Kvaser ROS Interface API

This package was developed as a standardized way to access Kvaser CAN devices from ROS. It can either be used as a development API by including the header <kvaser_interface/kvaser_interface.h> and linking against libros_linuxcan.so or the stand-alone node kvaser_can_bridge can communicate with a CAN device independently.

The following are required prerequisites:

• The Kvaser CANLIB API (https://www.kvaser.com/downloads/)

  • Can be downloaded directly or installed through PPA:

    sudo apt-add-repository ppa:astuff/kvaser-linux

    sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y kvaser-canlib-dev

  • You can optionally install the Kvaser drivers from the PPA with the following command:

    sudo apt install -y kvaser-drivers-dkms

  • For Linux kernel 4.13 or higher, version 5.21 or higher of CANLIB is required

• can_msgs

The kvaser_can_bridge Node

TOPICS

can_tx [can_msgs::Frame]

This topic is published by the node. It expects to have other nodes subscribe to it to receive data which are sent by the CAN device.

can_rx [can_msgs::Frame]

This topic is subscribed to by the node. It expects to have data published to it which are intended to be received by the CAN device.

PARAMETERS

~can_hardware_id

This is the Kvaser Hardware ID (serial number) of the connected device.

~can_circuit_id

This is the 0-based index of the channel number on the specific hardware device designated by the ~can_hardware_id.

~can_bit_rate

This is the communication rate to be used on the CAN channel in bits per second (default: 500000).

TOOLS

list_channels

A simple tool with no ROS dependencies which returns a list of all Kvaser devices and channels available on those devices.

canmonitor

A simple tool with no ROS depedencies to output the CAN messages received on a given channel index (-i - default: 0) and bitrate (-b - default: 500000) to the terminal.