CAN Bus And SAE J1939 Prototyping With The Arduino Due ARM Cortex M3 Processor

Posted by Wilfried Voss on Oct 31st 2019

Whenever it comes to building rapid prototypes for new CAN Bus or SAE J1939 applications, my first choice is regularly the Arduino Due, a microcontroller board based on the Atmel SAM3X8E ARM Cortex-M3 CPU.

In general, the Arduino platform couples an easy-to-use programming environment (IDE) with a vast number of hardware extensions (shields). While I do appreciate programming on a more "professional" level using our embedded systems with more sophisticated IDEs and debug probe, often enough, the needed hardware is not available. The Arduino concept may have its flaws (such as limited debugging capabilities), but when it comes to rapid prototyping, it is virtually unbeatable.

Let's have a look at the Arduino Due features:

Microcontroller board (Arduino Due) based on the Atmel SAM3X8E ARM Cortex-M3 CPU
512 KB Flash Memory
96 KB SRAM
84 MHz Clock Speed
2 CAN ports w/o transceiver
54 Digital I/O Pins (of which 12 provide PWM output)
12 Analog Input Pins
2 Analog Output Pins

When it comes to CAN Bus or SAE J1939 applications, though, the Due misses an essential feature, namely the CAN Bus transceivers (it shares that short-coming with a great number of off-the-shelf embedded systems with CAN Bus ports). Consequently, we at Copperhill Technologies have created a Dual CAN Bus interface for the Arduino Due that provides the following features:

2 CAN ports with three-pin terminal connectors
Extended input power range of 7 VDC to 36 VDC
3 LEDs (Power, CAN Activity Port 1, CAN Activity Port 2)
CAN Bus Termination resistors switchable per jumper

The available options are:

The concept of the Arduino Due mainboard plus Dual CAN Bus interface allows adding any Arduino-compatible hardware (shield).

For instance, the image to the left shows the board with Dual CAN Bus interface plus an Ethernet shield, which certainly, with the corresponding software development, can be used as a CAN-to-Ethernet gateway.

Check out the available resources, may it be hardware, cables, datasheets, or sample programs:

CAN Shield Resources:

Arduino Due Resources:

Cables:

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