CANifier
User’s
Guide www.ctr-electronics.com 10/8/2017
Cross The Road Electronics Page 4 10/8/2017
1. What is CANifier?
The CTR Electronics CANifier is a CAN-controlled multipurpose LED and General Purpose Input/Output (GPIO)
controller. CANifier also supports a variety of sensors including Quadrature, Limit Switch, SPI, I2C, and PWM
input/output.
CANifier is designed to
“
CAN-ify
”
robot control system components that traditionally do not take advantage of CAN
bus. This allows robot developers already using CAN bus to further expand their capabilities.
Example
users
are…
-
Commercial Robots developed using
the
CTRE HERO Control System
.
-
Robots developed for
FRC
Competition
(or similar).
-
Academic
robot courses/
design
projects.
-
Rapid Prototyping
(need to quickly
add another sensor)
Example
use-cases
solved by CANifier
…
-
Integrates
PWM
sensors like
LIDAR/Sonar
into a CTRE-HERO/FRC/CAN Bus control system.
-
Add more sensors into the FRC CAN bus
without involving the roboRIO
(no hardware SPI/I2C drivers to
struggle with). Native support coming in the CTRE Phoenix Framework.
-
Allows
direct communication
between external
sensors
and various
CTRE CAN products
for future out-of-
box features that
“
just work
”
.
-
Allows
control of PWM motor controllers
(1)
like Victor SP via CAN bus commands through CANifier.
-
LED Strip
control via CAN bus.
-
Integrate
RC Radio control (PWM)
into CTRE-HERO/FRC/CAN Bus control system.
-
Sensors located far from central robot controller can instead tap into the CAN bus.
Note 1:
FRC
Teams must confirm what is deemed
legal
when using PWM motor controllers in
competition
. Typically, FRC rules require PWM
Motor controllers to be wired directly to roboRIO.
