The CAN bus:

The proliferation of local communication networks in industrial systems seems inexorable: CAN bus, Profibus, LON, ASI, Interbus-S, FIP, EIB, eBus, and many more. The time has now arrived where these well-established technologies, protocol implementation in small silicon chips, dropping prices, and simple maintenance have become accessible to the smaller engineering firms and the enthusiastic amateur engineer/technician. In this short series of articles, the technologies underlying the CAN bus system will be described in a simple and practical manner. In a later part, a complete CAN bus interface for a microcontroller system will be presented.