan", can_filters=filters)

See set_filters() for the implementation.

Thread safe bus

This thread safe version of the BusABC class can be used by multiple threads at once. Sending and receiving is locked separately to avoid unnecessary delays. Conflicting calls are executed by blocking until the bus is accessible.

It can be used exactly like the normal BusABC:

# 'socketcan' is only an example interface, it works with all the others too
my_bus = can.ThreadSafeBus(interface='socketcan', channel='vcan0')
my_bus.send(...)
my_bus.recv(...)

class can.ThreadSafeBus(*args, **kwargs)

Contains a thread safe can.BusABC implementation that wraps around an existing interface instance. All public methods of that base class are now safe to be called from multiple threads. The send and receive methods are synchronized separately.

Use this as a drop-in replacement for BusABC.

Note

This approach assumes that both send() and _recv_internal() of the underlying bus instance can be called simultaneously, and that the methods use _recv_internal() instead of recv() directly.

Message

class can.Message(timestamp=0.0, arbitration_id=0, is_extended_id=True, is_remote_frame=False, is_error_frame=False, channel=None, dlc=None, data=None, is_fd=False, is_rx=True, bitrate_switch=False, error_state_indicator=False, check=False)

The Message object is used to represent CAN messages for sending, receiving and other purposes like converting between different logging formats.

Messages can use extended identifiers, be remote or error frames, contain data and may be associated to a channel.

Messages are always compared by identity and never by value, because that may introduce unexpected behaviour. See also equals().

copy()/deepcopy() is supported as well.

Messages do not support “dynamic” attributes, meaning any others than the documented ones, since it uses __slots__.

To create a message object, simply provide any of the below attributes together with additional parameters as keyword arguments to the constructor.

Parameters

check (bool) – By default, the constructor of this class does not strictly check the input. Thus, the caller must prevent the creation of invalid messages or set this parameter to True, to raise an Error on invalid inputs. Possible problems include the dlc field not matching the length of data or creating a message with both is_remote_frame and is_error_frame set to True.

Raises

ValueError – If and only if check is set to True and one or more arguments were invalid

One can instantiate a Message defining data, and optional arguments for all attributes such as arbitration ID, flags, and timestamp.

>>> from can import Message
>>> test = Message(data=[1, 2, 3, 4, 5])
>>> test.data
bytearray(b'\x01\x02\x03\x04\x05')
>>> test.dlc
5
>>> print(test)
Timestamp:        0.000000    ID: 00000000    010    DLC: 5    01 02 03 04 05

The arbitration_id field in a CAN message may be either 11 bits (standard addressing, CAN 2.0A) or 29 bits (extended addressing, CAN 2.0B) in length, and python-can exposes this difference with the is_extended_id attribute.

timestamp

Type

float

The timestamp field in a CAN message is a floating point number representing when the message was received since the epoch in seconds. Where possible this will be timestamped in hardware.

arbitration_id

Type

int

The frame identifier used for arbitration on the bus.

The arbitration ID can take an int between 0 and the maximum value allowed depending on the is_extended_id flag (either 2¹¹ - 1 for 11-bit IDs, or 2²⁹ - 1 for 29-bit identifiers).

>>> print(Message(is_extended_id=False, arbitration_id=100))
Timestamp:        0.000000        ID: 0064    S        DLC: 0

data

Type

bytearray

The data parameter of a CAN message is exposed as a bytearray with length between 0 and 8.

>>> example_data = bytearray([1, 2, 3])
>>> print(Message(data=example_data))
Timestamp:        0.000000    ID: 00000000    X        DLC: 3    01 02 03

A Message can also be created with bytes, or lists of ints:

>>> m1 = Message(data=[0x64, 0x65, 0x61, 0x64, 0x62, 0x65, 0x65, 0x66])
>>> print(m1.data)
bytearray(b'deadbeef')
>>> m2 = Message(data=b'deadbeef')
>>> m2.data
bytearray(b'deadbeef')

dlc

Type

int

The DLC parameter of a CAN message is an integer between 0 and 8 representing the frame payload length.

In the case of a CAN FD message, this indicates the data length in number of bytes.

>>> m = Message(data=[1, 2, 3])
>>> m.dlc
3

Note

The DLC value does not necessarily define the number of bytes of data in a message.

Its purpose varies depending on the frame type - for data frames it represents the amount of data contained in the message, in remote frames it represents the amount of data being requested.

channel

Type

str or int or None

This might store the channel from which the message came.

is_extended_id

Type

bool

This flag controls the size of the arbitration_id field. Previously this was exposed as id_type.

>>> print(Message(is_extended_id=False))
Timestamp:        0.000000        ID: 0000    S        DLC: 0
>>> print(Message(is_extended_id=True))
Timestamp:        0.000000    ID: 00000000    X        DLC: 0

Note

The initializer argument and attribute extended_id has been deprecated in favor of is_extended_id, but will continue to work for the 3.x release series.

is_error_frame

Type

bool

This boolean parameter indicates if the message is an error frame or not.

>>> print(Message(is_error_frame=True))
Timestamp:        0.000000    ID: 00000000    X E      DLC: 0

is_remote_frame

Type

bool

This boolean attribute indicates if the message is a remote frame or a data frame, and modifies the bit in the CAN message’s flags field indicating this.

>>> print(Message(is_remote_frame=True))
Timestamp:        0.000000    ID: 00000000    X   R    DLC: 0

is_fd

Type

bool

Indicates that this message is a CAN FD message.

is_rx

Type

bool

Indicates whether this message is a transmitted (Tx) or received (Rx) frame

bitrate_switch

Type

bool

If this is a CAN FD message, this indicates that a higher bitrate was used for the data transmission.

error_state_indicator

Type

bool

If this is a CAN FD message, this indicates an error active state.

__str__()

A string representation of a CAN message:

>>> from can import Message
>>> test = Message()
>>> print(test)
Timestamp:        0.000000    ID: 00000000    X        DLC: 0
>>> test2 = Message(data=[1, 2, 3, 4, 5])
>>> print(test2)
Timestamp:        0.000000    ID: 00000000    X        DLC: 5    01 02 03 04 05

The fields in the printed message are (in order):

• timestamp,

• arbitration ID,

• flags,

• dlc,

• and data.

The flags field is represented as one, two or three letters:

• X if the is_extended_id attribute is set, otherwise S,

• E if the is_error_frame attribute is set,

• R if the is_remote_frame attribute is set.

The arbitration ID field is represented as either a four or eight digit hexadecimal number depending on the length of the arbitration ID (11-bit or 29-bit).

Each of the bytes in the data field (when present) are represented as two-digit hexadecimal numbers.

Listeners

Listener

The Listener class is an “abstract” base class for any objects which wish to register to receive notifications of new messages on the bus. A Listener can be used in two ways; the default is to call the Listener with a new message, or by calling the method on_message_received.

Listeners are registered with Notifier object(s) which ensure they are notified whenever a new message is received.

Subclasses of Listener that do not override on_message_received will cause NotImplementedError to be thrown when a message is received on the CAN bus.

class can.Listener(*args, **kwargs)

The basic listener that can be called directly to handle some CAN message:

listener = SomeListener()
msg = my_bus.recv()

# now either call
listener(msg)
# or
listener.on_message_received(msg)

# Important to ensure all outputs are flushed
listener.stop()

on_error(exc)

This method is called to handle any exception in the receive thread.

Parameters

exc (Exception) – The exception causing the thread to stop

Return type

None

abstract on_message_received(msg)

This method is called to handle the given message.

Parameters

msg (Message) – the delivered message

Return type

None

stop()

Stop handling new messages, carry out any final tasks to ensure data is persisted and cleanup any open resources.

Concrete implementations override.

Return type

None

There are some listeners that already ship together with python-can and are listed below. Some of them allow messages to be written to files, and the corresponding file readers are also documented here.

Note

Please note that writing and the reading a message might not always yield a completely unchanged message again, since some properties are not (yet) supported by some file formats.

Note

Additional file formats for both reading/writing log files can be added via a plugin reader/writer. An external package can register a new reader by using the can.io.message_reader entry point. Similarly, a writer can be added using the can.io.message_writer entry point.

The format of the entry point is reader_name=module:classname where classname is a can.io.generic.BaseIOHandler concrete implementation.

entry_points={
    'can.io.message_reader': [
       '.asc = my_package.io.asc:ASCReader'
   ]
},

BufferedReader

class can.BufferedReader(*args, **kwargs)

A BufferedReader is a subclass of Listener which implements a message buffer: that is, when the can.BufferedReader instance is notified of a new message it pushes it into a queue of messages waiting to be serviced. The messages can then be fetched with get_message().

Putting in messages after stop() has been called will raise an exception, see on_message_received().

Attr is_stopped

True if the reader has been stopped

get_message(timeout=0.5)

Attempts to retrieve the latest message received by the instance. If no message is available it blocks for given timeout or until a message is received, or else returns None (whichever is shorter). This method does not block after can.BufferedReader.stop() has been called.

Parameters

timeout (float) – The number of seconds to wait for a new message.

Return type

Optional[Message]

Returns

the Message if there is one, or None if there is not.

on_message_received(msg)

Append a message to the buffer.

Raises

BufferError if the reader has already been stopped

Return type

None

stop()

Prohibits any more additions to this reader.

Return type

None

class can.AsyncBufferedReader(*args, **kwargs)

A message buffer for use with asyncio.

See Asyncio support for how to use with can.Notifier.

Can also be used as an asynchronous iterator:

async for msg in reader:
    print(msg)

async get_message()

Retrieve the latest message when awaited for:

msg = await reader.get_message()

Return type

Message

Returns

The CAN message.

on_message_received(msg)

Append a message to the buffer.

Must only be called inside an event loop!

Return type

None

RedirectReader

class can.RedirectReader(bus, *args, **kwargs)

A RedirectReader sends all received messages to another Bus.

on_message_received(msg)

This method is called to handle the given message.

Parameters

msg (Message) – the delivered message

Return type

None

Logger

The can.Logger uses the following can.Listener types to create log files with different file types of the messages received.

class can.Logger(file, mode='rt')

Logs CAN messages to a file.

The format is determined from the file suffix which can be one of:

• .asc: can.ASCWriter

• .blf can.BLFWriter

• .csv: can.CSVWriter

• .db: can.SqliteWriter

• .log can.CanutilsLogWriter

• .txt can.Printer

Any of these formats can be used with gzip compression by appending the suffix .gz (e.g. filename.asc.gz). However, third-party tools might not be able to read these files.

The filename may also be None, to fall back to can.Printer.

The log files may be incomplete until stop() is called due to buffering.

Note

This class itself is just a dispatcher, and any positional and keyword arguments are passed on to the returned instance.

Parameters

• file (Union[TextIO, BinaryIO, GzipFile, str, os.PathLike[str], None]) – a path-like object to open a file, a file-like object to be used as a file or None to not use a file at all

• mode (str) – the mode that should be used to open the file, see open(), ignored if file is None

static compress(filename)

Return the suffix and io object of the decompressed file. File will automatically recompress upon close.

on_message_received(msg)

This method is called to handle the given message.

Parameters

msg (Message) – the delivered message

Return type

None

class can.io.BaseRotatingLogger(*args, **kwargs)

Base class for rotating CAN loggers. This class is not meant to be instantiated directly. Subclasses must implement the should_rollover and do_rollover methods according to their rotation strategy.

The rotation behavior can be further customized by the user by setting the namer and rotator attributes after instantiating the subclass.

These attributes as well as the methods rotation_filename and rotate and the corresponding docstrings are carried over from the python builtin BaseRotatingHandler.

Subclasses must set the _writer attribute upon initialization.

Attr namer

If this attribute is set to a callable, the rotation_filename() method delegates to this callable. The parameters passed to the callable are those passed to rotation_filename().

Attr rotator

If this attribute is set to a callable, the rotate() method delegates to this callable. The parameters passed to the callable are those passed to rotate().

Attr rollover_count

An integer counter to track the number of rollovers.

Parameters

• file – a path-like object to open a file, a file-like object to be used as a file or None to not use a file at all

• mode – the mode that should be used to open the file, see open(), ignored if file is None

abstract do_rollover()

Perform rollover.

Return type

None

on_message_received(msg)

This method is called to handle the given message.

Parameters

msg (Message) – the delivered message

Return type

None

rotate(source, dest)

When rotating, rotate the current log.

The default implementation calls the rotator attribute of the handler, if it’s callable, passing the source and dest arguments to it. If the attribute isn’t callable (the default is None), the source is simply renamed to the destination.

Parameters

• source – The source filename. This is normally the base filename, e.g. “test.log”

• dest – The destination filename. This is normally what the source is rotated to, e.g. “test_#001.log”.

rotation_filename(default_name)

Modify the filename of a log file when rotating.

This is provided so that a custom filename can be provided. The default implementation calls the namer attribute of the handler, if it’s callable, passing the default name to it. If the attribute isn’t callable (the default is None), the name is returned unchanged.

Parameters

default_name – The default name for the log file.

abstract should_rollover(msg)

Determine if the rollover conditions are met.

Return type

bool

stop()

Stop handling new messages.

Carry out any final tasks to ensure data is persisted and cleanup any open resources.

Return type

None

property writer: can.io.generic.FileIOMessageWriter

This attribute holds an instance of a writer class which manages the actual file IO.

Return type

FileIOMessageWriter

class can.SizedRotatingLogger(base_filename, *args, max_bytes=0, **kwargs)

Log CAN messages to a sequence of files with a given maximum size.

The logger creates a log file with the given base_filename. When the size threshold is reached the current log file is closed and renamed by adding a timestamp and the rollover count. A new log file is then created and written to.

This behavior can be customized by setting the namer and rotator attribute.

Example:

from can import Notifier, SizedRotatingLogger
from can.interfaces.vector import VectorBus

bus = VectorBus(channel=[0], app_name="CANape", fd=True)

logger = SizedRotatingLogger(
    base_filename="my_logfile.asc",
    max_bytes=5 * 1024 ** 2,  # =5MB
)
logger.rollover_count = 23  # start counter at 23

notifier = Notifier(bus=bus, listeners=[logger])

The SizedRotatingLogger currently supports the formats

• .asc: can.ASCWriter

• .blf can.BLFWriter

• .csv: can.CSVWriter

• .log can.CanutilsLogWriter

• .txt can.Printer (if pointing to a file)

Note

The can.SqliteWriter is not supported yet.

The log files on disk may be incomplete due to buffering until stop() is called.

Parameters

• base_filename – A path-like object for the base filename. The log file format is defined by the suffix of base_filename.

• max_bytes – The size threshold at which a new log file shall be created. If set to 0, no rollover will be performed.

do_rollover()

Perform rollover.

Return type

None

should_rollover(msg)

Determine if the rollover conditions are met.

Return type

bool

Printer

class can.Printer(file=None, append=False)

The Printer class is a subclass of Listener which simply prints any messages it receives to the terminal (stdout). A message is turned into a string using __str__().

Attr write_to_file

True if this instance prints to a file instead of standard out

Parameters

• file (Union[str, os.PathLike[str], TextIO, None]) – An optional path-like object or a file-like object to “print” to instead of writing to standard out (stdout). If this is a file-like object, is has to be opened in text write mode, not binary write mode.

• append (bool) – If set to True messages, are appended to the file, else the file is truncated

on_message_received(msg)

This method is called to handle the given message.

Parameters

msg (Message) – the delivered message

Return type

None

CSVWriter

class can.CSVWriter(file, append=False)

Writes a comma separated text file with a line for each message. Includes a header line.

The columns are as follows:

name of column	format description	example
timestamp	decimal float	1483389946.197
arbitration_id	hex	0x00dadada
extended	1 == True, 0 == False	1
remote	1 == True, 0 == False	0
error	1 == True, 0 == False	0
dlc	int	6
data	base64 encoded	WzQyLCA5XQ==

Each line is terminated with a platform specific line separator.

Parameters

• file (Union[str, os.PathLike[str], TextIO]) – a path-like object or a file-like object to write to. If this is a file-like object, is has to open in text write mode, not binary write mode.

• append (bool) – if set to True messages are appended to the file and no header line is written, else the file is truncated and starts with a newly written header line

on_message_received(msg)

This method is called to handle the given message.

Parameters

msg (Message) – the delivered message

Return type

None

class can.CSVReader(file)

Iterator over CAN messages from a .csv file that was generated by CSVWriter or that uses the same format as described there. Assumes that there is a header and thus skips the first line.

Any line separator is accepted.

Parameters

file (Union[str, os.PathLike[str], TextIO]) – a path-like object or as file-like object to read from If this is a file-like object, is has to opened in text read mode, not binary read mode.

SqliteWriter

class can.SqliteWriter(file, table_name='messages')

Logs received CAN data to a simple SQL database.

The sqlite database may already exist, otherwise it will be created when the first message arrives.

Messages are internally buffered and written to the SQL file in a background thread. Ensures that all messages that are added before calling stop() are actually written to the database after that call returns. Thus, calling stop() may take a while.

Attr str table_name

the name of the database table used for storing the messages

Attr int num_frames

the number of frames actually written to the database, this excludes messages that are still buffered

Attr float last_write

the last time a message war actually written to the database, as given by time.time()

Note

When the listener’s stop() method is called the thread writing to the database will continue to receive and internally buffer messages if they continue to arrive before the GET_MESSAGE_TIMEOUT.

If the GET_MESSAGE_TIMEOUT expires before a message is received, the internal buffer is written out to the database file.

However if the bus is still saturated with messages, the Listener will continue receiving until the MAX_TIME_BETWEEN_WRITES timeout is reached or more than MAX_BUFFER_SIZE_BEFORE_WRITES messages are buffered.

Note

The database schema is given in the documentation of the loggers.

Parameters

• file (Union[str, os.PathLike[str]]) – a str or path like object that points to the database file to use

• table_name (str) – the name of the table to store messages in

Warning

In contrary to all other readers/writers the Sqlite handlers do not accept file-like objects as the file parameter.

GET_MESSAGE_TIMEOUT = 0.25

Number of seconds to wait for messages from internal queue

MAX_BUFFER_SIZE_BEFORE_WRITES = 500

Maximum number of messages to buffer before writing to the database

MAX_TIME_BETWEEN_WRITES = 5.0

Maximum number of seconds to wait between writes to the database

stop()

Stops the reader an writes all remaining messages to the database. Thus, this might take a while and block.

class can.SqliteReader(file, table_name='messages')

Reads recorded CAN messages from a simple SQL database.

This class can be iterated over or used to fetch all messages in the database with read_all().

Calling len() on this object might not run in constant time.

Attr str table_name

the name of the database table used for storing the messages

Note

The database schema is given in the documentation of the loggers.

Parameters

• file (Union[str, os.PathLike[str]]) – a str path like object that points to the database file to use

• table_name (str) – the name of the table to look for the messages

Warning

In contrary to all other readers/writers the Sqlite handlers do not accept file-like objects as the file parameter. It also runs in append=True mode all the time.

read_all()

Fetches all messages in the database.

Return type

Generator[can.Message]

stop()

Closes the connection to the database.

Database table format

The messages are written to the table messages in the sqlite database by default. The table is created if it does not already exist.

The entries are as follows:

Name	Data type	Note
ts	REAL	The timestamp of the message
arbitration_id	INTEGER	The arbitration id, might use the extended format
extended	INTEGER	1 if the arbitration id uses the extended format, else 0
remote	INTEGER	1 if the message is a remote frame, else 0
error	INTEGER	1 if the message is an error frame, else 0
dlc	INTEGER	The data length code (DLC)
data	BLOB	The content of the message

ASC (.asc Logging format)

ASCWriter logs CAN data to an ASCII log file compatible with other CAN tools such as Vector CANalyzer/CANoe and other. Since no official specification exists for the format, it has been reverse- engineered from existing log files. One description of the format can be found here.

Note

Channels will be converted to integers.

class can.ASCWriter(file, channel=1)

Logs CAN data to an ASCII log file (.asc).

The measurement starts with the timestamp of the first registered message. If a message has a timestamp smaller than the previous one or None, it gets assigned the timestamp that was written for the last message. It the first message does not have a timestamp, it is set to zero.

Parameters

• file (Union[str, os.PathLike[str], TextIO]) – a path-like object or as file-like object to write to If this is a file-like object, is has to opened in text write mode, not binary write mode.

• channel (int) – a default channel to use when the message does not have a channel set

log_event(message, timestamp=None)

Add a message to the log file.

Parameters

• message (str) – an arbitrary message

• timestamp (Optional[float]) – the absolute timestamp of the event

Return type

None

on_message_received(msg)

This method is called to handle the given message.

Parameters

msg (Message) – the delivered message

Return type

None

stop()

Closes the underlying file-like object and flushes it, if it was opened in write mode.

Return type

None

ASCReader reads CAN data from ASCII log files .asc, as further references can-utils can be used: asc2log, log2asc.

class can.ASCReader(file, base='hex', relative_timestamp=True)

Iterator of CAN messages from a ASC logging file. Meta data (comments, bus statistics, J1939 Transport Protocol messages) is ignored.

Parameters

• file (Union[str, os.PathLike[str], TextIO]) – a path-like object or as file-like object to read from If this is a file-like object, is has to opened in text read mode, not binary read mode.

• base (str) – Select the base(hex or dec) of id and data. If the header of the asc file contains base information, this value will be overwritten. Default “hex”.

• relative_timestamp (bool) – Select whether the timestamps are relative (starting at 0.0) or absolute (starting at the system time). Default True = relative.

Log (.log can-utils Logging format)

CanutilsLogWriter logs CAN data to an ASCII log file compatible with can-utils <https://github.com/linux-can/can-utils> As specification following references can-utils can be used: asc2log, log2asc.

class can.CanutilsLogWriter(file, channel='vcan0', append=False)

Logs CAN data to an ASCII log file (.log). This class is is compatible with “candump -L”.

If a message has a timestamp smaller than the previous one (or 0 or None), it gets assigned the timestamp that was written for the last message. It the first message does not have a timestamp, it is set to zero.

Parameters

• file (Union[str, os.PathLike[str], TextIO]) – a path-like object or as file-like object to write to If this is a file-like object, is has to opened in text write mode, not binary write mode.

• channel (str) – a default channel to use when the message does not have a channel set

• append (bool) – if set to True messages are appended to the file, else the file is truncated

on_message_received(msg)

This method is called to handle the given message.

Parameters

msg – the delivered message

CanutilsLogReader reads CAN data from ASCII log files .log

class can.CanutilsLogReader(file)

Iterator over CAN messages from a .log Logging File (candump -L).

Note

.log-format looks for example like this:

(0.0) vcan0 001#8d00100100820100

Parameters

file (Union[str, os.PathLike[str], TextIO]) – a path-like object or as file-like object to read from If this is a file-like object, is has to opened in text read mode, not binary read mode.

BLF (Binary Logging Format)

Implements support for BLF (Binary Logging Format) which is a proprietary CAN log format from Vector Informatik GmbH.

The data is stored in a compressed format which makes it very compact.

Note

Channels will be converted to integers.

class can.BLFWriter(file, append=False, channel=1, compression_level=- 1)

Logs CAN data to a Binary Logging File compatible with Vector’s tools.

Parameters

• file (Union[str, os.PathLike[str], BinaryIO]) – a path-like object or as file-like object to write to If this is a file-like object, is has to opened in mode “wb+”.

• channel (int) – Default channel to log as if not specified by the interface.

• append (bool) – Append messages to an existing log file.

• compression_level (int) – An integer from 0 to 9 or -1 controlling the level of compression. 1 (Z_BEST_SPEED) is fastest and produces the least compression. 9 (Z_BEST_COMPRESSION) is slowest and produces the most. 0 means that data will be stored without processing. The default value is -1 (Z_DEFAULT_COMPRESSION). Z_DEFAULT_COMPRESSION represents a default compromise between speed and compression (currently equivalent to level 6).

application_id = 5

Application identifier for the log writer

log_event(text, timestamp=None)

Add an arbitrary message to the log file as a global marker.

Parameters

• text (str) – The group name of the marker.

• timestamp (float) – Absolute timestamp in Unix timestamp format. If not given, the marker will be placed along the last message.

max_container_size = 131072

Max log container size of uncompressed data

on_message_received(msg)

This method is called to handle the given message.

Parameters

msg – the delivered message

stop()

Stops logging and closes the file.

The following class can be used to read messages from BLF file:

class can.BLFReader(file)

Iterator of CAN messages from a Binary Logging File.

Only CAN messages and error frames are supported. Other object types are silently ignored.

Parameters

file (Union[str, os.PathLike[str], BinaryIO]) – a path-like object or as file-like object to read from If this is a file-like object, is has to opened in binary read mode, not text read mode.

Asyncio support

The asyncio module built into Python 3.4 and later can be used to write asynchronous code in a single thread. This library supports receiving messages asynchronously in an event loop using the can.Notifier class.

There will still be one thread per CAN bus but the user application will execute entirely in the event loop, allowing simpler concurrency without worrying about threading issues. Interfaces that have a valid file descriptor will however be supported natively without a thread.

You can also use the can.AsyncBufferedReader listener if you prefer to write coroutine based code instead of using callbacks.

Example

Here is an example using both callback and coroutine based code:

#!/usr/bin/env python

"""
This example demonstrates how to use async IO with python-can.
"""

import asyncio
from typing import List

import can
from can.notifier import MessageRecipient


def print_message(msg: can.Message) -> None:
    """Regular callback function. Can also be a coroutine."""
    print(msg)


async def main() -> None:
    """The main function that runs in the loop."""

    with can.Bus(  # type: ignore
        interface="virtual", channel="my_channel_0", receive_own_messages=True
    ) as bus:
        reader = can.AsyncBufferedReader()
        logger = can.Logger("logfile.asc")

        listeners: List[MessageRecipient] = [
            print_message,  # Callback function
            reader,  # AsyncBufferedReader() listener
            logger,  # Regular Listener object
        ]
        # Create Notifier with an explicit loop to use for scheduling of callbacks
        loop = asyncio.get_running_loop()
        notifier = can.Notifier(bus, listeners, loop=loop)
        # Start sending first message
        bus.send(can.Message(arbitration_id=0))

        print("Bouncing 10 messages...")
        for _ in range(10):
            # Wait for next message from AsyncBufferedReader
            msg = await reader.get_message()
            # Delay response
            await asyncio.sleep(0.5)
            msg.arbitration_id += 1
            bus.send(msg)

        # Wait for last message to arrive
        await reader.get_message()
        print("Done!")

        # Clean-up
        notifier.stop()


if __name__ == "__main__":
    asyncio.run(main())

Broadcast Manager

The broadcast manager allows the user to setup periodic message jobs. For example sending a particular message at a given period. The broadcast manager supported natively by several interfaces and a software thread based scheduler is used as a fallback.

This example shows the socketcan backend using the broadcast manager:

#!/usr/bin/env python

"""
This example exercises the periodic sending capabilities.

Expects a vcan0 interface:

    python3 -m examples.cyclic

"""

import logging
import time

import can

logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO)


def simple_periodic_send(bus):
    """
    Sends a message every 20ms with no explicit timeout
    Sleeps for 2 seconds then stops the task.
    """
    print("Starting to send a message every 200ms for 2s")
    msg = can.Message(
        arbitration_id=0x123, data=[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], is_extended_id=False
    )
    task = bus.send_periodic(msg, 0.20)
    assert isinstance(task, can.CyclicSendTaskABC)
    time.sleep(2)
    task.stop()
    print("stopped cyclic send")


def limited_periodic_send(bus):
    """Send using LimitedDurationCyclicSendTaskABC."""
    print("Starting to send a message every 200ms for 1s")
    msg = can.Message(
        arbitration_id=0x12345678, data=[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], is_extended_id=True
    )
    task = bus.send_periodic(msg, 0.20, 1, store_task=False)
    if not isinstance(task, can.LimitedDurationCyclicSendTaskABC):
        print("This interface doesn't seem to support LimitedDurationCyclicSendTaskABC")
        task.stop()
        return

    time.sleep(2)
    print("Cyclic send should have stopped as duration expired")
    # Note the (finished) task will still be tracked by the Bus
    # unless we pass `store_task=False` to bus.send_periodic
    # alternatively calling stop removes the task from the bus
    # task.stop()


def test_periodic_send_with_modifying_data(bus):
    """Send using ModifiableCyclicTaskABC."""
    print("Starting to send a message every 200ms. Initial data is four consecutive 1s")
    msg = can.Message(arbitration_id=0x0CF02200, data=[1, 1, 1, 1])
    task = bus.send_periodic(msg, 0.20)
    if not isinstance(task, can.ModifiableCyclicTaskABC):
        print("This interface doesn't seem to support modification")
        task.stop()
        return
    time.sleep(2)
    print("Changing data of running task to begin with 99")
    msg.data[0] = 0x99
    task.modify_data(msg)
    time.sleep(2)

    task.stop()
    print("stopped cyclic send")
    print("Changing data of stopped task to single ff byte")
    msg.data = bytearray([0xFF])
    msg.dlc = 1
    task.modify_data(msg)
    time.sleep(1)
    print("starting again")
    task.start()
    time.sleep(1)
    task.stop()
    print("done")


# Will have to consider how to expose items like this. The socketcan
# interfaces will continue to support it... but the top level api won't.
# def test_dual_rate_periodic_send():
#     """Send a message 10 times at 1ms intervals, then continue to send every 500ms"""
#     msg = can.Message(arbitration_id=0x123, data=[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5])
#     print("Creating cyclic task to send message 10 times at 1ms, then every 500ms")
#     task = can.interface.MultiRateCyclicSendTask('vcan0', msg, 10, 0.001, 0.50)
#     time.sleep(2)
#
#     print("Changing data[0] = 0x42")
#     msg.data[0] = 0x42
#     task.modify_data(msg)
#     time.sleep(2)
#
#     task.stop()
#     print("stopped cyclic send")
#
#     time.sleep(2)
#
#     task.start()
#     print("starting again")
#     time.sleep(2)
#     task.stop()
#     print("done")


def main():
    """Test different cyclic sending tasks."""
    reset_msg = can.Message(
        arbitration_id=0x00, data=[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], is_extended_id=False
    )

    with can.Bus(interface="virtual") as bus:
        bus.send(reset_msg)

        simple_periodic_send(bus)

        bus.send(reset_msg)

        limited_periodic_send(bus)

        test_periodic_send_with_modifying_data(bus)

        # print("Carrying out multirate cyclic test for {} interface".format(interface))
        # can.rc['interface'] = interface
        # test_dual_rate_periodic_send()

    time.sleep(2)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Message Sending Tasks

The class based api for the broadcast manager uses a series of mixin classes. All mixins inherit from CyclicSendTaskABC which inherits from CyclicTask.

class can.broadcastmanager.CyclicTask

Abstract Base for all cyclic tasks.

abstract stop()

Cancel this periodic task.

Raises

can.CanError – If stop is called on an already stopped task.

Return type

None

class can.broadcastmanager.CyclicSendTaskABC(messages, period)

Message send task with defined period

Parameters

• messages (Union[Sequence[Message], Message]) – The messages to be sent periodically.

• period (float) – The rate in seconds at which to send the messages.

Raises

ValueError – If the given messages are invalid

class can.broadcastmanager.LimitedDurationCyclicSendTaskABC(messages, period, duration)

Message send task with a defined duration and period.

Parameters

• messages (Union[Sequence[Message], Message]) – The messages to be sent periodically.

• period (float) – The rate in seconds at which to send the messages.

• duration (Optional[float]) – Approximate duration in seconds to continue sending messages. If no duration is provided, the task will continue indefinitely.

Raises

ValueError – If the given messages are invalid

class can.broadcastmanager.MultiRateCyclicSendTaskABC(channel, messages, count, initial_period, subsequent_period)

A Cyclic send task that supports switches send frequency after a set time.

Transmits a message count times at initial_period then continues to transmit messages at subsequent_period.

Parameters

• channel (Union[int, str]) – See interface specific documentation.

• messages (Union[Sequence[Message], Message]) –

• count (int) –

• initial_period (float) –

• subsequent_period (float) –

Raises

ValueError – If the given messages are invalid

class can.ModifiableCyclicTaskABC(messages, period)

Adds support for modifying a periodic message

Parameters

• messages (Union[Sequence[Message], Message]) – The messages to be sent periodically.

• period (float) – The rate in seconds at which to send the messages.

Raises

ValueError – If the given messages are invalid

modify_data(messages)

Update the contents of the periodically sent messages, without altering the timing.

Parameters

messages (Union[Sequence[Message], Message]) –

The messages with the new Message.data.

Note: The arbitration ID cannot be changed.

Note: The number of new cyclic messages to be sent must be equal to the original number of messages originally specified for this task.

Raises

ValueError – If the given messages are invalid

Return type

None

class can.RestartableCyclicTaskABC(messages, period)

Adds support for restarting a stopped cyclic task

Parameters

• messages (Union[Sequence[Message], Message]) – The messages to be sent periodically.

• period (float) – The rate in seconds at which to send the messages.

Raises

ValueError – If the given messages are invalid

abstract start()

Restart a stopped periodic task.

Return type

None

Bit Timing Configuration

The CAN protocol allows the bitrate, sample point and number of samples to be optimized for a given application. You can read more on Wikipedia, Kvaser and other sources.

In most cases the recommended settings for a predefined set of common bitrates will work just fine. In some cases it may however be necessary to specify custom settings. The can.BitTiming class can be used for this purpose to specify them in a relatively interface agnostic manner.

It is also possible to specify the same settings for a CAN 2.0 bus using the config file:

[default]
bitrate=1000000
f_clock=8000000
tseg1=5
tseg2=2
sjw=1
nof_samples=1

[default]
brp=1
tseg1=5
tseg2=2
sjw=1
nof_samples=1

[default]
btr0=0x00
btr1=0x14

class can.BitTiming(bitrate=None, f_clock=None, brp=None, tseg1=None, tseg2=None, sjw=None, nof_samples=1, btr0=None, btr1=None)

Representation of a bit timing configuration.

The class can be constructed in various ways, depending on the information available or the capabilities of the interfaces that need to be supported.

The preferred way is using bitrate, CAN clock frequency, TSEG1, TSEG2, SJW:

can.BitTiming(bitrate=1000000, f_clock=8000000, tseg1=5, tseg2=1, sjw=1)

If the clock frequency is unknown it may be omitted but some interfaces may require it.

Alternatively the BRP can be given instead of bitrate and clock frequency but this will limit the number of supported interfaces.

It is also possible specify BTR registers directly, but will not work for all interfaces:

can.BitTiming(btr0=0x00, btr1=0x14)

Parameters

• bitrate (int) – Bitrate in bits/s.

• f_clock (int) – The CAN system clock frequency in Hz. Usually the oscillator frequency divided by 2.

• brp (int) – Bit Rate Prescaler. Prefer to use bitrate and f_clock instead.

• tseg1 (int) – Time segment 1, that is, the number of quanta from (but not including) the Sync Segment to the sampling point.

• tseg2 (int) – Time segment 2, that is, the number of quanta from the sampling point to the end of the bit.

• sjw (int) – The Synchronization Jump Width. Decides the maximum number of time quanta that the controller can resynchronize every bit.

• nof_samples (int) – Either 1 or 3. Some CAN controllers can also sample each bit three times. In this case, the bit will be sampled three quanta in a row, with the last sample being taken in the edge between TSEG1 and TSEG2. Three samples should only be used for relatively slow baudrates.

• btr0 (int) – The BTR0 register value used by many CAN controllers.

• btr1 (int) – The BTR1 register value used by many CAN controllers.

Internal API

Here we document the odds and ends that are more helpful for creating your own interfaces or listeners but generally shouldn’t be required to interact with python-can.

Extending the BusABC class

Concrete implementations must implement the following:

• send() to send individual messages

• _recv_internal() to receive individual messages (see note below!)

• set the channel_info attribute to a string describing the underlying bus and/or channel

They might implement the following:

• flush_tx_buffer() to allow discarding any messages yet to be sent

• shutdown() to override how the bus should shut down

• _send_periodic_internal() to override the software based periodic sending and push it down to the kernel or hardware.

• _apply_filters() to apply efficient filters to lower level systems like the OS kernel or hardware.

• _detect_available_configs() to allow the interface to report which configurations are currently available for new connections.

• state() property to allow reading and/or changing the bus state.

Note

TL;DR: Only override _recv_internal(), never recv() directly.

Previously, concrete bus classes had to override recv() directly instead of _recv_internal(), but that has changed to allow the abstract base class to handle in-software message filtering as a fallback. All internal interfaces now implement that new behaviour. Older (custom) interfaces might still be implemented like that and thus might not provide message filtering:

Concrete instances are usually created by can.Bus which takes the users configuration into account.

Bus Internals

Several methods are not documented in the main can.BusABC as they are primarily useful for library developers as opposed to library users. This is the entire ABC bus class with all internal methods:

class can.BusABC(channel, can_filters=None, **kwargs)

The CAN Bus Abstract Base Class that serves as the basis for all concrete interfaces.

This class may be used as an iterator over the received messages and as a context manager for auto-closing the bus when done using it.

Please refer to Errors for possible exceptions that may be thrown by certain operations on this bus.

Construct and open a CAN bus instance of the specified type.

Subclasses should call though this method with all given parameters as it handles generic tasks like applying filters.

Parameters

• channel (Any) – The can interface identifier. Expected type is backend dependent.

• can_filters (Optional[Sequence[Union[CanFilter, CanFilterExtended]]]) – See set_filters() for details.

• kwargs (dict) – Any backend dependent configurations are passed in this dictionary

Raises

• ValueError – If parameters are out of range

• can.CanInterfaceNotImplementedError – If the driver cannot be accessed

• can.CanInitializationError – If the bus cannot be initialized

About the IO module

Handling of the different file formats is implemented in can.io. Each file/IO type is within a separate module and ideally implements both a Reader and a Writer. The reader usually extends can.io.generic.BaseIOHandler, while the writer often additionally extends can.Listener, to be able to be passed directly to a can.Notifier.

Adding support for new file formats

This assumes that you want to add a new file format, called canstore. Ideally add both reading and writing support for the new file format, although this is not strictly required.

1. Create a new module: can/io/canstore.py (or simply copy some existing one like can/io/csv.py)

2. Implement a reader CanstoreReader (which often extends can.io.generic.BaseIOHandler, but does not have to). Besides from a constructor, only __iter__(self) needs to be implemented.

3. Implement a writer CanstoreWriter (which often extends can.io.generic.BaseIOHandler and can.Listener, but does not have to). Besides from a constructor, only on_message_received(self, msg) needs to be implemented.

4. Add a case to can.io.player.LogReader’s __new__().

5. Document the two new classes (and possibly additional helpers) with docstrings and comments. Please mention features and limitations of the implementation.

6. Add a short section to the bottom of doc/listeners.rst.

7. Add tests where appropriate, for example by simply adding a test case called class TestCanstoreFileFormat(ReaderWriterTest) to test/logformats_test.py. That should already handle all of the general testing. Just follow the way the other tests in there do it.

8. Add imports to can/__init__py and can/io/__init__py so that the new classes can be simply imported as from can import CanstoreReader, CanstoreWriter.

IO Utilities

Contains generic base classes for file IO.

class can.io.generic.BaseIOHandler(file, mode='rt')

A generic file handler that can be used for reading and writing.

Can be used as a context manager.

Attr file

the file-like object that is kept internally, or None if none was opened

Parameters

• file (Union[TextIO, BinaryIO, GzipFile, str, os.PathLike[str], None]) – a path-like object to open a file, a file-like object to be used as a file or None to not use a file at all

• mode (str) – the mode that should be used to open the file, see open(), ignored if file is None

stop()

Closes the underlying file-like object and flushes it, if it was opened in write mode.

Return type

None

class can.io.generic.FileIOMessageWriter(file, mode='rt')

A specialized base class for all writers with file descriptors.

Parameters

• file (Union[TextIO, BinaryIO, GzipFile, str, os.PathLike[str]]) – a path-like object to open a file, a file-like object to be used as a file or None to not use a file at all

• mode (str) – the mode that should be used to open the file, see open(), ignored if file is None

class can.io.generic.MessageReader(file, mode='rt')

The base class for all readers.

Parameters

• file (Union[TextIO, BinaryIO, GzipFile, str, os.PathLike[str], None]) – a path-like object to open a file, a file-like object to be used as a file or None to not use a file at all

• mode (str) – the mode that should be used to open the file, see open(), ignored if file is None

class can.io.generic.MessageWriter(file, mode='rt')

The base class for all writers.

Parameters

• file (Union[TextIO, BinaryIO, GzipFile, str, os.PathLike[str], None]) – a path-like object to open a file, a file-like object to be used as a file or None to not use a file at all

• mode (str) – the mode that should be used to open the file, see open(), ignored if file is None

Other Utilities

Utilities and configuration file parsing.

can.util.channel2int(channel)

Try to convert the channel to an integer.

Parameters

channel (Union[int, str, None]) – Channel string (e.g. “can0”, “CAN1”) or an integer

Return type

Optional[int]

Returns

Channel integer or None if unsuccessful

can.util.deprecated_args_alias(**aliases)

Allows to rename/deprecate a function kwarg(s) and optionally have the deprecated kwarg(s) set as alias(es)

Example:

@deprecated_args_alias(oldArg=”new_arg”, anotherOldArg=”another_new_arg”) def library_function(new_arg, another_new_arg):

pass

@deprecated_args_alias(oldArg=”new_arg”, obsoleteOldArg=None) def library_function(new_arg):

pass

can.util.dlc2len(dlc)

Calculate the data length from DLC.

Parameters

dlc (int) – DLC (0-15)

Return type

int

Returns

Data length in number of bytes (0-64)

can.util.len2dlc(length)

Calculate the DLC from data length.

Parameters

length (int) – Length in number of bytes (0-64)

Return type

int

Returns

DLC (0-15)

can.util.load_config(path=None, config=None, context=None)

Returns a dict with configuration details which is loaded from (in this order):

• config

• can.rc

• Environment variables CAN_INTERFACE, CAN_CHANNEL, CAN_BITRATE

• Config files /etc/can.conf or ~/.can or ~/.canrc where the latter may add or replace values of the former.

Interface can be any of the strings from can.VALID_INTERFACES for example: kvaser, socketcan, pcan, usb2can, ixxat, nican, virtual.

Note

The key bustype is copied to interface if that one is missing and does never appear in the result.

Parameters

• path – Optional path to config file.

• config – A dict which may set the ‘interface’, and/or the ‘channel’, or neither. It may set other values that are passed through.

• context – Extra ‘context’ pass to config sources. This can be use to section other than ‘default’ in the configuration file.

Returns

A config dictionary that should contain ‘interface’ & ‘channel’:

{
    'interface': 'python-can backend interface to use',
    'channel': 'default channel to use',
    # possibly more
}

Note None will be used if all the options are exhausted without finding a value.

All unused values are passed from config over to this.

Raises

CanInterfaceNotImplementedError if the interface name isn’t recognized

can.util.load_environment_config(context=None)

Loads config dict from environmental variables (if set):

• CAN_INTERFACE

• CAN_CHANNEL

• CAN_BITRATE

• CAN_CONFIG

if context is supplied, “_{context}” is appended to the environment variable name we will look at. For example if context=”ABC”:

• CAN_INTERFACE_ABC

• CAN_CHANNEL_ABC

• CAN_BITRATE_ABC

• CAN_CONFIG_ABC

Return type

Dict[str, str]

can.util.load_file_config(path=None, section='default')

Loads configuration from file with following content:

[default]
interface = socketcan
channel = can0

Parameters

• path – path to config file. If not specified, several sensible default locations are tried depending on platform.

• section – name of the section to read configuration from.

can.util.set_logging_level(level_name)

Set the logging level for the “can” logger.

Parameters

level_name (str) – One of: ‘critical’, ‘error’, ‘warning’, ‘info’,

‘debug’, ‘subdebug’, or the value None (=default). Defaults to ‘debug’.

Return type

None

can.util.time_perfcounter_correlation()

Get the perf_counter value nearest to when time.time() is updated

Computed if the default timer used by time.time on this platform has a resolution higher than 10μs, otherwise the current time and perf_counter is directly returned. This was chosen as typical timer resolution on Linux/macOS is ~1μs, and the Windows platform can vary from ~500μs to 10ms.

Note this value is based on when time.time() is observed to update from Python, it is not directly returned by the operating system.

Return type

Tuple[float, float]

Returns

(t, performance_counter) time.time value and time.perf_counter value when the time.time is updated

Utilities

can.detect_available_configs(interfaces=None)

Detect all configurations/channels that the interfaces could currently connect with.

This might be quite time consuming.

Automated configuration detection may not be implemented by every interface on every platform. This method will not raise an error in that case, but with rather return an empty list for that interface.

Parameters

interfaces (Union[None, str, Iterable[str]]) – either - the name of an interface to be searched in as a string, - an iterable of interface names to search in, or - None to search in all known interfaces.

Return type

list[dict]

Returns

an iterable of dicts, each suitable for usage in the constructor of can.BusABC.

Notifier

The Notifier object is used as a message distributor for a bus. Notifier creates a thread to read messages from the bus and distributes them to listeners.

class can.Notifier(bus, listeners, timeout=1.0, loop=None)

Manages the distribution of Message instances to listeners.

Supports multiple buses and listeners.

Note

Remember to call stop() after all messages are received as many listeners carry out flush operations to persist data.

Parameters

• bus (Union[BusABC, List[BusABC]]) – A Bus or a list of buses to listen to.

• listeners (Iterable[Union[Listener, Callable[[Message], None]]]) – An iterable of Listener or callables that receive a Message and return nothing.

• timeout (float) – An optional maximum number of seconds to wait for any Message.

• loop (Optional[AbstractEventLoop]) – An asyncio event loop to schedule the listeners in.

add_bus(bus)

Add a bus for notification.

Parameters

bus (BusABC) – CAN bus instance.

Return type

None

add_listener(listener)

Add new Listener to the notification list. If it is already present, it will be called two times each time a message arrives.

Parameters

listener (Listener) – Listener to be added to the list to be notified

Return type

None

exception: Optional[Exception]

Exception raised in thread

remove_listener(listener)

Remove a listener from the notification list. This method throws an exception if the given listener is not part of the stored listeners.

Parameters

listener (Listener) – Listener to be removed from the list to be notified

Raises

ValueError – if listener was never added to this notifier

Return type

None

stop(timeout=5)

Stop notifying Listeners when new Message objects arrive and call stop() on each Listener.

Parameters

timeout (float) – Max time in seconds to wait for receive threads to finish. Should be longer than timeout given at instantiation.

Return type

None

Errors

There are several specific Exception classes to allow user code to react to specific scenarios related to CAN busses:

Exception (Python standard library)
 +-- ...
 +-- CanError (python-can)
     +-- CanInterfaceNotImplementedError
     +-- CanInitializationError
     +-- CanOperationError
     +-- CanTimeoutError

Keep in mind that some functions and methods may raise different exceptions. For example, validating typical arguments and parameters might result in a ValueError. This should always be documented for the function at hand.

exception can.exceptions.CanError(message='', error_code=None)

Bases: Exception

Base class for all CAN related exceptions.

If specified, the error code is automatically appended to the message:

>>> # With an error code (it also works with a specific error):
>>> error = CanOperationError(message="Failed to do the thing", error_code=42)
>>> str(error)
'Failed to do the thing [Error Code 42]'
>>>
>>> # Missing the error code:
>>> plain_error = CanError(message="Something went wrong ...")
>>> str(plain_error)
'Something went wrong ...'

Parameters

• error_code (Optional[int]) – An optional error code to narrow down the cause of the fault

• error_code – An optional error code to narrow down the cause of the fault

exception can.exceptions.CanInitializationError(message='', error_code=None)

Bases: can.exceptions.CanError

Indicates an error the occurred while initializing a can.BusABC.

If initialization fails due to a driver or platform missing/being unsupported, a can.CanInterfaceNotImplementedError is raised instead. If initialization fails due to a value being out of range, a ValueError is raised.

Example scenarios:

• Try to open a non-existent device and/or channel

• Try to use an invalid setting, which is ok by value, but not ok for the interface

• The device or other resources are already used

exception can.exceptions.CanInterfaceNotImplementedError(message='', error_code=None)

Bases: can.exceptions.CanError, NotImplementedError

Indicates that the interface is not supported on the current platform.

Example scenarios:

• No interface with that name exists

• The interface is unsupported on the current operating system or interpreter

• The driver could not be found or has the wrong version

exception can.exceptions.CanOperationError(message='', error_code=None)

Bases: can.exceptions.CanError

Indicates an error while in operation.

Example scenarios:

• A call to a library function results in an unexpected return value

• An invalid message was received

• The driver rejected a message that was meant to be sent

• Cyclic redundancy check (CRC) failed

• A message remained unacknowledged

• A buffer is full

exception can.exceptions.CanTimeoutError(message='', error_code=None)

Bases: can.exceptions.CanError, TimeoutError

Indicates the timeout of an operation.

Example scenarios:

• Some message could not be sent after the timeout elapsed

• No message was read within the given time

can.exceptions.error_check(error_message=None, exception_type=<class 'can.exceptions.CanOperationError'>)

Catches any exceptions and turns them into the new type while preserving the stack trace.

Return type

Generator[None, None, None]

CAN Interface Modules

python-can hides the low-level, device-specific interfaces to controller area network adapters in interface dependant modules. However as each hardware device is different, you should carefully go through your interface’s documentation.

The available interfaces are:

CANalyst-II

CANalyst-II is a USB to CAN Analyzer device produced by Chuangxin Technology.

Install: pip install "python-can[canalystii]"

Supported platform

Windows, Linux and Mac.

Note

The backend driver depends on pyusb <https://pyusb.github.io/pyusb/> so a pyusb backend driver library such as libusb must be installed. On Windows a tool such as Zadig <https://zadig.akeo.ie/> can be used to set the Canalyst-II USB device driver to libusb-win32.

Limitations

Multiple Channels

The USB protocol transfers messages grouped by channel. Messages received on channel 0 and channel 1 may be returned by software out of order between the two channels (although inside each channel, all messages are in order). The timestamp field of each message comes from the hardware and shows the exact time each message was received. To compare ordering of messages on channel 0 vs channel 1, sort the received messages by the timestamp field first.

Backend Driver

The backend driver module canalystii <https://pypi.org/project/canalystii> must be installed to use this interface. This open source driver is unofficial and based on reverse engineering. Earlier versions of python-can required a binary library from the vendor for this functionality.

Bus

ETAS

This interface adds support for CAN interfaces by ETAS. The ETAS BOA (Basic Open API) is used. Install the “ETAS ECU and Bus Interfaces – Distribution Package”. Only Windows is supported by this interface. The Linux kernel v5.13 (and greater) natively supports ETAS ES581.4, ES582.1 and ES584.1 USB modules. To use these under Linux, please refer to socketcan.

Bus

Configuration file

The simplest configuration file would be:

[default]
interface = etas
channel = ETAS://ETH/ES910:abcd/CAN:1

Channels are the URIs used by the underlying API.

To find available URIs, use detect_available_configs():

configs = can.interface.detect_available_configs(interfaces="etas")
for c in configs:
    print(c)

CAN driver for Geschwister Schneider USB/CAN devices and bytewerk.org candleLight USB CAN interfaces

Windows/Linux/Mac CAN driver based on usbfs or WinUSB WCID for Geschwister Schneider USB/CAN devices and candleLight USB CAN interfaces.

Install: pip install "python-can[gs_usb]"

Usage: pass bus and address to open the device. The parameters can be got by pyusb as shown below:

import usb
import can

dev = usb.core.find(idVendor=0x1D50, idProduct=0x606F)
bus = can.Bus(bustype="gs_usb", channel=dev.product, bus=dev.bus, address=dev.address, bitrate=250000)

Supported devices

Geschwister Schneider USB/CAN devices and bytewerk.org candleLight USB CAN interfaces such as candleLight, canable, cantact, etc.

Supported platform

Windows, Linux and Mac.

Note

The backend driver depends on pyusb <https://pyusb.github.io/pyusb/> so a pyusb backend driver library such as libusb must be installed. On Windows a tool such as Zadig <https://zadig.akeo.ie/> can be used to set the USB device driver to libusb-win32.

Supplementary Info on gs_usb

The firmware implementation for Geschwister Schneider USB/CAN devices and candleLight USB CAN can be found in candle-usb/candleLight_fw. The Linux kernel driver can be found in linux/drivers/net/can/usb/gs_usb.c.

The gs_usb interface in PythonCan relys on upstream gs_usb package, which can be found in https://pypi.org/project/gs-usb/ or https://github.com/jxltom/gs_usb. The gs_usb package is using pyusb as backend, which brings better crossplatform compatibility.

Note: The bitrate 10K, 20K, 50K, 83.333K, 100K, 125K, 250K, 500K, 800K and 1M are supported in this interface, as implemented in the upstream gs_usb package’s set_bitrate method.

Note: Message filtering is not supported in Geschwister Schneider USB/CAN devices and bytewerk.org candleLight USB CAN interfaces.

Bus

isCAN

Interface for isCAN from Thorsis Technologies GmbH, former ifak system GmbH.

Bus

class can.interfaces.iscan.IscanBus(channel, bitrate=500000, poll_interval=0.01, **kwargs)

isCAN interface

Parameters

• channel (Union[str, int]) – Device number

• bitrate (int) – Bitrate in bits/s

• poll_interval (float) – Poll interval in seconds when reading messages

exception can.interfaces.iscan.IscanError(function, error_code, arguments)

IXXAT Virtual CAN Interface

Interface to IXXAT Virtual CAN Interface V3 SDK. Works on Windows.

The Linux ECI SDK is currently unsupported, however on Linux some devices are supported with SocketCAN.

The send_periodic() method is supported natively through the on-board cyclic transmit list. Modifying cyclic messages is not possible. You will need to stop it, and then start a new periodic message.

Bus

Configuration file

The simplest configuration file would be:

[default]
interface = ixxat
channel = 0

Python-can will search for the first IXXAT device available and open the first channel. interface and channel parameters are interpreted by frontend can.interfaces.interface module, while the following parameters are optional and are interpreted by IXXAT implementation.

• receive_own_messages (default False) Enable self-reception of sent messages.

• unique_hardware_id (default first device) Unique hardware ID of the IXXAT device.

• extended (default True) Allow usage of extended IDs.

• fd (default False) Enable CAN-FD capabilities.

• rx_fifo_size (default 16 for CAN, 1024 for CAN-FD) Number of RX mailboxes.

• tx_fifo_size (default 16 for CAN, 128 for CAN-FD) Number of TX mailboxes.

• bitrate (default 500000) Channel bitrate.

• data_bitrate (defaults to 2Mbps) Channel data bitrate (only canfd, to use when message bitrate_switch is used).

• sjw_abr (optional, only canfd) Bus timing value sample jump width (arbitration).

• tseg1_abr (optional, only canfd) Bus timing value tseg1 (arbitration).

• tseg2_abr (optional, only canfd) Bus timing value tseg2 (arbitration).

• sjw_dbr (optional, only used if baudrate switch enabled) Bus timing value sample jump width (data).

• tseg1_dbr (optional, only used if baudrate switch enabled) Bus timing value tseg1 (data).

• tseg2_dbr (optional, only used if baudrate switch enabled) Bus timing value tseg2 (data).

• ssp_dbr (optional, only used if baudrate switch enabled) Secondary sample point (data).

Filtering

The CAN filters act as an allow list in IXXAT implementation, that is if you supply a non-empty filter list you must explicitly state EVERY frame you want to receive (including RTR field). The can_id/mask must be specified according to IXXAT behaviour, that is bit 0 of can_id/mask parameters represents the RTR field in CAN frame. See IXXAT VCI documentation, section “Message filters” for more info.

List available devices

In case you have connected multiple IXXAT devices, you have to select them by using their unique hardware id. To get a list of all connected IXXAT you can use the function get_ixxat_hwids() as demonstrated below:

>>> from can.interfaces.ixxat import get_ixxat_hwids
>>> for hwid in get_ixxat_hwids():
...     print("Found IXXAT with hardware id '%s'." % hwid)
Found IXXAT with hardware id 'HW441489'.
Found IXXAT with hardware id 'HW107422'.

Internals

The IXXAT BusABC object is a fairly straightforward interface to the IXXAT VCI library. It can open a specific device ID or use the first one found.

The frame exchange does not involve threads in the background but is explicitly instantiated by the caller.

• recv() is a blocking call with optional timeout.

• send() is not blocking but may raise a VCIError if the TX FIFO is full

RX and TX FIFO sizes are configurable with rx_fifo_size and tx_fifo_size options, defaulting to 16 for both.

Kvaser’s CANLIB

Kvaser’s CANLib SDK for Windows (also available on Linux).

Bus

class can.interfaces.kvaser.canlib.KvaserBus(channel, can_filters=None, **kwargs)

The CAN Bus implemented for the Kvaser interface.

Parameters

• channel (int) – The Channel id to create this bus with.

• can_filters (list) – See can.BusABC.set_filters().

Backend Configuration

Parameters

• bitrate (int) – Bitrate of channel in bit/s

• accept_virtual (bool) – If virtual channels should be accepted.

• tseg1 (int) – Time segment 1, that is, the number of quanta from (but not including) the Sync Segment to the sampling point. If this parameter is not given, the Kvaser driver will try to choose all bit timing parameters from a set of defaults.

• tseg2 (int) – Time segment 2, that is, the number of quanta from the sampling point to the end of the bit.

• sjw (int) – The Synchronization Jump Width. Decides the maximum number of time quanta that the controller can resynchronize every bit.

• no_samp (int) – Either 1 or 3. Some CAN controllers can also sample each bit three times. In this case, the bit will be sampled three quanta in a row, with the last sample being taken in the edge between TSEG1 and TSEG2. Three samples should only be used for relatively slow baudrates.

• driver_mode (bool) – Silent or normal.

• single_handle (bool) – Use one Kvaser CANLIB bus handle for both reading and writing. This can be set if reading and/or writing is done from one thread.

• receive_own_messages (bool) – If messages transmitted should also be received back. Only works if single_handle is also False. If you want to receive messages from other applications on the same computer, set this to True or set single_handle to True.

• fd (bool) – If CAN-FD frames should be supported.

• data_bitrate (int) – Which bitrate to use for data phase in CAN FD. Defaults to arbitration bitrate.

flash(flash=True)

Turn on or off flashing of the device’s LED for physical identification purposes.

flush_tx_buffer()

Wipeout the transmit buffer on the Kvaser.

send(msg, timeout=None)

Transmit a message to the CAN bus.

Override this method to enable the transmit path.

Parameters

• msg (Message) – A message object.

• timeout – If > 0, wait up to this many seconds for message to be ACK’ed or for transmit queue to be ready depending on driver implementation. If timeout is exceeded, an exception will be raised. Might not be supported by all interfaces. None blocks indefinitely.

Raises

can.CanOperationError – If an error occurred while sending

shutdown()

Called to carry out any interface specific cleanup required in shutting down a bus.

Internals

The Kvaser Bus object with a physical CAN Bus can be operated in two modes; single_handle mode with one shared bus handle used for both reading and writing to the CAN bus, or with two separate bus handles. Two separate handles are needed if receiving and sending messages are done in different threads (see Kvaser documentation).

Warning

Any objects inheriting from Bus should not directly use the interface handle(/s).

Message filtering

The Kvaser driver and hardware only supports setting one filter per handle. If one filter is requested, this is will be handled by the Kvaser driver. If more than one filter is needed, these will be handled in Python code in the recv method. If a message does not match any of the filters, recv() will return None.

Custom methods

This section contains Kvaser driver specific methods.

KvaserBus.get_stats()

Retrieves the bus statistics.

Use like so:

>>> stats = bus.get_stats()
>>> print(stats)
std_data: 0, std_remote: 0, ext_data: 0, ext_remote: 0, err_frame: 0, bus_load: 0.0%, overruns: 0

Returns

bus statistics.

Return type

can.interfaces.kvaser.structures.BusStatistics

neoVI

Warning

This ICS neoVI documentation is a work in progress. Feedback and revisions are most welcome!

Interface to Intrepid Control Systems neoVI API range of devices via python-ics wrapper on Windows.

Installation

This neoVI interface requires the installation of the ICS neoVI DLL and python-ics package.

• Download and install the Intrepid Product Drivers

  Intrepid Product Drivers

• Install python-ics

  pip install python-ics
  

Configuration

An example can.ini file for windows 7:

[default]
interface = neovi
channel = 1

Bus

class can.interfaces.ics_neovi.NeoViBus(channel, can_filters=None, **kwargs)

The CAN Bus implemented for the python_ics interface https://github.com/intrepidcs/python_ics

Parameters

• channel (int or str or list(int) or list(str)) – The channel ids to create this bus with. Can also be a single integer, netid name or a comma separated string.

• can_filters (list) – See can.BusABC.set_filters() for details.

• receive_own_messages (bool) – If transmitted messages should also be received by this bus.

• use_system_timestamp (bool) – Use system timestamp for can messages instead of the hardware time stamp

• serial (str) – Serial to connect (optional, will use the first found if not supplied)

• bitrate (int) – Channel bitrate in bit/s. (optional, will enable the auto bitrate feature if not supplied)

• fd (bool) – If CAN-FD frames should be supported.

• data_bitrate (int) – Which bitrate to use for data phase in CAN FD. Defaults to arbitration bitrate.

• override_library_name – Absolute path or relative path to the library including filename.

Raises

• ImportError – If python-ics is not available

• CanInitializationError – If the bus could not be set up. May or may not be a ICSInitializationError.

NI-CAN

This interface adds support for CAN controllers by National Instruments.

Warning

NI-CAN only seems to support 32-bit architectures so if the driver can’t be loaded on a 64-bit Python, try using a 32-bit version instead.

Warning

CAN filtering has not been tested thoroughly and may not work as expected.

Bus

class can.interfaces.nican.NicanBus(channel, can_filters=None, bitrate=None, log_errors=True, **kwargs)

The CAN Bus implemented for the NI-CAN interface.

Warning

This interface does implement efficient filtering of messages, but the filters have to be set in __init__() using the can_filters parameter. Using set_filters() does not work.

Parameters

• channel (str) – Name of the object to open (e.g. “CAN0”)

• bitrate (Optional[int]) – Bitrate in bit/s

• can_filters (Optional[Sequence[Union[CanFilter, CanFilterExtended]]]) – See can.BusABC.set_filters().

• log_errors (bool) – If True, communication errors will appear as CAN messages with is_error_frame set to True and arbitration_id will identify the error (default True)

Raises

• can.CanInterfaceNotImplementedError – If the current operating system is not supported or the driver could not be loaded.

• can.interfaces.nican.NicanInitializationError – If the bus could not be set up.

exception can.interfaces.nican.NicanError(function, error_code, arguments)

Error from NI-CAN driver.

NI-XNET

This interface adds support for NI-XNET CAN controllers by National Instruments.

Warning

NI-XNET only seems to support windows platforms.

Bus

PCAN Basic API

Interface to Peak-System’s PCAN-Basic API.

Configuration

Here is an example configuration file for using PCAN-USB:

[default]
interface = pcan
channel = PCAN_USBBUS1
state = can.bus.BusState.PASSIVE
bitrate = 500000

channel: (default "PCAN_USBBUS1") CAN interface name

state: (default can.bus.BusState.ACTIVE) BusState of the channel

bitrate: (default 500000) Channel bitrate

Valid channel values:

PCAN_ISABUSx
PCAN_DNGBUSx
PCAN_PCIBUSx
PCAN_USBBUSx
PCAN_PCCBUSx
PCAN_LANBUSx

Where x should be replaced with the desired channel number starting at 1.

Linux installation

Beginning with version 3.4, Linux kernels support the PCAN adapters natively via SocketCAN, refer to: PCAN.

Bus

class can.interfaces.pcan.PcanBus(channel='PCAN_USBBUS1', state=BusState.ACTIVE, bitrate=500000, *args, **kwargs)

A PCAN USB interface to CAN.

On top of the usual Bus methods provided, the PCAN interface includes the flash() and status() methods.

Parameters

• channel (str) – The can interface name. An example would be ‘PCAN_USBBUS1’. Alternatively the value can be an int with the numerical value. Default is ‘PCAN_USBBUS1’

• state (can.bus.BusState) – BusState of the channel. Default is ACTIVE

• bitrate (int) – Bitrate of channel in bit/s. Default is 500 kbit/s. Ignored if using CanFD.

• fd (bool) – Should the Bus be initialized in CAN-FD mode.

• f_clock (int) – Clock rate in Hz. Any of the following: 20000000, 24000000, 30000000, 40000000, 60000000, 80000000. Ignored if not using CAN-FD. Pass either f_clock or f_clock_mhz.

• f_clock_mhz (int) – Clock rate in MHz. Any of the following: 20, 24, 30, 40, 60, 80. Ignored if not using CAN-FD. Pass either f_clock or f_clock_mhz.

• nom_brp (int) – Clock prescaler for nominal time quantum. In the range (1..1024) Ignored if not using CAN-FD.

• nom_tseg1 (int) – Time segment 1 for nominal bit rate, that is, the number of quanta from (but not including) the Sync Segment to the sampling point. In the range (1..256). Ignored if not using CAN-FD.

• nom_tseg2 (int) – Time segment 2 for nominal bit rate, that is, the number of quanta from the sampling point to the end of the bit. In the range (1..128). Ignored if not using CAN-FD.

• nom_sjw (int) – Synchronization Jump Width for nominal bit rate. Decides the maximum number of time quanta that the controller can resynchronize every bit. In the range (1..128). Ignored if not using CAN-FD.

• data_brp (int) – Clock prescaler for fast data time quantum. In the range (1..1024) Ignored if not using CAN-FD.

• data_tseg1 (int) – Time segment 1 for fast data bit rate, that is, the number of quanta from (but not including) the Sync Segment to the sampling point. In the range (1..32). Ignored if not using CAN-FD.

• data_tseg2 (int) – Time segment 2 for fast data bit rate, that is, the number of quanta from the sampling point to the end of the bit. In the range (1..16). Ignored if not using CAN-FD.

• data_sjw (int) – Synchronization Jump Width for fast data bit rate. Decides the maximum number of time quanta that the controller can resynchronize every bit. In the range (1..16). Ignored if not using CAN-FD.

Chinese CAN-USB interface (mfg. Robotell etc.)

An USB to CAN adapter sold on Aliexpress, etc. with the manufacturer name Robotell printed on the case. There is also a USB stick version with a clear case. If the description or screenshots refer to EmbededDebug or EmbededConfig the device should be compatible with this driver. These USB devices are based on a STM32 controller with a CH340 serial interface and use a binary protocol - NOT compatible with SLCAN

See https://www.amobbs.com/thread-4651667-1-1.html for some background on these devices.

This driver directly uses either the local or remote (not tested) serial port. Remote serial ports will be specified via special URL. Both raw TCP sockets as also RFC2217 ports are supported.

Usage: use port or URL[@baurate] to open the device. For example use /dev/ttyUSB0@115200 or COM4@9600 for local serial ports and socket://192.168.254.254:5000 or rfc2217://192.168.254.254:5000 for remote ports.

Supported devices

Todo

Document this.

Bus

class can.interfaces.robotell.robotellBus(channel, ttyBaudrate=115200, bitrate=None, rtscts=False, **kwargs)

robotell interface

Parameters

• channel (str) – port of underlying serial or usb device (e.g. /dev/ttyUSB0, COM8, …) Must not be empty. Can also end with @115200 (or similarly) to specify the baudrate.

• ttyBaudrate (int) – baudrate of underlying serial or usb device (Ignored if set via the channel parameter)

• bitrate (int) – CAN Bitrate in bit/s. Value is stored in the adapter and will be used as default if no bitrate is specified

• rtscts (bool) – turn hardware handshake (RTS/CTS) on and off

get_serial_number(timeout)

Get serial number of the slcan interface. :type timeout: int or None :param timeout:

seconds to wait for serial number or None to wait indefinitely

:rtype str or None :return:

None on timeout or a str object.

send(msg, timeout=None)

Transmit a message to the CAN bus.

Override this method to enable the transmit path.

Parameters

• msg (Message) – A message object.

• timeout – If > 0, wait up to this many seconds for message to be ACK’ed or for transmit queue to be ready depending on driver implementation. If timeout is exceeded, an exception will be raised. Might not be supported by all interfaces. None blocks indefinitely.

Raises

can.CanOperationError – If an error occurred while sending

set_auto_bus_management(auto_man)

Parameters

auto_man (bool) – Enable/disable automatic bus management

set_auto_retransmit(retrans_flag)

Parameters

retrans_flag (bool) – Enable/disable automatic retransmission of unacknowledged CAN frames

set_bitrate(bitrate)

Raises

ValueError – if bitrate is greater than 1000000

Parameters

bitrate (int) – Bitrate in bit/s

set_hw_filter(filterid, enabled, msgid_value, msgid_mask, extended_msg)

Raises

ValueError – if filterid is not between 1 and 14

Parameters

• filterid (int) – ID of filter (1-14)

• enabled (bool) – This filter is enabled

• msgid_value (int) – CAN message ID to filter on. The test unit does not accept an extented message ID unless bit 31 of the ID was set.

• msgid_mask (int) – Mask to apply to CAN messagge ID

• extended_msg (bool) – Filter operates on extended format messages

set_serial_rate(serial_bps)

Parameters

serial_bps (int) – Set the baud rate of the serial port (not CAN) interface

shutdown()

Called to carry out any interface specific cleanup required in shutting down a bus.

Internals

Todo

Document the internals of robotell interface.

USB-CAN Analyzer

…by Seeed Studio

SKU: 114991193

Links:

• https://www.seeedstudio.com/USB-CAN-Analyzer-p-2888.html

• https://github.com/SeeedDocument/USB-CAN_Analyzer

• https://copperhilltech.com/blog/usbcan-analyzer-usb-to-can-bus-serial-protocol-definition/

---

Installation

This interface has additional dependencies which can be installed using pip and the optional extra [seeedstudio]. That will install an additional packages if not already available:

• pyserial

pip3 install python-can[seeedstudio]

---

Interface

can.interfaces.seeedstudio.SeeedBus

A bus example:

bus = can.interface.Bus(bustype='seeedstudio', channel='/dev/ttyUSB0', bitrate=500000)

---

Parameters

SeeedBus(channel,
         baudrate=2000000,
         timeout=0.1,
         frame_type='STD',
         operation_mode='normal',
         bitrate=500000)

ChANNEL

The serial port created by the USB device when connected.

TIMEOUT

Only used by the underling serial port, it probably should not be changed. The serial port baudrate=2000000 and rtscts=false are also matched to the device so are not added here.

FRAMETYPE

• “STD”

• “EXT”

OPERATIONMODE

• “normal”

• “loopback”

• “silent”

• “loopback_and_silent”

BITRATE

• 1000000

• 800000

• 500000

• 400000

• 250000

• 200000

• 125000

• 100000

• 50000

• 20000

• 10000

• 5000

CAN over Serial

A text based interface. For example use over serial ports like /dev/ttyS1 or /dev/ttyUSB0 on Linux machines or COM1 on Windows. Remote ports can be also used via a special URL. Both raw TCP sockets as also RFC2217 ports are supported: socket://192.168.254.254:5000 or rfc2217://192.168.254.254:5000. In addition a virtual loopback can be used via loop:// URL. The interface is a simple implementation that has been used for recording CAN traces.

Note

The properties extended_id, is_remote_frame and is_error_frame from the class:~can.Message are not in use. This interface will not send or receive flags for this properties.

Bus

class can.interfaces.serial.serial_can.SerialBus(channel, baudrate=115200, timeout=0.1, rtscts=False, *args, **kwargs)

Enable basic can communication over a serial device.

Note

See _recv_internal() for some special semantics.

Parameters

• channel (str) – The serial device to open. For example “/dev/ttyS1” or “/dev/ttyUSB0” on Linux or “COM1” on Windows systems.

• baudrate (int) –

  Baud rate of the serial device in bit/s (default 115200).

  Warning

  Some serial port implementations don’t care about the baudrate.

• timeout (float) – Timeout for the serial device in seconds (default 0.1).

• rtscts (bool) – turn hardware handshake (RTS/CTS) on and off

Raises

• can.CanInitializationError – If the given parameters are invalid.

• can.CanInterfaceNotImplementedError – If the serial module is not installed.

Internals

The frames that will be sent and received over the serial interface consist of six parts. The start and the stop byte for the frame, the timestamp, DLC, arbitration ID and the payload. The payload has a variable length of between 0 and 8 bytes, the other parts are fixed. Both, the timestamp and the arbitration ID will be interpreted as 4 byte unsigned integers. The DLC is also an unsigned integer with a length of 1 byte.

Serial frame format

	Start of frame	Timestamp		DLC	Arbitration ID	Payload	End of frame
Length (Byte)	1	4		1	4	0 - 8	1
Data type	Byte	Unsigned 4 byte integer		Unsigned 1 byte integer	Unsigned 4 byte integer	Byte	Byte
Byte order	-	Little-Endian		Little-Endian	Little-Endian	-	-
Description	Must be 0xAA	Usually s, ms or µs since start of the device		Length in byte of the payload	-	-	Must be 0xBB

Examples of serial frames

CAN message with 8 byte payload

CAN message
Arbitration ID	Payload
1	0x11 0x22 0x33 0x44 0x55 0x66 0x77 0x88

Serial frame
Start of frame	Timestamp	DLC	Arbitration ID	Payload	End of frame
0xAA	0x66 0x73 0x00 0x00	0x08	0x01 0x00 0x00 0x00	0x11 0x22 0x33 0x44 0x55 0x66 0x77 0x88	0xBB

CAN message with 1 byte payload

CAN message
Arbitration ID	Payload
1	0x11

Serial frame
Start of frame	Timestamp	DLC	Arbitration ID	Payload	End of frame
0xAA	0x66 0x73 0x00 0x00	0x01	0x01 0x00 0x00 0x00	0x11	0xBB

CAN message with 0 byte payload

CAN message
Arbitration ID	Payload
1	None

Serial frame
Start of frame	Timestamp	DLC	Arbitration ID	End of frame
0xAA	0x66 0x73 0x00 0x00	0x00	0x01 0x00 0x00 0x00	0xBB

CAN over Serial / SLCAN

A text based interface: compatible to slcan-interfaces (slcan ASCII protocol) should also support LAWICEL direct. These interfaces can also be used with socketcan and slcand with Linux. This driver directly uses either the local or remote serial port, it makes slcan-compatible interfaces usable with Windows also. Remote serial ports will be specified via special URL. Both raw TCP sockets as also RFC2217 ports are supported.

Usage: use port or URL[@baurate] to open the device. For example use /dev/ttyUSB0@115200 or COM4@9600 for local serial ports and socket://192.168.254.254:5000 or rfc2217://192.168.254.254:5000 for remote ports.

Supported devices

Todo

Document this.

Bus

class can.interfaces.slcan.slcanBus(channel, ttyBaudrate=115200, bitrate=None, btr=None, sleep_after_open=2, rtscts=False, **kwargs)

slcan interface

Parameters

• channel (str) – port of underlying serial or usb device (e.g. /dev/ttyUSB0, COM8, …) Must not be empty. Can also end with @115200 (or similarly) to specify the baudrate.

• ttyBaudrate (int) – baudrate of underlying serial or usb device (Ignored if set via the channel parameter)

• bitrate (Optional[int]) – Bitrate in bit/s

• btr (Optional[str]) – BTR register value to set custom can speed

• poll_interval – Poll interval in seconds when reading messages

• sleep_after_open (float) – Time to wait in seconds after opening serial connection

• rtscts (bool) – turn hardware handshake (RTS/CTS) on and off

Raises

• ValueError – if both bitrate and btr are set or the channel is invalid

• CanInterfaceNotImplementedError – if the serial module is missing

• CanInitializationError – if the underlying serial connection could not be established

get_serial_number(timeout)

Get serial number of the slcan interface.

Parameters

timeout (Optional[float]) – seconds to wait for serial number or None to wait indefinitely

Return type

Optional[str]

Returns

None on timeout or a str object.

get_version(timeout)

Get HW and SW version of the slcan interface.

Parameters

timeout (Optional[float]) – seconds to wait for version or None to wait indefinitely

Return type

Tuple[Optional[int], Optional[int]]

Returns

tuple (hw_version, sw_version) WHERE int hw_version is the hardware version or None on timeout int sw_version is the software version or None on timeout

send(msg, timeout=None)

Transmit a message to the CAN bus.

Override this method to enable the transmit path.

Parameters

• msg (Message) – A message object.

• timeout (Optional[float]) – If > 0, wait up to this many seconds for message to be ACK’ed or for transmit queue to be ready depending on driver implementation. If timeout is exceeded, an exception will be raised. Might not be supported by all interfaces. None blocks indefinitely.

Raises

can.CanOperationError – If an error occurred while sending

Return type

None

set_bitrate(bitrate)

Parameters

bitrate (int) – Bitrate in bit/s

Raises

ValueError – if bitrate is not among the possible values

Return type

None

set_bitrate_reg(btr)

Parameters

btr (str) – BTR register value to set custom can speed

Return type

None

shutdown()

Called to carry out any interface specific cleanup required in shutting down a bus.

Return type

None

Internals

Todo

Document the internals of slcan interface.

SocketCAN

The SocketCAN documentation can be found in the Linux kernel docs at networking directory. Quoting from the SocketCAN Linux documentation:

> The socketcan package is an implementation of CAN protocols
> (Controller Area Network) for Linux.  CAN is a networking technology
> which has widespread use in automation, embedded devices, and
> automotive fields.  While there have been other CAN implementations
> for Linux based on character devices, SocketCAN uses the Berkeley
> socket API, the Linux network stack and implements the CAN device
> drivers as network interfaces.  The CAN socket API has been designed
> as similar as possible to the TCP/IP protocols to allow programmers,
> familiar with network programming, to easily learn how to use CAN
> sockets.

Important

python-can versions before 2.2 had two different implementations named socketcan_ctypes and socketcan_native. These were removed in version 4.0.0 after a deprecation period.

Socketcan Quickstart

The CAN network driver provides a generic interface to setup, configure and monitor CAN devices. To configure bit-timing parameters use the program ip.

The virtual CAN driver (vcan)

The virtual CAN interfaces allow the transmission and reception of CAN frames without real CAN controller hardware. Virtual CAN network devices are usually named ‘vcanX’, like vcan0 vcan1 vcan2.

To create a virtual can interface using socketcan run the following:

sudo modprobe vcan
# Create a vcan network interface with a specific name
sudo ip link add dev vcan0 type vcan
sudo ip link set vcan0 up

Real Device

vcan should be substituted for can and vcan0 should be substituted for can0 if you are using real hardware. Setting the bitrate can also be done at the same time, for example to enable an existing can0 interface with a bitrate of 1MB:

sudo ip link set can0 up type can bitrate 1000000

PCAN

Kernels >= 3.4 supports the PCAN adapters natively via SocketCAN, so there is no need to install any drivers. The CAN interface can be brought like so:

sudo modprobe peak_usb
sudo modprobe peak_pci
sudo ip link set can0 up type can bitrate 500000

Intrepid

The Intrepid Control Systems, Inc provides several devices (e.g. ValueCAN) as well as Linux module and user-space daemon to make it possible to use them via SocketCAN.

Refer to below repositories for installation instructions:

• Intrepid kernel module

• Intrepid user-space daemon

Send Test Message

The can-utils library for Linux includes a cansend tool which is useful to send known payloads. For example to send a message on vcan0:

cansend vcan0 123#DEADBEEF

CAN Errors

A device may enter the “bus-off” state if too many errors occurred on the CAN bus. Then no more messages are received or sent. An automatic bus-off recovery can be enabled by setting the “restart-ms” to a non-zero value, e.g.:

sudo ip link set canX type can restart-ms 100

Alternatively, the application may realize the “bus-off” condition by monitoring CAN error frames and do a restart when appropriate with the command:

ip link set canX type can restart

Note that a restart will also create a CAN error frame.

List network interfaces

To reveal the newly created can0 or a vcan0 interface:

ifconfig

Display CAN statistics

ip -details -statistics link show vcan0

Network Interface Removal

To remove the network interface:

sudo ip link del vcan0

Wireshark

Wireshark supports socketcan and can be used to debug python-can messages. Fire it up and watch your new interface.

To spam a bus:

import time
import can

bustype = 'socketcan'
channel = 'vcan0'

def producer(id):
    """:param id: Spam the bus with messages including the data id."""
    bus = can.Bus(channel=channel, interface=bustype)
    for i in range(10):
        msg = can.Message(arbitration_id=0xc0ffee, data=[id, i, 0, 1, 3, 1, 4, 1], is_extended_id=False)
        bus.send(msg)

    time.sleep(1)

producer(10)

With debugging turned right up this looks something like this:

The process to follow bus traffic is even easier:

for message in Bus(can_interface):
    print(message)

Reading and Timeouts

Reading a single CAN message off of the bus is simple with the bus.recv() function:

import can

bus = can.Bus(channel='vcan0', interface='socketcan')
message = bus.recv()

By default, this performs a blocking read, which means bus.recv() won’t return until a CAN message shows up on the socket. You can optionally perform a blocking read with a timeout like this:

message = bus.recv(1.0)  # Timeout in seconds.

if message is None:
    print('Timeout occurred, no message.')

If you set the timeout to 0.0, the read will be executed as non-blocking, which means bus.recv(0.0) will return immediately, either with a Message object or None, depending on whether data was available on the socket.

Filtering

The implementation features efficient filtering of can_id’s. That filtering occurs in the kernel and is much much more efficient than filtering messages in Python.

Broadcast Manager

The socketcan interface implements thin wrappers to the linux broadcast manager socket api. This allows the cyclic transmission of CAN messages at given intervals. The overhead for periodic message sending is extremely low as all the heavy lifting occurs within the linux kernel.

The BusABC initialized for socketcan interface transparently handles scheduling of CAN messages to Linux BCM via send_periodic():

with can.interface.Bus(interface="socketcan", channel="can0") as bus:
    task = bus.send_periodic(...)

More examples that uses send_periodic() are included in python-can/examples/cyclic.py.

The task object returned by send_periodic() can be used to halt, alter or cancel the periodic message task:

class can.interfaces.socketcan.CyclicSendTask(bcm_socket, task_id, messages, period, duration=None)

A SocketCAN cyclic send task supports:

• setting of a task duration

• modifying the data

• stopping then subsequent restarting of the task

Construct and start() a task.

Parameters

• bcm_socket (socket) – An open BCM socket on the desired CAN channel.

• task_id (int) – The identifier used to uniquely reference particular cyclic send task within Linux BCM.

• messages (Union[Sequence[Message], Message]) – The messages to be sent periodically.

• period (float) – The rate in seconds at which to send the messages.

• duration (Optional[float]) – Approximate duration in seconds to send the messages for.

modify_data(messages)

Update the contents of the periodically sent CAN messages by sending TX_SETUP message to Linux kernel.

The number of new cyclic messages to be sent must be equal to the original number of messages originally specified for this task.

Note

The messages must all have the same arbitration_id like the first message.

Parameters

messages (Union[Sequence[Message], Message]) – The messages with the new can.Message.data.

Return type

None

start()

Start a periodic task by sending TX_SETUP message to Linux kernel.

It verifies presence of the particular BCM task through sending TX_READ message to Linux kernel prior to scheduling.

Raises

ValueError – If the task referenced by task_id is already running.

Return type

None

stop()

Stop a task by sending TX_DELETE message to Linux kernel.

This will delete the entry for the transmission of the CAN-message with the specified task_id identifier. The message length for the command TX_DELETE is {[bcm_msg_head]} (only the header).

Return type

None

Buffer Sizes

Currently, the sending buffer size cannot be adjusted by this library. However, this issue describes how to change it via the command line/shell.

Bus

The SocketcanBus specializes BusABC to ensure usage of SocketCAN Linux API. The most important differences are:

• usage of SocketCAN BCM for periodic messages scheduling;

• filtering of CAN messages on Linux kernel level;

• usage of nanosecond timings from the kernel.

class can.interfaces.socketcan.SocketcanBus(channel='', receive_own_messages=False, local_loopback=True, fd=False, can_filters=None, ignore_rx_error_frames=False, **kwargs)

A SocketCAN interface to CAN.

It implements can.BusABC._detect_available_configs() to search for available interfaces.

Creates a new socketcan bus.

If setting some socket options fails, an error will be printed but no exception will be thrown. This includes enabling:

• that own messages should be received,

• CAN-FD frames and

• error frames.

Parameters

• channel (str) – The can interface name with which to create this bus. An example channel would be ‘vcan0’ or ‘can0’. An empty string ‘’ will receive messages from all channels. In that case any sent messages must be explicitly addressed to a channel using can.Message.channel.

• receive_own_messages (bool) – If transmitted messages should also be received by this bus.

• local_loopback (bool) – If local loopback should be enabled on this bus. Please note that local loopback does not mean that messages sent on a socket will be readable on the same socket, they will only be readable on other open sockets on the same machine. More info can be read on the socketcan documentation: See https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/networking/can.html#socketcan-local-loopback1

• fd (bool) – If CAN-FD frames should be supported.

• can_filters (Optional[Sequence[Union[CanFilter, CanFilterExtended]]]) – See can.BusABC.set_filters().

• ignore_rx_error_frames – If incoming error frames should be discarded.

property filters: Optional[Sequence[Union[can.typechecking.CanFilter, can.typechecking.CanFilterExtended]]]

Modify the filters of this bus. See set_filters() for details.

Return type

Optional[Sequence[Union[CanFilter, CanFilterExtended]]]

flush_tx_buffer()

Discard every message that may be queued in the output buffer(s).

Return type

None

recv(timeout=None)

Block waiting for a message from the Bus.

Parameters

timeout (Optional[float]) – seconds to wait for a message or None to wait indefinitely

Return type

Optional[Message]

Returns

None on timeout or a Message object.

Raises

can.CanOperationError – If an error occurred while reading

send(msg, timeout=None)

Transmit a message to the CAN bus.

Parameters

• msg (Message) – A message object.

• timeout (Optional[float]) – Wait up to this many seconds for the transmit queue to be ready. If not given, the call may fail immediately.

Raises

can.CanError – if the message could not be written.

Return type

None

send_periodic(msgs, period, duration=None, store_task=True)

Start sending messages at a given period on this bus.

The task will be active until one of the following conditions are met:

• the (optional) duration expires

• the Bus instance goes out of scope

• the Bus instance is shutdown

• BusABC.stop_all_periodic_tasks() is called

• the task’s CyclicTask.stop() method is called.

Parameters

• msgs (Union[Message, Sequence[Message]]) – Message(s) to transmit

• period (float) – Period in seconds between each message

• duration (Optional[float]) – Approximate duration in seconds to continue sending messages. If no duration is provided, the task will continue indefinitely.

• store_task (bool) – If True (the default) the task will be attached to this Bus instance. Disable to instead manage tasks manually.

Return type

CyclicSendTaskABC

Returns

A started task instance. Note the task can be stopped (and depending on the backend modified) by calling the task’s stop() method.

Note

Note the duration before the messages stop being sent may not be exactly the same as the duration specified by the user. In general the message will be sent at the given rate until at least duration seconds.

Note

For extremely long running Bus instances with many short lived tasks the default api with store_task==True may not be appropriate as the stopped tasks are still taking up memory as they are associated with the Bus instance.

set_filters(filters=None)

Apply filtering to all messages received by this Bus.

All messages that match at least one filter are returned. If filters is None or a zero length sequence, all messages are matched.

Calling without passing any filters will reset the applied filters to None.

Parameters

filters (Optional[Sequence[Union[CanFilter, CanFilterExtended]]]) –

A iterable of dictionaries each containing a “can_id”, a “can_mask”, and an optional “extended” key.

>>> [{"can_id": 0x11, "can_mask": 0x21, "extended": False}]

A filter matches, when <received_can_id> & can_mask == can_id & can_mask. If extended is set as well, it only matches messages where <received_is_extended> == extended. Else it matches every messages based only on the arbitration ID and mask.

Return type

None

shutdown()

Stops all active periodic tasks and closes the socket.

Return type

None

property state: can.bus.BusState

Return the current state of the hardware

Return type

BusState

stop_all_periodic_tasks(remove_tasks=True)

Stop sending any messages that were started using bus.send_periodic.

Note

The result is undefined if a single task throws an exception while being stopped.

Parameters

remove_tasks (bool) – Stop tracking the stopped tasks.

Return type

None

SYSTEC interface

Windows interface for the USBCAN devices supporting up to 2 channels based on the particular product. There is support for the devices also on Linux through the SocketCAN interface and for Windows using this systec interface.

Installation

The interface requires installation of the USBCAN32.dll library. Download and install the driver for specific SYSTEC device.

Supported devices

The interface supports following devices:

• GW-001 (obsolete),

• GW-002 (obsolete),

• Multiport CAN-to-USB G3,

• USB-CANmodul1 G3,

• USB-CANmodul2 G3,

• USB-CANmodul8 G3,

• USB-CANmodul16 G3,

• USB-CANmodul1 G4,

• USB-CANmodul2 G4.

Bus

class can.interfaces.systec.ucanbus.UcanBus(channel, can_filters=None, **kwargs)

The CAN Bus implemented for the SYSTEC interface.

Parameters

• channel (int) – The Channel id to create this bus with.

• can_filters (list) – See can.BusABC.set_filters().

Backend Configuration

Parameters

• bitrate (int) – Channel bitrate in bit/s. Default is 500000.

• device_number (int) – The device number of the USB-CAN. Valid values: 0 through 254. Special value 255 is reserved to detect the first connected device (should only be used, in case only one module is connected to the computer). Default is 255.

• state (can.bus.BusState) – BusState of the channel. Default is ACTIVE.

• receive_own_messages (bool) – If messages transmitted should also be received back. Default is False.

• rx_buffer_entries (int) – The maximum number of entries in the receive buffer. Default is 4096.

• tx_buffer_entries (int) – The maximum number of entries in the transmit buffer. Default is 4096.

Raises

• ValueError – If invalid input parameter were passed.

• can.CanInterfaceNotImplementedError – If the platform is not supported.

• can.CanInitializationError – If hardware or CAN interface initialization failed.

static create_filter(extended, from_id, to_id, rtr_only, rtr_too)

Calculates AMR and ACR using CAN-ID as parameter.

Parameters

• extended (bool) – if True parameters from_id and to_id contains 29-bit CAN-ID

• from_id (int) – first CAN-ID which should be received

• to_id (int) – last CAN-ID which should be received

• rtr_only (bool) – if True only RTR-Messages should be received, and rtr_too will be ignored

• rtr_too (bool) – if True CAN data frames and RTR-Messages should be received

Returns

Returns list with one filter containing a “can_id”, a “can_mask” and “extended” key.

flush_tx_buffer()

Flushes the transmit buffer.

Raises

can.CanError – If flushing of the transmit buffer failed.

send(msg, timeout=None)

Sends one CAN message.

When a transmission timeout is set the firmware tries to send a message within this timeout. If it could not be sent the firmware sets the “auto delete” state. Within this state all transmit CAN messages for this channel will be deleted automatically for not blocking the other channel.

Parameters

• msg (can.Message) – The CAN message.

• timeout (float) – Transmit timeout in seconds (value 0 switches off the “auto delete”)

Raises

can.CanOperationError – If the message could not be sent.

shutdown()

Shuts down all CAN interfaces and hardware interface.

property state

Return the current state of the hardware

Configuration

The simplest configuration would be:

interface = systec
channel = 0

Python-can will search for the first device found if not specified explicitly by the device_number parameter. The interface and channel are the only mandatory parameters. The interface supports two channels 0 and 1. The maximum number of entries in the receive and transmit buffer can be set by the parameters rx_buffer_entries and tx_buffer_entries, with default value 4096 set for both.

Optional parameters:

• bitrate (default 500000) Channel bitrate in bit/s

• device_number (default first device) The device number of the USB-CAN

• rx_buffer_entries (default 4096) The maximum number of entries in the receive buffer

• tx_buffer_entries (default 4096) The maximum number of entries in the transmit buffer

• state (default BusState.ACTIVE) BusState of the channel

• receive_own_messages (default False) If messages transmitted should also be received back

Internals

Message filtering

The interface and driver supports only setting of one filter per channel. If one filter is requested, this is will be handled by the driver itself. If more than one filter is needed, these will be handled in Python code in the recv method. If a message does not match any of the filters, recv() will return None.

Periodic tasks

The driver supports periodic message sending but without the possibility to set the interval between messages. Therefore the handling of the periodic messages is done by the interface using the ThreadBasedCyclicSendTask.

Multicast IP Interface

This module implements transport of CAN and CAN FD messages over UDP via Multicast IPv4 and IPv6. This virtual interface allows for communication between multiple processes and even hosts. This differentiates it from the Virtual interface, which can only passes messages within a single process but does not require a network stack.

It runs on UDP to have the lowest possible latency (as opposed to using TCP), and because normal IP multicast is inherently unreliable, as the recipients are unknown. This enables ad-hoc networks that do not require a central server but is also a so-called unreliable network. In practice however, local area networks (LANs) should most often be sufficiently reliable for this interface to function properly.

Note

For an overview over the different virtual buses in this library and beyond, please refer to the section Other Virtual Interfaces. It also describes important limitations of this interface.

Please refer to the Bus class documentation below for configuration options and useful resources for specifying multicast IP addresses.

Supported Platforms

It should work on most Unix systems (including Linux with kernel 2.6.22+) but currently not on Windows.

Example

This example should print a single line indicating that a CAN message was successfully sent from bus_1 to bus_2:

import time
import can
from can.interfaces.udp_multicast import UdpMulticastBus

# The bus can be created using the can.Bus wrapper class or using UdpMulticastBus directly
with can.Bus(channel=UdpMulticastBus.DEFAULT_GROUP_IPv6, bustype='udp_multicast') as bus_1, \
        UdpMulticastBus(channel=UdpMulticastBus.DEFAULT_GROUP_IPv6) as bus_2:

    # register a callback on the second bus that prints messages to the standard out
    notifier = can.Notifier(bus_2, [can.Printer()])

    # create and send a message with the first bus, which should arrive at the second one
    message = can.Message(arbitration_id=0x123, data=[1, 2, 3])
    bus_1.send(message)

    # give the notifier enough time to get triggered by the second bus
    time.sleep(2.0)

Bus Class Documentation

class can.interfaces.udp_multicast.UdpMulticastBus(channel='ff15:7079:7468:6f6e:6465:6d6f:6d63:6173', port=43113, hop_limit=1, receive_own_messages=False, fd=True, **kwargs)

A virtual interface for CAN communications between multiple processes using UDP over Multicast IP.

It supports IPv4 and IPv6, specified via the channel (which really is just a multicast IP address as a string). You can also specify the port and the IPv6 hop limit/the IPv4 time to live (TTL).

This bus does not support filtering based on message IDs on the kernel level but instead provides it in user space (in Python) as a fallback.

Both default addresses should allow for multi-host CAN networks in a normal local area network (LAN) where multicast is enabled.

Note

The auto-detection of available interfaces (see) is implemented using heuristic that checks if the required socket operations are available. It then returns two configurations, one based on the DEFAULT_GROUP_IPv6 address and another one based on the DEFAULT_GROUP_IPv4 address.

Warning

The parameter receive_own_messages is currently unsupported and setting it to True will raise an exception.

Warning

This interface does not make guarantees on reliable delivery and message ordering, and also does not implement rate limiting or ID arbitration/prioritization under high loads. Please refer to the section Other Virtual Interfaces for more information on this and a comparison to alternatives.

Parameters

• channel (str) – A multicast IPv4 address (in 224.0.0.0/4) or an IPv6 address (in ff00::/8). This defines which version of IP is used. See Wikipedia (“Multicast address”) for more details on the addressing schemes. Defaults to DEFAULT_GROUP_IPv6.

• port (int) – The IP port to read from and write to.

• hop_limit (int) – The hop limit in IPv6 or in IPv4 the time to live (TTL).

• receive_own_messages (bool) – If transmitted messages should also be received by this bus. CURRENTLY UNSUPPORTED.

• fd (bool) – If CAN-FD frames should be supported. If set to false, an error will be raised upon sending such a frame and such received frames will be ignored.

• can_filters – See set_filters().

Raises

• RuntimeError – If the msgpack-dependency is not available. It should be installed on all non Windows platforms via the setup.py requirements.

• NotImplementedError – If the receive_own_messages is passed as True.

Construct and open a CAN bus instance of the specified type.

Subclasses should call though this method with all given parameters as it handles generic tasks like applying filters.

Parameters

• channel (str) – The can interface identifier. Expected type is backend dependent.

• can_filters – See set_filters() for details.

• kwargs (dict) – Any backend dependent configurations are passed in this dictionary

Raises

• ValueError – If parameters are out of range

• can.CanInterfaceNotImplementedError – If the driver cannot be accessed

• can.CanInitializationError – If the bus cannot be initialized

DEFAULT_GROUP_IPv4 = '239.74.163.2'

An arbitrary IPv4 multicast address with “administrative” scope, i.e. only to be routed within administrative organizational boundaries and not beyond it. It should allow for multi-host CAN networks in a normal IPv4 LAN. This is provided as a default fallback channel if IPv6 is (still) not supported.

DEFAULT_GROUP_IPv6 = 'ff15:7079:7468:6f6e:6465:6d6f:6d63:6173'

An arbitrary IPv6 multicast address with “site-local” scope, i.e. only to be routed within the local physical network and not beyond it. It should allow for multi-host CAN networks in a normal IPv6 LAN. This is the default channel and should work with most modern routers if multicast is allowed.

fileno()

Provides the internally used file descriptor of the socket or -1 if not available.

Return type

int

shutdown()

Close all sockets and free up any resources.

Never throws errors and only logs them.

Return type

None

USB2CAN Interface

OVERVIEW

The USB2CAN is a cheap CAN interface based on an ARM7 chip (STR750FV2). There is support for this device on Linux through the SocketCAN interface and for Windows using this usb2can interface.

WINDOWS SUPPORT

Support though windows is achieved through a DLL very similar to the way the PCAN functions. The API is called CANAL (CAN Abstraction Layer) which is a separate project designed to be used with VSCP which is a socket like messaging system that is not only cross platform but also supports other types of devices. This device can be used through one of three ways 1)Through python-can 2)CANAL API either using the DLL and C/C++ or through the python wrapper that has been added to this project 3)VSCP Using python-can is strongly suggested as with little extra work the same interface can be used on both Windows and Linux.

WINDOWS INSTALL

1. To install on Windows download the USB2CAN Windows driver. It is compatible with XP, Vista, Win7, Win8/8.1. (Written against driver version v1.0.2.1)

2. Install the appropriate version of pywin32 (win32com)

3. Download the USB2CAN CANAL DLL from the USB2CAN website. Place this in either the same directory you are running usb2can.py from or your DLL folder in your python install. Note that only a 32-bit version is currently available, so this only works in a 32-bit Python environment. (Written against CANAL DLL version v1.0.6)

Interface Layout

• usb2canabstractionlayer.py

  This file is only a wrapper for the CANAL API that the interface expects. There are also a couple of constants here to try and make dealing with the bitwise operations for flag setting a little easier. Other than that this is only the CANAL API. If a programmer wanted to work with the API directly this is the file that allows you to do this. The CANAL project does not provide this wrapper and normally must be accessed with C.

• usb2canInterface.py

  This file provides the translation to and from the python-can library to the CANAL API. This is where all the logic is and setup code is. Most issues if they are found will be either found here or within the DLL that is provided

• serial_selector.py

  See the section below for the reason for adding this as it is a little odd. What program does is if a serial number is not provided to the usb2canInterface file this program does WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) calls to try and figure out what device to connect to. It then returns the serial number of the device. Currently it is not really smart enough to figure out what to do if there are multiple devices. This needs to be changed if people are using more than one interface.

Interface Specific Items

There are a few things that are kinda strange about this device and are not overly obvious about the code or things that are not done being implemented in the DLL.

1. You need the Serial Number to connect to the device under Windows. This is part of the “setup string” that configures the device. There are a few options for how to get this.

   1. Use usb2canWin.py to find the serial number

   2. Look on the device and enter it either through a prompt/barcode scanner/hardcode it.(Not recommended)

   3. Reprogram the device serial number to something and do that for all the devices you own. (Really Not Recommended, can no longer use multiple devices on one computer)

2. In usb2canabstractionlayer.py there is a structure called CanalMsg which has a unsigned byte array of size 8. In the usb2canInterface file it passes in an unsigned byte array of size 8 also which if you pass less than 8 bytes in it stuffs it with extra zeros. So if the data “01020304” is sent the message would look like “0102030400000000”. There is also a part of this structure called sizeData which is the actual length of the data that was sent not the stuffed message (in this case would be 4). What then happens is although a message of size 8 is sent to the device only the length of information so the first 4 bytes of information would be sent. This is done because the DLL expects a length of 8 and nothing else. So to make it compatible that has to be sent through the wrapper. If usb2canInterface sent an array of length 4 with sizeData of 4 as well the array would throw an incompatible data type error. There is a Wireshark file posted in Issue #36 that demonstrates that the bus is only sending the data and not the extra zeros.

3. The masking features have not been implemented currently in the CANAL interface in the version currently on the USB2CAN website.

Warning

Currently message filtering is not implemented. Contributions are most welcome!

Bus

Internals

Vector

This interface adds support for CAN controllers by Vector. Only Windows is supported.

By default this library uses the channel configuration for CANalyzer. To use a different application, open Vector Hardware Config program and create a new application and assign the channels you may want to use. Specify the application name as app_name='Your app name' when constructing the bus or in a config file.

Channel should be given as a list of channels starting at 0.

Here is an example configuration file connecting to CAN 1 and CAN 2 for an application named “python-can”:

[default]
interface = vector
channel = 0, 1
app_name = python-can

If you are using Python 2.7 it is recommended to install pywin32, otherwise a slow and CPU intensive polling will be used when waiting for new messages.

Bus

class can.interfaces.vector.VectorBus(channel, can_filters=None, poll_interval=0.01, receive_own_messages=False, bitrate=None, rx_queue_size=16384, app_name='CANalyzer', serial=None, fd=False, data_bitrate=None, sjw_abr=2, tseg1_abr=6, tseg2_abr=3, sjw_dbr=2, tseg1_dbr=6, tseg2_dbr=3, **kwargs)

The CAN Bus implemented for the Vector interface.

Parameters

• channel (Union[int, Sequence[int], str]) – The channel indexes to create this bus with. Can also be a single integer or a comma separated string.

• can_filters (Optional[Sequence[Union[CanFilter, CanFilterExtended]]]) – See can.BusABC.

• receive_own_messages (bool) – See can.BusABC.

• poll_interval (float) – Poll interval in seconds.

• bitrate (Optional[int]) – Bitrate in bits/s.

• rx_queue_size (int) – Number of messages in receive queue (power of 2). CAN: range 16…32768 CAN-FD: range 8192…524288

• app_name (Optional[str]) – Name of application in Vector Hardware Config. If set to None, the channel should be a global channel index.

• serial (Optional[int]) – Serial number of the hardware to be used. If set, the channel parameter refers to the channels ONLY on the specified hardware. If set, the app_name does not have to be previously defined in Vector Hardware Config.

• fd (bool) – If CAN-FD frames should be supported.

• data_bitrate (Optional[int]) – Which bitrate to use for data phase in CAN FD. Defaults to arbitration bitrate.

• sjw_abr (int) – Bus timing value sample jump width (arbitration).

• tseg1_abr (int) – Bus timing value tseg1 (arbitration)

• tseg2_abr (int) – Bus timing value tseg2 (arbitration)

• sjw_dbr (int) – Bus timing value sample jump width (data)

• tseg1_dbr (int) – Bus timing value tseg1 (data)

• tseg2_dbr (int) – Bus timing value tseg2 (data)

Raises

• can.CanInterfaceNotImplementedError – If the current operating system is not supported or the driver could not be loaded.

• can.CanInitializationError – If the bus could not be set up. This may or may not be a can.interfaces.vector.VectorInitializationError.

exception can.interfaces.vector.VectorError(error_code, error_string, function)

Virtual

The virtual interface can be used as a way to write OS and driver independent tests. Any VirtualBus instances connecting to the same channel (from within the same Python process) will receive each others messages.

If messages shall be sent across process or host borders, consider using the Multicast IP Interface and refer to (the next section) for a comparison and general discussion of different virtual interfaces.

Other Virtual Interfaces

There are quite a few implementations for CAN networks that do not require physical CAN hardware. This section also describes common limitations of current virtual interfaces.

Comparison

The following table compares some known virtual interfaces:

Name	Availability	Applicability			Implementation
		Within Process	Between Processes	Via (IP) Networks	Without Central Server	Transport Technology	Serialization Format
virtual (this)	included	✓	✗	✗	✓	Singleton & Mutex (reliable)	none
udp_multicast (doc)	included	✓	✓	✓	✓	UDP via IP multicast (unreliable)	custom using msgpack
christiansandberg/ python-can-remote	external	✓	✓	✓	✗	Websockets via TCP/IP (reliable)	custom binary
windelbouwman/ virtualcan	external	✓	✓	✓	✗	ZeroMQ via TCP/IP (reliable)	custom binary 1

1

The only option in this list that implements interoperability with other languages out of the box. For the others (except the first intra-process one), other programs written in potentially different languages could effortlessly interface with the bus once they mimic the serialization format. The last one, however, has already implemented the entire bus functionality in C++ and Rust, besides the Python variant.

Common Limitations

Guaranteed delivery and message ordering is one major point of difference: While in a physical CAN network, a message is either sent or in queue (or an explicit error occurred), this may not be the case for virtual networks. The udp_multicast bus for example, drops this property for the benefit of lower latencies by using unreliable UDP/IP instead of reliable TCP/IP (and because normal IP multicast is inherently unreliable, as the recipients are unknown by design). The other three buses faithfully model a physical CAN network in this regard: They ensure that all recipients actually receive (and acknowledge each message), much like in a physical CAN network. They also ensure that messages are relayed in the order they have arrived at the central server and that messages arrive at the recipients exactly once. Both is not guaranteed to hold for the best-effort udp_multicast bus as it uses UDP/IP as a transport layer.

Central servers are, however, required by interfaces 3 and 4 (the external tools) to provide these guarantees of message delivery and message ordering. The central servers receive and distribute the CAN messages to all other bus participants, unlike in a real physical CAN network. The first intra-process virtual interface only runs within one Python process, effectively the Python instance of VirtualBus acts as a central server. Notably the udp_multicast bus does not require a central server.

Arbitration and throughput are two interrelated functions/properties of CAN networks which are typically abstracted in virtual interfaces. In all four interfaces, an unlimited amount of messages can be sent per unit of time (given the computational power of the machines and networks that are involved). In a real CAN/CAN FD networks, however, throughput is usually much more restricted and prioritization of arbitration IDs is thus an important feature once the bus is starting to get saturated. None of the interfaces presented above support any sort of throttling or ID arbitration under high loads.

Example

import can

bus1 = can.interface.Bus('test', bustype='virtual')
bus2 = can.interface.Bus('test', bustype='virtual')

msg1 = can.Message(arbitration_id=0xabcde, data=[1,2,3])
bus1.send(msg1)
msg2 = bus2.recv()

#assert msg1 == msg2
assert msg1.arbitration_id == msg2.arbitration_id
assert msg1.data == msg2.data
assert msg1.timestamp != msg2.timestamp

import can

bus1 = can.interface.Bus('test', bustype='virtual', preserve_timestamps=True)
bus2 = can.interface.Bus('test', bustype='virtual')

msg1 = can.Message(timestamp=1639740470.051948, arbitration_id=0xabcde, data=[1,2,3])

# Messages sent on bus1 will have their timestamps preserved when received
# on bus2
bus1.send(msg1)
msg2 = bus2.recv()

assert msg1.arbitration_id == msg2.arbitration_id
assert msg1.data == msg2.data
assert msg1.timestamp == msg2.timestamp

# Messages sent on bus2 will not have their timestamps preserved when
# received on bus1
bus2.send(msg1)
msg3 = bus1.recv()

assert msg1.arbitration_id == msg3.arbitration_id
assert msg1.data == msg3.data
assert msg1.timestamp != msg3.timestamp

Bus Class Documentation

class can.interfaces.virtual.VirtualBus(channel=None, receive_own_messages=False, rx_queue_size=0, preserve_timestamps=False, **kwargs)

A virtual CAN bus using an internal message queue. It can be used for example for testing.

In this interface, a channel is an arbitrary object used as an identifier for connected buses.

Implements can.BusABC._detect_available_configs(); see can.VirtualBus._detect_available_configs() for how it behaves here.

Note

The timeout when sending a message applies to each receiver individually. This means that sending can block up to 5 seconds if a message is sent to 5 receivers with the timeout set to 1.0.

Warning

This interface guarantees reliable delivery and message ordering, but does not implement rate limiting or ID arbitration/prioritization under high loads. Please refer to the section Other Virtual Interfaces for more information on this and a comparison to alternatives.

Construct and open a CAN bus instance of the specified type.

Subclasses should call though this method with all given parameters as it handles generic tasks like applying filters.

Parameters

• channel (Optional[Any]) – The can interface identifier. Expected type is backend dependent.

• can_filters – See set_filters() for details.

• kwargs (dict) – Any backend dependent configurations are passed in this dictionary

Raises

• ValueError – If parameters are out of range

• can.CanInterfaceNotImplementedError – If the driver cannot be accessed

• can.CanInitializationError – If the bus cannot be initialized

send(msg, timeout=None)

Transmit a message to the CAN bus.

Override this method to enable the transmit path.

Parameters

• msg (Message) – A message object.

• timeout (Optional[float]) – If > 0, wait up to this many seconds for message to be ACK’ed or for transmit queue to be ready depending on driver implementation. If timeout is exceeded, an exception will be raised. Might not be supported by all interfaces. None blocks indefinitely.

Raises

can.CanOperationError – If an error occurred while sending

Return type

None

shutdown()

Called to carry out any interface specific cleanup required in shutting down a bus.

Return type

None

Additional interfaces can be added via a plugin interface. An external package can register a new interface by using the can.interface entry point in its setup.py.

The format of the entry point is interface_name=module:classname where classname is a concrete can.BusABC implementation.

entry_points={
    'can.interface': [
        "interface_name=module:classname",
    ]
},

The Interface Names are listed in Configuration.

Scripts

The following modules are callable from python-can.

They can be called for example by python -m can.logger or can_logger.py (if installed using pip).

can.logger

Command line help, called with --help:

$ python -m can.logger -h
usage: logger.py [-h] [-c CHANNEL]
                 [-i {slcan,neousys,virtual,gs_usb,pcan,socketcan,nican,kvaser,serial,vector,iscan,socketcand,neovi,seeedstudio,cantact,udp_multicast,ixxat,systec,canalystii,etas,usb2can,robotell,nixnet}]
                 [-b BITRATE] [--fd] [--data_bitrate DATA_BITRATE]
                 [-f LOG_FILE] [-s FILE_SIZE] [-v]
                 [--filter {<can_id>:<can_mask>,<can_id>~<can_mask>} [{<can_id>:<can_mask>,<can_id>~<can_mask>} ...]]
                 [--active | --passive]
                 ...

Log CAN traffic, printing messages to stdout or to a given file.

positional arguments:
  extra_args            The remaining arguments will be used for the interface
                        initialisation. For example, `-i vector -c 1 --app-
                        name=MyCanApp` is the equivalent to opening the bus
                        with `Bus('vector', channel=1, app_name='MyCanApp')`

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -c CHANNEL, --channel CHANNEL
                        Most backend interfaces require some sort of channel.
                        For example with the serial interface the channel
                        might be a rfcomm device: "/dev/rfcomm0" With the
                        socketcan interfaces valid channel examples include:
                        "can0", "vcan0"
  -i {slcan,neousys,virtual,gs_usb,pcan,socketcan,nican,kvaser,serial,vector,iscan,socketcand,neovi,seeedstudio,cantact,udp_multicast,ixxat,systec,canalystii,etas,usb2can,robotell,nixnet}, --interface {slcan,neousys,virtual,gs_usb,pcan,socketcan,nican,kvaser,serial,vector,iscan,socketcand,neovi,seeedstudio,cantact,udp_multicast,ixxat,systec,canalystii,etas,usb2can,robotell,nixnet}
                        Specify the backend CAN interface to use. If left
                        blank, fall back to reading from configuration files.
  -b BITRATE, --bitrate BITRATE
                        Bitrate to use for the CAN bus.
  --fd                  Activate CAN-FD support
  --data_bitrate DATA_BITRATE
                        Bitrate to use for the data phase in case of CAN-FD.
  -f LOG_FILE, --file_name LOG_FILE
                        Path and base log filename, for supported types see
                        can.Logger.
  -s FILE_SIZE, --file_size FILE_SIZE
                        Maximum file size in bytes. Rotate log file when size
                        threshold is reached.
  -v                    How much information do you want to see at the command
                        line? You can add several of these e.g., -vv is DEBUG
  --filter {<can_id>:<can_mask>,<can_id>~<can_mask>} [{<can_id>:<can_mask>,<can_id>~<can_mask>} ...]
                        R|Space separated CAN filters for the given CAN
                        interface: <can_id>:<can_mask> (matches when
                        <received_can_id> & mask == can_id & mask)
                        <can_id>~<can_mask> (matches when <received_can_id> &
                        mask != can_id & mask) Fx to show only frames with ID
                        0x100 to 0x103 and 0x200 to 0x20F: python -m
                        can.viewer -f 100:7FC 200:7F0 Note that the ID and
                        mask are always interpreted as hex values
  --active              Start the bus as active, this is applied by default.
  --passive             Start the bus as passive.

can.player

$ python -m can.player -h
usage: player.py [-h] [-c CHANNEL]
                 [-i {canalystii,kvaser,neousys,pcan,usb2can,cantact,seeedstudio,iscan,socketcan,systec,neovi,serial,gs_usb,udp_multicast,etas,ixxat,vector,nican,robotell,socketcand,nixnet,slcan,virtual}]
                 [-b BITRATE] [--fd] [--data_bitrate DATA_BITRATE]
                 [-f LOG_FILE] [-v] [--ignore-timestamps] [--error-frames]
                 [-g GAP] [-s SKIP]
                 ... input-file

Replay CAN traffic.

positional arguments:
  extra_args            The remaining arguments will be used for the interface
                        initialisation. For example, `-i vector -c 1 --app-
                        name=MyCanApp` is the equivalent to opening the bus
                        with `Bus('vector', channel=1, app_name='MyCanApp')`
  input-file            The file to replay. For supported types see
                        can.LogReader.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -c CHANNEL, --channel CHANNEL
                        Most backend interfaces require some sort of channel.
                        For example with the serial interface the channel
                        might be a rfcomm device: "/dev/rfcomm0" With the
                        socketcan interfaces valid channel examples include:
                        "can0", "vcan0"
  -i {canalystii,kvaser,neousys,pcan,usb2can,cantact,seeedstudio,iscan,socketcan,systec,neovi,serial,gs_usb,udp_multicast,etas,ixxat,vector,nican,robotell,socketcand,nixnet,slcan,virtual}, --interface {canalystii,kvaser,neousys,pcan,usb2can,cantact,seeedstudio,iscan,socketcan,systec,neovi,serial,gs_usb,udp_multicast,etas,ixxat,vector,nican,robotell,socketcand,nixnet,slcan,virtual}
                        Specify the backend CAN interface to use. If left
                        blank, fall back to reading from configuration files.
  -b BITRATE, --bitrate BITRATE
                        Bitrate to use for the CAN bus.
  --fd                  Activate CAN-FD support
  --data_bitrate DATA_BITRATE
                        Bitrate to use for the data phase in case of CAN-FD.
  -f LOG_FILE, --file_name LOG_FILE
                        Path and base log filename, for supported types see
                        can.LogReader.
  -v                    Also print can frames to stdout. You can add several
                        of these to enable debugging
  --ignore-timestamps   Ignore timestamps (send all frames immediately with
                        minimum gap between frames)
  --error-frames        Also send error frames to the interface.
  -g GAP, --gap GAP     <s> minimum time between replayed frames
  -s SKIP, --skip SKIP  <s> skip gaps greater than 's' seconds

can.viewer

A screenshot of the application can be seen below:

The first column is the number of times a frame with the particular ID that has been received, next is the timestamp of the frame relative to the first received message. The third column is the time between the current frame relative to the previous one. Next is the length of the frame, the data and then the decoded data converted according to the -d argument. The top red row indicates an error frame. There are several keyboard shortcuts that can be used with the viewer script, they function as follows:

• ESCAPE - Quit the viewer script

• q - as ESCAPE

• c - Clear the stored frames

• s - Sort the stored frames

• h - Toggle highlighting of changed bytes in the data field - see the below image

• SPACE - Pause the viewer

• UP/DOWN - Scroll the viewer

A byte in the data field is highlighted blue if the value is different from the last time the message was received.

Command line arguments

By default the can.viewer uses the SocketCAN interface. All interfaces are supported and can be specified using the -i argument or configured following Configuration.

The full usage page can be seen below:

$ python -m can.viewer -h
Usage: python -m can.viewer [-c CHANNEL]
                            [-i {seeedstudio,usb2can,vector,pcan,serial,robotell,slcan,canalystii,etas,systec,cantact,nixnet,neousys,neovi,udp_multicast,nican,socketcan,ixxat,iscan,socketcand,virtual,kvaser,gs_usb}]
                            [-b BITRATE] [--fd] [--data_bitrate DATA_BITRATE]
                            [-h] [--version]
                            [-d '{<id>:<format>,<id>:<format>:<scaling1>:...:<scalingN>,file.txt}',)]
                            [-f ('{<can_id>:<can_mask>,<can_id>~<can_mask>}',]
                            [-v]
                            'extra_args',

A simple CAN viewer terminal application written in Python

positional arguments:
  extra_args            The remaining arguments will be used for the interface
                        initialisation. For example, `-i vector -c 1 --app-
                        name=MyCanApp` is the equivalent to opening the bus
                        with `Bus('vector', channel=1, app_name='MyCanApp')`

optional arguments:
  -c, --channel CHANNEL
                        Most backend interfaces require some sort of channel.
                        For example with the serial interface the channel
                        might be a rfcomm device: "/dev/rfcomm0" With the
                        socketcan interfaces valid channel examples include:
                        "can0", "vcan0"
  -i, --interface {seeedstudio,usb2can,vector,pcan,serial,robotell,slcan,canalystii,etas,systec,cantact,nixnet,neousys,neovi,udp_multicast,nican,socketcan,ixxat,iscan,socketcand,virtual,kvaser,gs_usb}
                        Specify the backend CAN interface to use. If left
                        blank, fall back to reading from configuration files.
  -b, --bitrate BITRATE
                        Bitrate to use for the CAN bus.
  --fd                  Activate CAN-FD support
  --data_bitrate DATA_BITRATE
                        Bitrate to use for the data phase in case of CAN-FD.

Optional arguments:
  -h, --help            Show this help message and exit
  --version             Show program's version number and exit
  -d, --decode ('{<id>:<format>,<id>:<format>:<scaling1>:...:<scalingN>,file.txt}',)
                        Specify how to convert the raw bytes into real values.
                        The ID of the frame is given as the first argument and the format as the second.
                        The Python struct package is used to unpack the received data
                        where the format characters have the following meaning:
                              < = little-endian, > = big-endian
                              x = pad byte
                              c = char
                              ? = bool
                              b = int8_t, B = uint8_t
                              h = int16, H = uint16
                              l = int32_t, L = uint32_t
                              q = int64_t, Q = uint64_t
                              f = float (32-bits), d = double (64-bits)
                        Fx to convert six bytes with ID 0x100 into uint8_t, uint16 and uint32_t:
                          $ python -m can.viewer -d "100:<BHL"
                        Note that the IDs are always interpreted as hex values.
                        An optional conversion from integers to real units can be given
                        as additional arguments. In order to convert from raw integer
                        values the values are divided with the corresponding scaling value,
                        similarly the values are multiplied by the scaling value in order
                        to convert from real units to raw integer values.
                        Fx lets say the uint8_t needs no conversion, but the uint16 and the uint32_t
                        needs to be divided by 10 and 100 respectively:
                          $ python -m can.viewer -d "101:<BHL:1:10.0:100.0"
                        Be aware that integer division is performed if the scaling value is an integer.
                        Multiple arguments are separated by spaces:
                          $ python -m can.viewer -d "100:<BHL" "101:<BHL:1:10.0:100.0"
                        Alternatively a file containing the conversion strings separated by new lines
                        can be given as input:
                          $ cat file.txt
                              100:<BHL
                              101:<BHL:1:10.0:100.0
                          $ python -m can.viewer -d file.txt
  -f, --filter ('{<can_id>:<can_mask>,<can_id>~<can_mask>}',)
                        Space separated CAN filters for the given CAN interface:
                              <can_id>:<can_mask> (matches when <received_can_id> & mask == can_id & mask)
                              <can_id>~<can_mask> (matches when <received_can_id> & mask != can_id & mask)
                        Fx to show only frames with ID 0x100 to 0x103 and 0x200 to 0x20F:
                              python -m can.viewer -f 100:7FC 200:7F0
                        Note that the ID and mask are always interpreted as hex values
  -v                    How much information do you want to see at the command
                        line? You can add several of these e.g., -vv is DEBUG

Shortcuts: 
        +---------+-------------------------------+
        |   Key   |       Description             |
        +---------+-------------------------------+
        | ESQ/q   | Exit the viewer               |
        | c       | Clear the stored frames       |
        | s       | Sort the stored frames        |
        | h       | Toggle highlight byte changes |
        | SPACE   | Pause the viewer              |
        | UP/DOWN | Scroll the viewer             |
        +---------+-------------------------------+

can.logconvert

$ python -m can.logconvert -h
usage: logconvert.py [-h] [-s FILE_SIZE] INFILE OUTFILE

Convert a log file from one format to another.

positional arguments:
  INFILE                Input filename. The type is dependent on the suffix,
                        see can.LogReader.
  OUTFILE               Output filename. The type is dependent on the suffix,
                        see can.Logger.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -s FILE_SIZE, --file_size FILE_SIZE
                        Maximum file size in bytes. Rotate log file when size
                        threshold is reached.

Developer’s Overview

Contributing

Contribute to source code, documentation, examples and report issues: https://github.com/hardbyte/python-can

Note that the latest released version on PyPi may be significantly behind the develop branch. Please open any feature requests against the develop branch

There is also a python-can mailing list for development discussion.

Some more information about the internals of this library can be found in the chapter Internal API. There is also additional information on extending the can.io module.

Pre-releases

The latest pre-release can be installed with:

pip install --upgrade --pre python-can

Building & Installing

The following assumes that the commands are executed from the root of the repository:

The project can be built with:

pip install wheel
python setup.py sdist bdist_wheel

The project can be installed in editable mode with:

pip install -e .

The unit tests can be run with:

pip install tox
tox -e py

The documentation can be built with:

pip install -r doc/doc-requirements.txt
python -m sphinx -an doc build

The linters can be run with:

pip install -r requirements-lint.txt
pylint --rcfile=.pylintrc-wip can/**.py
black --check --verbose can

Creating a new interface/backend

These steps are a guideline on how to add a new backend to python-can.

• Create a module (either a *.py or an entire subdirectory depending on the complexity) inside can.interfaces

• Implement the central part of the backend: the bus class that extends can.BusABC. See Extending the BusABC class for more info on this one!

• Register your backend bus class in BACKENDS in the file can.interfaces.__init__.py.

• Add docs where appropriate. At a minimum add to doc/interfaces.rst and add a new interface specific document in doc/interface/*. It should document the supported platforms and also the hardware/software it requires. A small snippet of how to install the dependencies would also be useful to get people started without much friction.

• Also, don’t forget to document your classes, methods and function with docstrings.

• Add tests in test/* where appropriate. To get started, have a look at back2back_test.py: Simply add a test case like BasicTestSocketCan and some basic tests will be executed for the new interface.

Code Structure

The modules in python-can are:

Module	Description
interfaces	Contains interface dependent code.
bus	Contains the interface independent Bus object.
message	Contains the interface independent Message object.
io	Contains a range of file readers and writers.
broadcastmanager	Contains interface independent broadcast manager code.

Creating a new Release

• Release from the main branch (except for pre-releases).

• Update the library version in __init__.py using semantic versioning.

• Check if any deprecations are pending.

• Run all tests and examples against available hardware.

• Update CONTRIBUTORS.txt with any new contributors.

• For larger changes update doc/history.rst.

• Sanity check that documentation has stayed inline with code.

• Create a temporary virtual environment. Run python setup.py install and tox.

• Create and upload the distribution: python setup.py sdist bdist_wheel.

• Sign the packages with gpg gpg --detach-sign -a dist/python_can-X.Y.Z-py3-none-any.whl.

• Upload with twine twine upload dist/python-can-X.Y.Z*.

• In a new virtual env check that the package can be installed with pip: pip install python-can==X.Y.Z.

• Create a new tag in the repository.

• Check the release on PyPi, Read the Docs and GitHub.

History and Roadmap

Background

Originally written at Dynamic Controls for internal use testing and prototyping wheelchair components.

Maintenance was taken over and the project was open sourced by Brian Thorne in 2010.

Acknowledgements

Originally written by Ben Powell as a thin wrapper around the Kvaser SDK to support the leaf device.

Support for linux socketcan was added by Rose Lu as a summer coding project in 2011. The socketcan interface was helped immensely by Phil Dixon who wrote a leaf-socketcan driver for Linux.

The pcan interface was contributed by Albert Bloomfield in 2013. Support for pcan on Mac was added by Kristian Sloth Lauszus in 2018.

The usb2can interface was contributed by Joshua Villyard in 2015.

The IXXAT VCI interface was contributed by Giuseppe Corbelli and funded by Weightpack in 2016.

The NI-CAN and virtual interfaces plus the ASCII and BLF loggers were contributed by Christian Sandberg in 2016 and 2017. The BLF format is based on a C++ library by Toby Lorenz.

The slcan interface, ASCII listener and log logger and listener were contributed by Eduard Bröcker in 2017.

The NeoVi interface for ICS (Intrepid Control Systems) devices was contributed by Pierre-Luc Tessier Gagné in 2017.

Many improvements all over the library, cleanups, unifications as well as more comprehensive documentation and CI testing was contributed by Felix Divo in 2017 and 2018.

The CAN viewer terminal script was contributed by Kristian Sloth Lauszus in 2018.

The CANalyst-II interface was contributed by Shaoyu Meng in 2018.

@deonvdw added support for the Robotell interface in 2019.

Felix Divo and Karl Ding added type hints for the core library and many interfaces leading up to the 4.0 release.

Eric Evenchick added support for the CANtact devices in 2020.

Felix Divo added an interprocess virtual bus interface in 2020.

@jxltom added the gs_usb interface in 2020 supporting Geschwister Schneider USB/CAN devices and bytewerk.org candleLight USB CAN devices such as candlelight, canable, cantact, etc.

@jaesc added the nixnet interface in 2021 supporting NI-XNET devices from National Instruments.

Tuukka Pasanen @illuusio added the neousys interface in 2021.

Francisco Javier Burgos Maciá @fjburgos added ixxat FD support.

@domologic contributed a socketcand interface in 2021.

Felix N @felixn contributed the ETAS interface in 2021.

Felix Divo unified exception handling across every interface in the lead up to the 4.0 release.

Felix Divo prepared the python-can 4.0 release.

Support for CAN within Python

Python natively supports the CAN protocol from version 3.3 on, if running on Linux (with a sufficiently new kernel):

Python version	Feature	Link
3.3	Initial SocketCAN support	Docs
3.4	Broadcast Management (BCM) commands are natively supported	Docs
3.5	CAN FD support	Docs
3.7	Support for CAN ISO-TP	Docs
3.9	Native support for joining CAN filters	Docs

Known Bugs

See the project bug tracker on github. Patches and pull requests very welcome!

Documentation generated

Feb 19, 2022