Kvaser has developed the USBcan Pro 4xCAN Silent, a compact, multichannel four-channel CAN/CAN FD to USB real-time interface that is always silent on the CAN bus (‘listen only’). The CAN interface is made silent through hardware and thus, cannot transmit on bus.
Standard CAN interfaces receive and transmit CAN messages, enabling them to be used to configure the system to which they are connected. However, as Kvaser explains, certain customers, particularly those developing highly sensitive autonomous or safety-critical systems, require CAN interfaces capable of listening only, to ensure that the interface has no impact on the bus or surrounding systems. Listen-only interfaces are also used to prevent any application or third-party, such as a hacker, from impacting the CANbus and its related systems through the Kvaser device.
“The Kvaser USBcan Pro 4xCAN Silent was designed in close collaboration with several customers that wanted the highest performance and highest certainty from their CAN interfaces. While the Kvaser USBcan range provides software-controlled silent mode, the customers in question wanted the guarantee of zero unwanted effects that only a hardware-implemented silent CAN interface can bring to the final test and validation stage of safety-critical systems,” said Ludvig Wallander, Kvaser’s director of product development.
The Kvaser USBcan Pro 4xCAN Silent handles reception of standard and extended CAN messages on the CAN/CAN FD bus with a high timestamp precision. With a standard USB connector at one end and four CAN channels in a single 26-pin HD D-sub CAN connector at the other, it includes a high quality four-channel breakout cable with nine-pin D-sub connectors to connect with ease to separate CAN networks.
Kvaser’s MagiSync automatic time synchronization technology is said to achieve accurate and precise time stamping between multiple interfaces connected to one host computer. The Kvaser USBcan Pro 4xCAN Silent is compatible with applications that use Kvaser’s CANlib, the software API common to all Kvaser hardware.