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Quick Start Guide

Get started with CAN & CANopen Studio in less than 2 minutes.

1. Launching with Hardware

  1. Connect your USB-to-CAN converter (e.g. Lawicel CANUSB, PEAK PCAN-USB, CANable).
  2. Start the graphical studio: 
    just gui          # the Python studio
just rust-gui     # or the native front end, same engine
# or via the installed shortcut or the standalone executable
  3. In the top toolbar:
  4. Select your adapter under Interface (e.g., SLCAN or PEAK-System PCAN).
  5. Select the target Bitrate (e.g., 500000 for 500 kbit/s).
  6. Click Connect.
  7. The network monitor immediately begins discovering nodes, decoding PDOs, and logging traffic!

2. No Hardware? Use the Built-in Virtual Simulator!

You can explore all features, test decoders, and learn CANopen without any hardware:

  1. In the top toolbar, select Interface: Virtual Simulator (In-Memory Loopback).
  2. Click Connect.
  3. The simulator launches in-memory synthetic CANopen traffic:
  4. Node 1 Heartbeat (COB-ID 0x701) & Node 2 Heartbeat (0x702)
  5. SYNC clock pulses (COB-ID 0x080) at 50 Hz
  6. CiA 402 TPDO1/2 motor speed oscillating between 400 and 3200 RPM
  7. SEVCON Gen4 TPDOs with simulated torque and temperatures
  8. Responds to NMT Master commands and SDO queries in real-time!

3. Command-Line Sniffer (Terminal Mode)

If you prefer working in a headless console or shell:

# Sniff traffic on default SLCAN adapter at 500 kbps
just sniff

# Sniff at 250 kbps — the recipe takes the interface first, then the bitrate
just sniff slcan 250000

# Run in virtual simulation mode for 10 seconds
just simulate 10

# Launch real-time console dashboard (RPM, Temperatures, Status)
just dashboard

# Filter for a specific CAN ID
just filter 0x473

# Record frames to a CSV file
just record capture_log.csv

Every option is listed in Command-Line Tools.

4. A Virtual Bus Without a Window

The native CLI runs the same simulated nodes headlessly over UDP, which gives the command-line tools and the native front end a bus to work against with no hardware and no window open:

just rust-simulate 1750 0     # transmit to port 1750, run until interrupted

Anything speaking the same UDP transport can then listen — canopen-cli sniff --port 1750 in another terminal, or the benchmark commands in Command-Line Tools.

To share a bus between machines rather than processes, use the UDP multicast interface of the studio itself, described in Hardware & Interfaces.

5. Diagnosing a Vehicle

Plug an ELM327 into the OBD-II socket, or wire a native CAN adapter to pins 6 and 14, then open the 🩺 OBD-II Diagnostics tab. The full procedure — adapter setup, supported-PID discovery, trouble codes, VIN, and the safety gates around writing — is in OBD-II Vehicle Diagnostics.