Using PeakCAN Plugin

The PeakCAN plugin encapsulates the low-level API to work with the PEAK-System CAN adapters.

This plugin requires the PCAN device drivers and the PCAN-Basic library version 4.4.0 or higher on Windows (pcanbasic.dll) resp. 4.0.0 on Linux (libpcanbasic.so). On macOS the plugin requires the PCBUSB library from UV Software.

Creating CAN Bus Devices

At first it is necessary to check that QCanBus provides the desired plugin:

if (QCanBus::instance()->plugins().contains(QStringLiteral("peakcan"))) {
    // plugin available
}

Where peakcan is the plugin name.

Next, a connection to a specific interface can be established:

QString errorString;
QCanBusDevice *device = QCanBus::instance()->createDevice(
    QStringLiteral("peakcan"), QStringLiteral("usb0"), &errorString);
if (!device) {
    // Error handling goes here
    qDebug << errorString;
} else {
    device->connectDevice();
}

Where usb0 is the active CAN interface name. The PeakCAN plugin supports 16 USB interfaces from usb0 to usb15 and 16 PCI interfaces from pci0 to pci15. The availableDevices() method returns a list of currently available devices.

The device is now open for writing and reading CAN frames:

QCanBusFrame frame;
frame.setFrameId(8);
QByteArray payload("A36E");
frame.setPayload(payload);
device->writeFrame(frame);

The reading can be done using the readFrame() method. The framesReceived() signal is emitted when at least one new frame is available for reading:

QCanBusFrame frame = device->readFrame();

PeakCAN supports the following configurations that can be controlled through setConfigurationParameter():

PeakCAN supports the following additional functions:

• QCanBusDevice::resetController()
• QCanBusDevice::busStatus()
• QCanBusDeviceInfo::alias() (Windows and PCAN-Basic >= 4.4.0 only): Returns the PCAN_DEVICE_ID which can be set to a user defined value from 0..255 resp. 0..4294967295 (depending on the device) with PCAN-View. The default value is 255 resp. 4294967295.