Adafruit has launched a trio of new boards, including two aimed at those working on automotive or other CAN bus projects and one which gives you an ea

Adafruit Launches New CAN Bus Boards and a Neat Feather RP2040 with HDMI-Compatible Video Port

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2023-03-24 08:30:10

Adafruit has launched a trio of new boards, including two aimed at those working on automotive or other CAN bus projects and one which gives you an easy way to hook a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller up to an HDMI display.

"CAN Bus is a small-scale networking standard, originally designed for cars and, yes, busses, but is now used for many robotics or sensor networks that need better range and addressing than I2C, and don't have the pins or computational ability to talk on Ethernet," Adafruit writes of its latest CAN-based devices. "CAN is two-wire differential, which means it's good for long distances and noisy environments."

The first of Adafruit's new CAN bus devices is the CAN Bus FeatherWing, based on the Microchip MCP2515 CAN controller — chosen for its broad compatibility, with stable libraries for both Arduio and MicroPython/CircuitPython projects. Compatible with any Feather board, including third-party boards which correctly implement the Feather pinout, the FeatherWing attaches to the board and offers full CAN bus support — including the use of a 5V charge-pump voltage generator to properly power the NXP TJA1051/3 transceiver and options for 3.5mm terminal block or an edge-launch DE-9 connector.

If you've got a board which already boasts native CAN support, Adafruit's second new board will be of interest. Dubbed the CAN PAL, the tiny board packs the same NXP TJA1051/T3 transceiver and 5V charge-pump voltage generator as the CAN BUS FeatherWing — but lacks a CAN controller of its own. Instead, it's designed to be used with microcontrollers offering an integrated controller but no on-board transceiver — like the Espressif ESP32 family, the Microchip AT SAME51, STMicro STM32F405, or Teensy 4.

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