CAN bus serial protocol decoding

Wiring
CAN bus requires two wires for CAN H and CAN L signals, It is a multi-master serial bus
standard for connecting devices known as nodes. Multiple devices can be connected to the
bus. The nodes can be a simple I/O device or a complex embedded computer. The node may
be a gateway to other standard buses like Ethernet or USB.
CAN bus physical layer is specified in ISO 11898-2:2003. It defines voltage, current and the
number of conductors. The exact voltages for a logical 0 or 1 depend on the physical layer
used, typical values are given below. Optical isolation is sometimes used
to provide protection from overvoltage transients between the CAN bus cable network and
the nodes connected to it. Isolation also eliminates ground loops in the network, reduces
signal distortion and errors, and provides protection from voltage/ground mismatches.
CAN bus must be correctly terminated. The high speed bus is terminated into a 100 ohm
load and the low speed bus into a 120 ohm load. The CAN bus has no clock line; data is
transmitted in an asynchronous format.
Logic 1 is called the Idle, or recessive state, is typically biased at +2.5 V for both CAN H and
CAN L.
Logic 0 is called the active, or dominant state, is typically driven down to +1.5 V for CAN
L and up +3.5 V for CAN H.

CAN sync pulse

Signaling
Data is transferred in blocks called frames. Each message starts with an ID identification.
The ID must be unique for each node on any defined network otherwise errors will occur due
to transmission beyond the end of the arbitration field.
All nodes on a CAN network must operate at the same nominal bit rate; since no separate
clock line is provided a means of synchronizing the nodes is necessary. Synchronization is
important during arbitration since the nodes in arbitration must be able to see both their
transmitted data and the other nodes transmitted data at the same time. Synchronization
starts with the first recessive to dominant transition after a period of bus idle, this is the start
bit.

CAN bus debugging

To monitor and find faults on a CAN bus it is important to have an oscilloscope with deep
memory to capture a large time window with several frames of data. For example this
screenshot shows a 50 ms window of acquired data. The instrument can then process the
acquired waveform and zoom in to analyze the data packets. It is recommended the
instrument has a bandwidth of ten times the CAN baud rate, to analyze rise times and any
fault conditions. PicoScope will give a warning on the screen if the sample rate is set too low
to correctly decode and analyze the acquired data.
Errors can occur due to inductors, coils and power devices which can cause large voltage
spikes, noise and ringing. An increasing number of embedded computers and devices are
being added to automobile CAN buses and as more nodes are added the available bus time
becomes more occupied. When the traffic reaches around 40% of the bus time errors can
start to occur. At this point an oscilloscope may be required to debug the network.

CAN bus decoding with PicoScope

The first step is to acquire the CAN data signal of interest using the PicoScope.
Connect Channel A probe to the CAN L signal and the Channel B probe to the CAN H signal.

Open the PicoScope 6 application, turn on channels A and B and set both to Auto. Set the
buffer memory to 1 MS and the timebase to 10 ms/div.
Now capture some data then select stop. The display should be similar to the screenshot
here.

CAN decoding in graph

Set up CAN L decode
Select Serial Decoding from the tools menu, click Create, select CAN. Select Channel >
Data > A and Configuration Low. PicoScope will automatically calculate the optimum
threshold, hysteresis and baud rate but these values can be customized if necessary.
In the display menu tick Graph, untick Table, select format Hex and click OK.

Set up CAN H decode

Click Create, select CAN. Select Channel > Data > B, Configuration High, and click OK.

With the mouse, click the CAN Ch A bus decoded waveform and drag it down to a clear space
on the screen. Do the same with CAN Ch B bus to display the two decoded CAN buses (CAN L
& CAN H). The display should look like the one on the right.

Zoom into data frames using the Horizontal Zoom menu at the top of screen. Select x 10.
To see more information about each data packet, hover the mouse over the selected packet
in the decoded bus display.

CAN decoding in table

Select Tools > Serial Decoding > CAN Ch A, click Edit, check Table, then click OK.
To correlate data in the two display panels, double-click any packet.
The table can be moved anywhere on the screen or another screen. To move the table, drag
it to a new position.

Exporting CAN data to a spreadsheet

CAN data in the table can be exported to an Excel spreadsheet using the Export button.

CAN bus error example

Errors can occur on CAN buses due to inductors, coils and power devices which can
cause large spikes, noise and ringing, or a faulty node.
This example displays a captured error condition. A second node on a CAN H line starts
randomly transmitting a message and corrupting the data packets. The first packet corrupted
in this example is number 508. This can be found by zooming in then turning on the table
display. The CRC error is highlighted in red.
You can use the Search controls to look for a CRC Validfield equal to 0 and thus search for
bus errors.