"CAN" bus advice

[Mark- 26]

Hello,

 

Anyone have suggestions for hardware/software for "Controller Area Network" (CAN) bus support for Windows using VCL?

 

Thanks,

 

Mark

 

 

Edited November 10, 2023 by Mark-

[DelphiUdIT 132]

You can start from here, they should have something for canbus (their hardware, PEAK CANBUS): https://www.peak-system.com/PCAN-Basic.239.0.html?&L=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIhOuR_8C6ggMVvJKDBx08TgQbEAAYASABEgLiAvD_BwE

[Uwe Raabe 1889]

It has been quite a while, but I had a good experience with CANUSB.

[Mark- 26]

21 minutes ago, DelphiUdIT said:

You can start from here, they should have something for canbus (their hardware, PEAK CANBUS): https://www.peak-system.com/PCAN-Basic.239.0.html?&L=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIhOuR_8C6ggMVvJKDBx08TgQbEAAYASABEgLiAvD_BwE

1 minute ago, Uwe Raabe said:

It has been quite a while, but I had a good experience with CANUSB.

Thank you both.

Edited November 10, 2023 by Mark-

[FPiette 367]

I'm using Peak System PCAN-USB interfaces with great success.

In their PCAN-BASIC API, they have a Lazarus folder which contains PCANBasic.pas files you can use with Delphi.

Those hardware and software are very reliable, I recommend it.

[dummzeuch 1392]

We are too using Peak Systems hardware, but not with the free PCAN-Basic API (I tried it, but it was too much hassle), but the paid for PCAN-Developer 4 API. We use several PCAN USB interfaces per PC and many devices.The Delphi examples aren't that great though and there was at least one serious bug in one of them (I don't remember the specifics but it took me a while to figure it out. I reported the problem, so maybe they have fixed it by now.)

Edited November 11, 2023 by dummzeuch

[FPiette 367]

48 minutes ago, dummzeuch said:

not with the free PCAN-Basic API (I tried it, but it was too much hassle)

I use the PCAN-BASIC API with several PCAN-USB devices and there is no problem at all. Sorry but I don't agree with you : this API is easy to use whatever number of interfaces you use.

My use is controlling motors using digital positioning controllers in an industrial environment.

[DelphiUdIT 132]

I have never used their hardware directly, but I have worked on several systems where these were used (they used canbus motors to move the cameras) and I know that the basic APIs were used. The systems have always worked without any problems (I have made about a hundred).

[dummzeuch 1392]

29 minutes ago, FPiette said:

I use the PCAN-BASIC API with several PCAN-USB devices and there is no problem at all. Sorry but I don't agree with you : this API is easy to use whatever number of interfaces you use.

My use is controlling motors using digital positioning controllers in an industrial environment.

I'm not saying it can't be done. Just more work than I was prepared to put into it. Some of the features seemed to be missing too. But that was several years ago (when PCAN Developer was still called CanAPI2 or something like this).

[Mark- 26]

Thanks for all the replies.

[Alexander Elagin 143]

I have used devices from Kvaser, IXXAT and some others. Kvaser has a superb support library (CANLib SDK) which includes Delphi interface module, their software model is very simple and elegant. IXXAT also used to have one, but I have not touched it since version 2.18 as the later versions of their VCI interface were incompatible with 2.x branch. Kvaser drivers implement virtual CAN channels which helps debugging when no real hardware is available.

[Mark- 26]

2 hours ago, Alexander Elagin said:

I have used devices from Kvaser, IXXAT...

Thanks

Edited November 11, 2023 by Mark-

[fastbike 0]

On 11/11/2023 at 12:07 PM, Uwe Raabe said:

It has been quite a while, but I had a good experience with CANUSB.

I've bought the CANUSB dongle but they seem to only offer support for dot Net.
I've found an old project CanDe that uses an older version of the ComPortDriver but I can't get it to connect to the bus.

 

Do you remember what was required ?

[Uwe Raabe 1889]

45 minutes ago, fastbike said:

Do you remember what was required ?

It made use of canusbdrv.dll and a Delphi wrapper (see attachment). This was sometimes around 2008, so most likely that interface may have changed since then.

uCanUsbDll.pas

[FPiette 367]

3 hours ago, fastbike said:

I've bought the CANUSB dongle but they seem to only offer support for dot Net.

A few years ago, I used with great success Peak Systems CANUsb interface. They  have a Delphi unit for it.

 

[fastbike 0]

4 hours ago, FPiette said:

A few years ago, I used with great success Peak Systems CANUsb interface. They  have a Delphi unit for it.

 

Unfortunately out of my price range and I already have the other product.

[fastbike 0]

7 hours ago, Uwe Raabe said:

It made use of canusbdrv.dll and a Delphi wrapper (see attachment). This was sometimes around 2008, so most likely that interface may have changed since then.

uCanUsbDll.pas

Thanks Uwe, I'll take a look later today.
I see they have a 64 bit DLL on the vendor website so I will update the pas import file to match.

Edited Sunday at 07:43 PM by fastbike

[fastbike 0]

23 hours ago, fastbike said:

Thanks Uwe, I'll take a look later today.
I see they have a 64 bit DLL on the vendor website so I will update the pas import file to match.

Now that was useful, many thanks.

I spent about an hour getting my head around the whole 32 bit app running on a 64 bit OS, and unicode thing but after changing declarations using PChar to PAnsiChar and also figuring out that the safest way of calling some of the functions that were looking for a PChar to populate, was to declare an array of Byte and pass in the address - it all worked out ok.

The CANUSB driver installs the header files so you can check what is required but as far as I could tell the Delphi import unit had got everything correct.
I've created a simple monitor with some decoding of the Velbus protocol so I can figure out what is going on at the bus level.

Edited Monday at 06:45 PM by fastbike