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Jaguar Motor Controllers + Pandaboard over CAN

asked 2013-03-23 06:52:30 -0500

aman501 gravatar image

updated 2014-01-28 17:15:51 -0500

ngrennan gravatar image

Hi,

We want to use Jaguar Motor Controllers (http://www.vexrobotics.com/217-3367.html) in conjunction with ROS on a Pandaboard running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. ROS is installed and running, however it is unclear to us what sort of CAN library we should be using. We've found a few options which I will highlight below. The Pandaboard has a DB9 port, so we were hoping to use that to handle the CAN interface with the jaguars. We already have the appropriate adapter.

  1. can_communication (http://www.ros.org/browse/details.php?distro=fuerte&name=can_communication) Seems pretty generic, however documentation is virtually non-existent from what I can tell.

  2. CANOpen_driver (http://www.ros.org/browse/details.php?distro=fuerte&name=CANOpen_driver) Documentation even more lacking than can_communication! perhaps I should actually be using a cob_* package like cob_generic_can? (http://ros.org/wiki/cob_generic_can)

  3. http://www.neckbeard.ca/r/robotics/comments/18uwuv/does_anyone_have_experience_with_jaguar_motor/ The last comment there mentioned a ROS node he wrote using the source also in that git.

Any direction/assistance regarding this would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT 1:

I'm going with option 3, and modifying his code to account for the 2 additional motors. My issue is that his CAN port is "/dev/jaguar". I believe I need a CAN driver for this (what I believe is) file abstraction to work. So, my question to anyone who has built a CAN before, what drivers did you use? Did you need any hardware? I was thinking I could just use the Pandaboard's DB9 port. Will this not work? Do you know of any that do this file abstraction of the bare metal? I've found the following, http://www.canfestival.org/, which seems to still need a driver, such as the following two:

  1. http://www.ocera.org/download/components/WP7/lincan-0.3.3.html

  2. http://developer.berlios.de/projects/socketcan/

Am I correct in my understanding here? Do I need one or both of these packages? Do they require hardware such as, PCAN-USB? (which could be option 3 on this list)

Thanks again!

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answered 2013-06-04 12:52:10 -0500

Just happened upon your question through an unrelated Google search, but (among other things) I'm the maintainer of my work's Linux CAN drivers.

Unfortunately the DB9 connector on the Pandaboard is RS232, not CAN, electrically. Despite having the same connector, it's not going to work (and may damage your Pandaboard, CAN runs at weird voltages). Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

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Asked: 2013-03-23 06:52:30 -0500

Seen: 718 times

Last updated: Jun 04 '13