Close

CANable 2.5 Firmware from ElmüSoft - Slcan & Candlelight

1. I united 2 formerly separate firmware projects Slcan and Candlelight into one project with a common code base.
2. The new CANable 2.5 firmware is high quality and open-source.
3. If you noticed in the legacy firmware that CAN communication did not work you had no chance to find out why.
4. Here you find the first CANable firmware with correctly implemented error handling telling you what is wrong.
5. Although many new features were added, the new firmware is 100% backward compatible with legacy software.
6. The firmware has been tested successfully with CAN FD baudrates up to 10 Mega baud.
7. The firmware has been designed to be easily expandable for future requirements.
8. The firmware has been written by a software developer with 40+ years of programming, reverse engineering and electronic experience.

1. With the Firmware Updater you can upload the new firmware to your CANable with one click.
2. Additionally you get a high speed CAN Raw Terminal that supports all the new features, but works also with legacy adapters.
3. You can grab logfiles of CAN bus traffic.
4. You can decode the CAN bus protocols ISO 15765, J1939 and NMEA 2000 that are used in motorbikes, cars, trucks and vessels.
5. You can write ultra fast macro scripts that communicate with devices on CAN bus.

1.) User Manual

CANable Adapters

Show Full Size

Show Full Size

Hardware Misdesign

Show Full Size

Official Firmware for STM32G431

canable.io   Web Updater Show Full Size

Slcan Protocol

Candlelight Protocol

Inefficient USB Data Transfer

Legacy Candlelight Installation not working

Microsoft OS Descriptor Request

The new Firmware Updater

HUD ECU Hacker Show Full Size

Firmware Updater Show Full Size

Meaning of the LED's

LED's	Meaning	LED's	Meaning
	The adapter is ready and closed.		1.) The adapter is open: No CAN bus traffic. 2.) The adapter is in Firmware Update mode. 3.) The USB bus is suspended in sleep mode.
	1.) The adapter is open: RX CAN bus traffic. 2.) The adapter is closed: USB command received.		The adapter is blocked after a severe error buffer overflow or bus off.
	The adapter is open: TX CAN bus traffic.		1.) After Power-On both LED's flash alternatingly. 2.) Also when you click the button 'Identify'.
	The adapter is open: RX+TX CAN bus traffic.

Cangaroo

HUD ECU Hacker

CAN Raw Terminal Show Full Size

J1939 Protocol Show Full Size

NMEA 2000 Protocol Show Full Size

CAN bus Settings

Send always 8 data bytes If you send classic packets with less than 8 bytes they are padded to 8 bytes, while CAN FD packets are always padded to the next possible data length. Show all packets on the bus This checkbox turns off all filters and also the combobox "ID Length" is ignored. No matter if you selected '11 Bit' or '29 Bit', you will see all packets on the bus. Automatic Retransmission if no ACK received If this checkbox is On the processor tries to send a packet until it is achnowledged. After trying it 128 times in vain the processor goes into error state Bus Passive. If the checkbox is Off the processor sends the packet in One shot mode. If the packet is not acknowledged the processor does not send it again. Show sent packets in Trace if ACK received When a packet was acknowledeged you see the 'echo' of the Tx packet in olive color. You see the exact timestamp when the packet has been acknowledged. If the packet is not acknowledged you will not see any echo and the green LED does not flash. This allows you to verify that a packet has been sent and received successfully. The CANable 2.5 firmware is the first firmware where this is implemented correctly. The legacy Slcan firmware did not implement this feature. The legacy Candlelight firmware showed a fake echo, also for not acknowledged packets. Suppress repeating identical CAN bus packets CAN bus traffic is often very repetitive. Here you can hide all packets that have already been shown with the same ID and data bytes. You see each unique packet only once.

CAN Filter

Samplepoint

Baudrates

1. Bitrate Prescaler: the CAN clock is divided by the prescaler which gives the clock for one Time Quantum.
2. Segment1: defines the count of time quantums before the samplepoint (in the above example = 11).
3. Segment2: defines the count of time quantums after the samplepoint (in the above example = 4).

CAN bus Errors

1. The first error on CAN bus is always reported immediately.
2. A second error is only reported after 100 ms have elapsed and only if the second error is different from the
   previously reported. This is important to avoid flooding the host with thousands of errors as the legacy firmware did.
3. If the same error stays present for a long time, it is reported in intervals of 3 seconds.

1. Bus Actice (no errors or less than 96 errors)
2. Warning Level (between 96 and 128 errors)
3. Bus Passive (between 128 and 248 errors)
4. Bus Off (more than 248 errors)

Transmit Timeout

Transmit Echo Markers

Timestamps

Enter DFU mode

Bugfixes

1. The Candlelight firmware could crash completely after a buffer overflow.
2. Candlelight had a misdesign: it used only one buffer for CAN Rx and Tx.
   The consequence was that after a CAN buffer overflow it could not even send the error status to the host.
3. Candlelight did not send USB traffic correctly. USB Packets with exactly 64 bytes arrived wrong.

Bus Load

Transceiver Delay

2.) Application Developer Manual - Slcan

Slcan Commands

Slcan Responses and Events

Slcan Version Info

Slcan Packets

All packets are transmitted using this pattern:

• Packet type: T, t, R, r, D, d, B or b (see tables above)
• CAN ID: 3 digits for 11 bit or 8 digits for 29 bit CAN ID
• DLC: 1 digit (count of data bytes)
  Classic packets: DLC = '0' to '8',
  CAN FD: '8'= 8 byte, '9'= 12 bytes, 'A'= 16 bytes, 'B'= 20 byte, 'C'= 24 bytes, 'D'= 32 bytes, 'E'= 48 byte, 'F'= 64 byte.
• Data bytes: Classic packets: 0 to 8, CAN FD: 8 to 64 bytes.
• only for Tx packets and only if Tx Echo Markers are enabled: a 2 digit marker.
• only for Rx packets and only if ESI reporting is enabled: a character 'S' if the sending node is error passive.

Direction	Packet	Slcan	Comment
Both	18AABBCC: 11 22 33 44 55	"T18AABBCC51122334455\r"	Classic, 29 bit ID
Both	7E0: 11 22 33 44 55 66 77 88 99 AA BB CC	"d7E09112233445566778899AABBCC\r"	CAN FD, 11 bit, FDF
Receive	7E0: 11 22 33 44 55 66 77 88	"b7E081122334455667788S\r"	FDF, BRS, ESI
Transmit	7E0: 11 22 33 44 55 66	"t7E061122334455663F\r"	Marker = 3F

Example:

Tx: "t7E061122334455663F\r" <—— send packet with marker 3F Rx: "#\r"                   <—— receive command feedback (Success) Rx: "M3F\r"                 <—— receive echo marker 3F

Slcan Error Reports

When CAN Error Reports are enabled you get an error report only if at least one error is present.

Errors are sent immediately, after 100 ms or after 3 seconds as explained above.

An error report is always of the form "Exxxxxxxx\r" and consists of 5 parts:

Digit	Meaning	Value
1	Bus Status	'0' = Bus Active '1' = Warning Level '2' = Bus Passive '3' = Bus Off
2	Last Protocol Error	'0' = None '1' = Bit stuffing error '2' = Frame format error '3' = No ACK received '4' = Recessive bit error '5' = Dominant bit error '6' = CRC error
3 + 4	Firmware Error Flags	0x00 = None 0x01 = Rx Failed 0x02 = Tx Failed 0x04 = CAN Tx buffer overflow 0x08 = USB IN buffer overflow 0x10 = Tx Timeout Multiple flags may be combined
5 + 6	Tx Error Count	0 ... 255 errors
7 + 8	Rx Error Count	0 ... 255 errors

Example: "E2310800C\r" means:

Bus is passive, No ACK received, Tx Timeout, 128 Tx Errors, 12 Rx Errors

Slcan Initialization

When connecting to a CANable 2.5 adapter you should follow this sequence:

1. Send command "C\r" to close the device if it is till open.
   But this command has also another purpose: It resets all internal variables in the firmware to their default.
   Baudrates and all modes are reset (back to legacy), reports turned off, filters removed, Rx/Tx buffers are emptied.
   ATTENTION: The command 'Close' is the only command that does not send a feedback, although feedbacks are enabled.
   The purpose is that you can always send this as the first command and don't have to wait for a feedback.
   When you connect to a CANable you don't know if the user has connected a legacy device or a CANable 2.5
   Additionally the firmware cannot know at this moment if you will enable feedback mode later or not.
   Therefore the command 'Close' behaves exactly as the legacy command: It never sends a feedback.
2. Send command "V\r" to get the Version String.
   Split the response string at the tab characters.
   When you get 7 parts or more you are communicating with a CANable 2.5, otherwise it is a legacy firmware.
   If you don't support legacy devices show an error message, otherwise switch to legacy mode.
   If it is a CANable 2.5 use the Slcan Version Number (100 or higher) to check which features are available.
3. Send command "MF\r" to enable feedback mode (or "MADEFMS\r" with all the other modes that you need)
   This will be the first command that sends a feedback.
   From now on you must wait for the feedback "#\r" and check for errors before sending the next command.
4. Send command 'S' or 's' to set the nominal baudrate.
5. If you also send command 'Y' or 'y' to set the data baudrate, the firmware will switch automatically into CAN FD mode.
6. Now you can optionally set filters
7. Finally execute command "ON\r" to open the device in normal mode.

RS232 Terminal Show Full Size

Here you see the initialization sequence sent manually to the adapter. Use the RS232 Terminal in HUD ECU Hacker. The baudrate that you enter to open the COM port is irrelevant. The port runs always with maximum USB speed (12 MBit).

 

3.) Application Developer Manual - Candlelight

The Candlelight 2.5 firmware can be used to build professional high speed CAN FD applications.

Controlling the Candlelight firmware is more complex than the Slcan firmware.

There are lots of structures and enums. Explaining them all here would explode this manual.

C++ Demo Application

Therefore I wrote a ready-to-use C++ Candlelight class that you can copy and paste into your project.

This robust and well tested class demonstrates all the features that the new firmware offers:

• Detect and enumerate all connected Candlelight devices
• Obtain details about the connected device: USB descriptor, board, processor, version numbers,.....
• Set baudrate and samplepoint
• Set mask filters
• Open / Close / Start / Reset
• Send packet / Receive packet / Process Tx echo marker
• Decode and display CAN bus errors
• Disable boot pin / Enter DFU mode

The source code is full of detailed comments so you can easily understand how it works.

The C++ demo also shows how to use WinUSB.dll correctly which is more complex than it seems at the first look.

For example in Cangaroo and in Candle.NET they use WinUSB wrongly which results in packet loss or wrong packet order.

WinUSB requires an unusal programming that is not documented by Microsoft.

The new ElmüSoft Protocol

The legacy Candlelight protocol had several design errors.

For example when a CAN FD packet was transmitted to the host they sent the timestamp behind a fix array of 64 data bytes.

Adding more unneccessary overhead resulted in sending always 80 bytes over USB, even for a packet with only 8 data bytes.

Additionally the legacy protocol was never designed to transmit anything else than CAN packets.

It was impossible to transfer other data to the host, like for example an ASCII debug string.

Therfore I had to design a new efficient protocol: The ElmüSoft protocol.

It adds only 2 additional bytes the CAN packet payload while transmitting over USB.

It uses a minimalistic data transfer and is additionally very easy to expand for any future requirements.

The new firmware 2.5 still implements the legacy Geschwister Schneider protocol, but can be switched to the new protocol.

The new protocol sends optimized structs for Tx and Rx packtes, Echo Markers, Debug Messages, Error reports, Busload events.

You can test all this in the demo application.

The screenshot above uses timestamps from the computer CPU. They are converted to local time with 1 µs precision.

When you set the flag GS_DevFlagTimestamp the demo switches to firmware timestamps generated in the adapter.

They have no advantage at all. They produce more USB traffic and you will see several lines with "No Timestamp".

The reason is that firmware timestamps are only available for events received from the firmware.

But when you send a packert to the firmware you don't get a timestamp.

Enter DFU mode

A SETUP request with DFU_Detach to interface 1 (DFU) enables boot mode.

Then immediately send a SETUP request with DFU_GetStatus to check if execution was successful.

If the state is DfuState_AppIdle the adapter will enter boot mode 300 ms later.

If the state is DfuState_AppDetach you must show a message to the user to reconnect the USB cable.

The USB reconnection is only required if the pin BOOT0 was disabled before.

The demo application shows the entire procedure.

See pages 17 and 22 in DFU Functional Descriptor 1.1.pdf in subfolder Documentation.

 

4.) Firmware Developer Manual

This is the first project that unites two firmware's, written by different persons, into one project.

The new CANable 2.5 firmware uses the same code base to compile Slcan and Candlelight.

The CAN interface, error handling, LED control, entering DFU mode, etc... use common code.

Only the USB interface and the command executer are implemented individually.

Each project has an own Make file that inculdes the corresponding subfolder: Slcan or Candlelight.

Caveat

The code in this project is not for beginners.

You need several years of embedded C programming experience and hardware knowledge.

Adding new boards

In the file settings.h you find the definitions for the boards.

Currently there are the pin defintions for the boards from MKS Makerbase and Openlight Labs.

The new board must be defined in a new Make file as TARGET_BOARD

Adding new processors

Also in settings.h are the includes of the HAL files (Hardware Abtraction Layer) from ST Microelectronics.

For another processor serie the required HAL files must be added into a new subfolder.

The new processor must be defined in a new Make file as TARGET_MCU

USB Interface

The USB interface is by far the most complicated code in the firmware.

ST Microelectronics gives us a HAL that is scatterd over eleven files calling from one file into another.

All the USB stuff is called from multiple interrupt handlers.

If you don't know what is a SETUP request, what is an OUT endpoint or what stalling an endpoint means,

I recommend that you read the exellent USB tutorial in subfolder Documentation.

Compiling STM32 code on Windows

You find a lot of instructions in internet how to compile the firmware on Linux.

But there is nothing for Windows developers, although it is quite simple.

Cube Programmer

If you think that you can install the STM32 Cube Programmer from ST Microelectronics

and you will get a comfortable developer environment, you are completely wrong!

After downloading this Gigabyte monster you will find a very badly designed user interface,

an extremely slow software and you notice that it is not able to compile a Make file.

Several menu items are greyed out without an understandable reason and the help file is no help.

So don't waste your time with this.

ST Microelectronics has only hardware engineers, they have nobody who is able to write desktop software.

Intallation

1. Install STM32 Cube CLT (STM32 Command Line Compiler)
   From the drop down list on the ST website you can select the oldest version (300 MB).
   The newer the version, the bigger it gets. The latest version is 1 Gigabyte. You don't need that.
2. Install MinGW (Minimalist GNU for Windows)
   The only files that you need from this installation are make.exe and mkdir.exe and their 6 DLLs:
   libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll, libiconv-2.dll, libintl-8.dll, msys-1.0.dll, msys-iconv-2.dll, msys-intl-8.dll
3. Rename mkdir.exe into mmkdir.exe to avoid collision with the MKDIR command in the Windows console.
4. In the Advanced System Settings search the PATH variable and add two folders separated by semicolon:
   The folder into which CubeCLT has installed the file arm-none-eabi-gcc.exe
   The folder into which MinGW has installed the file make.exe
   You can also copy make.exe and mmkdir.exe and their DLLs into the CubCLT directory and you need only one folder.
5. Now double click the file Build_Slcan.cmd in my project and the compilation should start.
   This script copies the compiled BIN files automatically into the Firmware folder of HUD ECU Hacker.
6. The Firmware Updater will convert the BIN files automatically into DFU files that you can upload.

Source Code

• Version 25.09.14: Initial release
• Any future versions will be listed here.

You find the source code on Github.

Version Numbers

When you add new features to the firmware don't forget to adapt FIRMWARE_VERSION_BCD in settings.h

After adding new Slcan commands you must increase SLCAN_VERSION and add the new commands to the documentation.

 

 

 

 

High Quality Software  from  ElmüSoft

Desktop Organizer & Event Calendar My program PTBSync (in english + deutsch) has an event calendar / scheduler with lots of features, calculates the holidays of 70 countries, can display multiple gadgets on the desktop (current weather, birthdays, moon phase, menstruation calendar, world clocks,...) pins notes on the desktop, replaces the primitive Windows trayclock and adds a detailed tooltip, synchronizes with an atomic clock, and much more.

ECU Scanner, ECU Hacker, ECU Tuner for motorbikes, cars, trucks, vessels connects to ECU's (Engine Control Units) from motorbikes, cars and trucks, shows parameters, clears DTC's, has tuning for a Delphi ECU, has an ECU emulator, can analyze the CAN bus using cheap adapters, supports many protocols, has a sniffer and manual data injection for K-Line and CAN Bus, allows you to write your own macro scripts that communicate over K-Line and CAN Bus.

Oscilloscope Waveform Logicanalyzer displays oscilloscope waveforms and has A/D converters, noise suppression, precise time measurement, logic analyzer with decoders for UART, SPI, I²C, CAN bus (also CAN FD) and chip-specific decoders. Can split half-duplex communication. Transfers signals over USB (SCPI) from the oscilloscope to the computer and remote controls the oscilloscope. It is open-source and you can extend it with new features.

Subtitle Tuner calculates the display duration of the subtitles based on the count of characters in the text. This avoids that badly created subtitles disappear before you could read them. Can remove deaf texts, lyrics, italic/bold. Can resynchronize a subtile to a movie with different framerate or change the subtitle offset.

Secure Doorlock with RFID Cards is a project with an RFID antenna and a Teensy processor that opens a door with Mifare Desfire cards. The RFID cards of up to 64 users can be stored in the flash memory. It is extremely secure because it uses strong encryption. A big battery assures that the door can be opened during a power failure.

Remote Control your Computer with Infrared An infrared receiver and a Teensy processor allow to remote control the music player on your computer with any old remote control that you have from a TV, amplifier, DVD player, SAT tuner or whatever. The Teensy simulates a keyboard and sends keystrokes to the music player.

3D Render and Editor Control in C# A .NET control that can be easily implemented into System.Windows.Forms applications to display 3D graphs. The user can move and rotate the graph with the mouse and edit single points. Many display modes are available: 3D surface, 3D shapes, 3D lines, 3D objects, also animated 3D objects.

CAN FD adapter - CANable 2.5 Firmware Update - Candlelight & Slcan I wrote two completely new firmwares for the CANable adapter with the STM32G431 processor (for example from MKS Makerbase). The official Slcan firmware has several issues and the official Candlelight firmware is complete crap. I fixed a ton of bugs and added several new features. HUD ECU Hacker fully supports these new features and comes with a firmware updater.

USB HID Touchscreen A Teensy processor emulates keyboard, mouse and touchscreen at the same time to remote control a computer for automation purposes.

You can write me in english, oder auf deutsch, o en español.