We've got a chipKIT Max32 which has two CAN controllers inside its PIC32 processor. I finally have my hardware set up on the CAN bus in such a way as to not interfere with our Stupidly Expensive Efi Tools ( SEET ) talking to a Monster 696's diag port. This is actually kind of cool because it took more than a few attempts to make this happen. I was getting worried because every attempt previous to put my hardware on the bus would result in comms failure in SEET's software. I read the mcp2551's data sheet and it suggested a 60 ohm resistor for testing ... and the 80-something ohm resistor was the 1st one I grabbed within 50% of 60 ohms...

I still haven't convinced the chipKIT to actually sniff traffic, but this was the 1st configuration where the SEET could still communicate with the M696 while the chipKIT hardware was connected to the CAN bus. So that's some progress at least. It's also the 1st time my test software said "can bus modules initialized". Now it's back on the software to finger out how to make the CAN stuff in the PIC32 work.

In a parallel development, we got in a NXP dev board with CAN controller and transceivers built in. I was successful in making it "blink" ... however, I have no idea how nor how to make code happen in the IDE software. Normally my 2nd step after making something blink is to make it do SOS in morse code. Kinda of backwards, as I'm quite SOS and SOL until I actually make it blink dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot. Just a bit frustrating how the NXP IDE is supposed to be "easy" but the hobbyist-oriented Arduino stuff actually is easy.

Speaking of Arduino, we also ordered some SparkFun CANbus shields, where the transceiver and controller are on-board and the MCU (microcontroller unit – "computer") only needs to shuffle the data coming out of it. But they're lost in the hybrid UPS+USPS delivery system. Rather than it being twice as cheap, it just introduces more people to lose the package – and more other people to blame it on. I'm told we can report it lost after 4 weeks...