cannelloni

a SocketCAN over Ethernet tunnel

cannelloni is written in C++11 and uses UDP to transfer CAN frames between two machines.

Features:

frame aggregation in Ethernet frames (multiple CAN frames in one Ethernet frame)
efficient protocol
very high data rates possible (10 Mbit/s +)
custom timeouts for certain IDs (see below)
easy debugging
CAN FD support on interfaces that support it
UDP support (fast, unreliable transport)
TCP support (reliable transport)
SCTP support (optional, reliable transport)

Important Usage Notice

cannelloni is not suited for production deployments. Use it only in environments where packet loss is tolerable. There is no guarantee that CAN frames will reach their destination at all and/or in the right order.

Ecosystem

https://github.com/PhilippFux/ESP32_CAN_Interface
https://github.com/tuvok/qtCannelloniCanBus
https://github.com/mguentner/cannelloni_ports (currently only a lwIP implementation)
https://github.com/epozzobon/lasagne (another esp32)
https://github.com/GENIVI/CANdevStudio

Compilation

cannelloni uses cmake to generate a Makefile. You can build cannelloni using the following command.

cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
make

If you do not want or need SCTP support, you can disable it by setting -DSCTP_SUPPORT=false. SCTP support is also disabled if you don't have lksctp-tools installed.

Installation

Just install it using

  make install

Usage

Example

Two machines 1 and 2 need to be connected:

Machine 2 needs to be connected to the physical CAN Bus that is attached to Machine 1.

Start cannelloni on Machine 1:

cannelloni -I slcan0 -R 192.168.0.3 -r 20000 -l 20000

cannelloni will now listen on port 20000 and has Machine 2 configured as its remote.

Prepare vcan on Machine 2:

sudo modprobe vcan
sudo ip link add name vcan0 type vcan
sudo ip link set dev vcan0 up

When operating with vcan interfaces always keep in mind that they easily surpass the possible data rate of any physical CAN interface. An application that just sends whenever the bus is ready would simply send with many Mbit/s. The receiving end, a physical CAN interface with a net. data rate of <= 1 Mbit/s would not be able to keep up. It is therefore a good idea to rate limit a vcan interface to prevent packet loss.

sudo tc qdisc add dev vcan0 root tbf rate 300kbit latency 100ms burst 1000

This command will rate limit vcan0 to 300 kbit/s. Try to match the rate limit with your physical interface on the remote. Keep also in mind that this also increases the overall latency!

Now start cannelloni on Machine 2:

cannelloni -I vcan0 -R 192.168.0.2 -r 20000 -l 20000

The tunnel is now complete and can be used on both machines. Simply try it by using candump and/or cangen.

If something does not work, try the debug switch -d cut to find out what is wrong.

Timeouts

UDP + SCTP only!

cannelloni either sends a full UDP frame or all CAN frames that are queued when the timeout that has been specified by the -t option has been reached. The default value is 100000 us, so the worst case latency for any can frame is

Lw ~= 100ms + Ethernet latency + Delay on Receiver

If you have high priority frames but you also want a small ethernet overhead, you can create a csv in the format

CAN_ID,Timeout in us

to specify these frames. You can use the # character to comment your frames.

For example, if the frames with the IDs 5 and 15 should be send after a shorter timeout you can create a file with the following content.

# 15ms
5,15000
# 50ms
15,50000

You can load this file into each cannelloni instance with the -T file.csv option. Please note that the whole buffer will be flushed and not only the two frames.

If you enable timer debugging using -d t you should see that the table has been loaded successfully into cannelloni:

[...]
INFO:cannelloni.cpp[148]:main:Custom timeout table loaded:
INFO:cannelloni.cpp[149]:main:*---------------------*
INFO:cannelloni.cpp[150]:main:|  ID  | Timeout (us) |
INFO:cannelloni.cpp[153]:main:|     5|         15000|
INFO:cannelloni.cpp[153]:main:|    15|         50000|
INFO:cannelloni.cpp[154]:main:*---------------------*
INFO:cannelloni.cpp[155]:main:Other Frames:100000 us.
[...]

Transports

UDP

cannelloni supports UDP for stable connections where no packet loss is expected. Here two instances communicate using defined ports.

Usage example

IP: 192.168.0.2

cannelloni -I vcan0 -R 192.168.0.3 -r 12000 -l 13000

IP: 192.168.0.3

cannelloni -I vcan0 -R 192.168.0.2 -r 13000 -l 12000

SCTP

With SCTP it is possible to use cannelloni over lossy connections where packet loss and re-ordering is very likely. The SCTP implementation uses the server-client model (for now). One instance binds on a fixed port and the other instance (client) connects to it.

Usage example:

IP: 192.168.0.2 (Server)

cannelloni -I vcan0 -S s

IP: 192.168.0.3 (Client)

cannelloni -I vcan0 -S c -R 192.168.0.2

If there is no remote IP supplied to the server instance, every client (any IP) will be accepted. Only one client can be connected at a time. After the client disconnects, the server waits for a new client.

TCP

Usage example:

IP: 192.168.0.2 (Server)

cannelloni -I vcan0 -C s

IP: 192.168.0.3 (Client)

cannelloni -I vcan0 -C c -R 192.168.0.2

With TCP, no frame buffer is used an frames are immediately transmitted, frame sorting and timeouts do not apply here.

Frame sorting

CAN frames can be sorted by their ID in each ethernet frame to write high priority frames first on the receiving CAN bus.

This can be achieved by supplying the -s option.

Filtering

cannelloni does not support filtering, if however you want to only bridge a certain set of CAN IDs, you can first forward the frames of interest to virtual CAN interface. From there you will send using cannelloni.

This can be achieved with cangw which is part of (can-utils)[https://github.com/linux-can/can-utils/] and its respective kernel module is also present in upstream Linux.

Let's look at an example where currently can0 is sent to a remote machine:

cannelloni -I can0 -R 192.168.0.3 -r 12000

Let's say you want to only receive CAN frames with the ID 0x042 at the remote machine. First, load two kernel modules, can_gw and vcan:

modprobe vcan
modprobe can_gw

Now, start a virtual CAN bus:

ip link add name vcan0 type vcan
ip link set dev vcan0 up mtu 16

Add a rule to the gateway that will forward frames with IDs that match 0x042 & 0xC00007F0. Note that the bitmask accounts for the type can_id which is 4 bytes long.

cangw -A -s can0 -d vcan0 -f 042:C00007FF -e

If you start candump now on vcan0, you should only see frames with ID 0x042. Now change the cannelloni command to

cannelloni -I vcan0 -R 192.168.0.3 -r 12000

Now you should see those 0x042 frames also at the remote machine.

If you want to also send frames from the remote to your original can0, you need to add a rule for that as well!

Paper

cannelloni was discussed in the paper Mapping CAN-to-Ethernet communication channels within virtualized embedded environments on the Conference Industrial Embedded Systems (SIES), 2015 10th IEEE International Symposium.

DOI: 10.1109/SIES.2015.7185064

The papers documentes a PoC how to virtualize CAN controllers similiar to the approach Xen uses (netback/-front).

Contributing

Please fork the repository, create a separate branch and create a PR for your work.

License

cannelloni is licensed under the GPL, version 2. See gpl-2.0.txt for more information.

mguentner/cannelloni

mguentner

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