CAN232 is a dongle that plugs into any PC COM Port, or any other RS232 port in an embedded system and gives an instant CAN connectivity. This means it can be treated by software as a standard COM Port which eliminates the need for any extra drivers. Send and receive can be done in standard ASCII format.

Figure 1: Pin assignement according to CiA recommendations DS102-1.
The CAN232 is powered with +Vin at pin 9 and GND at pin 3.

Figure 2: How to connect CAN232

Free CAN232 Monitor Software including source code in Delphi

CAN232 Monitor software is written in Delphi version 5 and is a simple tool to send and receive CAN frames at any given standard CAN speed and COM port. The software polls the CAN232 automatically at 100mS interval and an eventual frame is automatically listed in the window. It is also possible to send frames from it by setting up an ID, Data length (DLC) and 0 to 8 data bytes in hex. The software comes with full source code and uses a freeware LIB for the RS232 communication (see below for links to the RS232 LIB). This free version is free to use and modify to suit your needs and we cannot give any support on it or the RS232 LIB since it is freeware. To be able to compile and change the code you need the RS232 LIB as well. If you only need the executable file, just download the ZIP file and unpack and run the CAN232.EXE file.

Soon there will be an extended version with full source code as well, which enables faster polling, logging to file and much more plus support from us. All this for a small fee, check back soon for more information.

Download ZIP file with Delphi Project and Executable file (237KB), version 1.05.

Visit Dejan Crnila home page for his excellent TComPort Library for Delphi & BC++.

CAN232 Project in C++ for Linux written by Svenn Rönnbäck of Luleå University of Technology in Sweden. This project will use socket communication for the CAN232, so it is actually possible to be anywhere in the world to control the CAN232 through sockets. There will be a JAVA client for it as well soon. More information will be here and also on the link below as the projects delelops. The code is under the GNU licence. There will soon be a readme file there to describe the project more in detail.

These C++ files can be ported to e.g. Windows platform or any other C++ environment, since all source code is included. Currently LAWICEL cannot answer any support reated questions of this project, contact information to the developer will be added in the readme file soon.

Visit the CAN232 Linux C++ Project.