Frequently Asked Questions

The NET-CAN (and the other VSCAN devices) are CAN bus adapters, giving application software access to a CAN bus. As such they implement the CAN bus protocol to send and receive data frames, in standard and extended format.

To use high-layer protocols like CANopen customers application has to use a software (e.g. a library family) to implement the protocol on CAN bus. For example CANopen is available using the CanFestival set of libraries, this is open source and royalty free. CANFestival uses the VSCAN API to control the VSCAN adapters.

Other high-layer protocols shall be used in the same way. The application software implements the protocol by using CAN frames, and it uses the VSCAN API (or the ASCII command set) for exchange of these frames.

Using NET-CAN the application performs the control via Ethernet or WLAN.
Since there is no standard to transfer CAN bus or the high-layer protocols over Ethernet, there is no option to have NET-CAN operate as a gateway without a controlling software.

Examples for such high-layer protocols are J1939, DeviceNet, ISO-TP, NMEA2000 and many more.