AVR CAN Bus Project – Step 1: Programming AT90CAN128 with Arduino

Jul 16 2011
Filed In: automotive, electronics, hacking

Last month, I bought a Nissan Leaf EV.  It’s pretty cool driving around in an all-electric car.  Luckily, there’s a great forum called MyNissanLeaf, where Leaf owners can learn a lot, and share information.  I’m currently collaborating with one of the forum members to design and build a Level 2 EVSE.  I will document that project on this blog at a later date.  Having a serious case of project ADHD, I discovered that forum members had set about hacking the Leaf’s CAN buses, and couldn’t resist joining the fray.

Being most familiar with ATmel AVR microcontrollers and Arduino, I decided to use that platform for this project.  ATmel has a subtype of the AVR with CAN bus capabilities, the AT90CANxxx.  I found an interesting development board containing an AT90CAN128 and headers for access to all the pins on the MCU.  I ordered one from Sparkfun for $29.95.  They also sell another board, the AVR-CAN, but it contains things that I don’t need, such as an RS-232 interface, and can be programmed only via JTAG – I only have a USBtinyISP, which is an ICSP programmer.  Unlike the AVR-CAN, the AT90CAN128 Header Board doesn’t contain a CAN Bus transceiver.  I decided to go with the Microchip MCP2551, since that’s what the AVR-CAN uses.

The AT90CAN128 header board is from Olimex, and comes in a cute little box:

Here’s a closeup of the front:

and the back:

I decided to try to get this board working with Arduino, since it’s a lot easier to set up than WinAVR.  The first problem to solve is how to adapt the Arduino IDE to work with the AT90CAN128 and my USBtinyISP.  After much Googling, I found SuperCow had already done the dirty work and posted it to the Arduino forum.  He packaged the core files, bootloader, and a couple of examples into a handy zip file (which has since been taken offline). Since he used an unknown JTAG programmer, I had to adapt his files to work with the USBtinyISP and JTAG ICE mk1.  Also, I modified them to work with Arduino 1.x+.

You can download the latest version from github: https://github.com/lincomatic/AT90CAN  To install it, simply unzip the atcan90 directory into <your arduino directory>/hardware/at90can.  Next time you restart Arduino, you can select it from Tools->Board->[usbtinyisp]AT90CAN128.

If you have a JTAG ICE mk1 programmer instead, select [JTAG ICE mk1]AT90CAN128.

I connected up my USBtinyISP via the 10-pin ICSP header, burned the Blink sketch, hooked up an LED, and bingo!  It’s working flawlessly.

In at90can/cores/at90can, I found can_lib.h and can_lib.cpp, which appear to be all we need to interface to the CAN bus.  Since I currently know ZERO about CAN bus, I have a lot of reading to do before I can commence programming.  SuperCow’s original zip file contains a couple of rudimentary examples.

Before I start programming, I need to build a little interface board containing the MCP2551 CAN bus transceiver, which should arrive next week.  I already have an OBD-II cable to tap into the Leaf CAN bus via the OBD-II connector.  Currently, obdcables.com is having a special on the 9-ft model.

 

Downloads:  https://github.com/lincomatic/AT90CAN

Next: AVR CAN Bus Project – Step 2: Programming Low Fuse

 

 

 

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There are 14 Comments to "AVR CAN Bus Project – Step 1: Programming AT90CAN128 with Arduino"

  • SuperCow says:
    October 23, 2011 at 1:19 PM

    Nice your using my school project’s at90can to arduino.

    Reply
  • Iván says:
    March 27, 2012 at 6:57 AM

    Can you put the JTAG programmer to arduino? Please.

    Thanks

    Reply
  • Iván says:
    March 28, 2012 at 6:01 AM

    Thanks but now I have a problem when I upload the program. The program shows me a sincronize error. Have I made a mistake? Which can be the reason?

    Reply
  • Iván says:
    March 29, 2012 at 5:26 AM

    My error is this:

    Binary sketch size: 1086 bytes (of a 126976 byte maximum)
    avrdude: jtagmkI_open(): failed to synchronize to ICE
    avrdude: jtagmkI_close(): unsupported baudrate -1

    Can you help me? please

    I using this USB JTAG debugger:

    http://www.olimex.com/dev/arm-usb-ocd.html

    Regards

    Reply
  • lincomatic says:
    March 29, 2012 at 8:50 AM

    I don’t have one of those. If you can get it to work with avrdude, then I can help you get it working with Arduino. But it has to work with avrdude, or you’re out of luck.

    Reply
  • justr says:
    October 21, 2012 at 1:50 AM

    Hi lincomatic,
    glad you continued supercow’s work. I downloaded the repo and copied the at90can dir into the hardware subfolder of the arduino installation. I tried to do a dry-test (no hardware yet, but compiling should be successful). So I selected the USBtinyISP and the corresponding board entry but compiling fails for the blink example:
    C:\Program Files\Arduino\hardware\at90can\cores\at90can\main.cpp: In function ‘int main()’:
    C:\Program Files\Arduino\hardware\at90can\cores\at90can\main.cpp:5: error: ‘init’ was not declared in this scope
    C:\Program Files\Arduino\hardware\at90can\cores\at90can\main.cpp:7: error: ‘setup’ was not declared in this scope
    C:\Program Files\Arduino\hardware\at90can\cores\at90can\main.cpp:10: error: ‘loop’ was not declared in this scope
    Can you imagine what I have done wrong?

    Another question: I’ve got a AVRISP mkII programmer. Is ist enough to define following in the programmers.txt:
    avrispmkii.name=AVRISP mkII
    avrispmkii.communication=usb
    avrispmkii.protocol=stk500v2

    and this in boards.txt:
    aat90can128.name=[avrispmkii]AT90CAN128
    aat90can128.upload.using=AVRISP mkII
    aat90can128.upload.maximum_size=131072
    …(and the rest corresponding..)

    Thanks,
    juergen
    (heavily trying to learn about Atmel/Arduino world of programming)

    Reply

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