Formula Hybrid forums

Hi guys ,

A no. of teams have used CAN network last year, is it really required ?

The two foremost reasons that i could find in favour of using CAN -
1. To get rid of a number of wires( which weigh more than 50kg in commercial vehicles).
2. Develop a standard for developing electronic devices for vehicles irrespective of the vehicle model.

Since we are not using a great number of control units and are neither interested in developing it as per commercial standard do we need to use CAN ?

One alternate way i could think of is using multiple processors on fpga with inter-processor communication dedicated network and standard wires to connect with the external devices.

As i do not have much knowledge of CAN network please suggest on the same..

I don't think CAN is required (of course I don't think any FPGA's are required either), but our team is a big believer in simple electrical systems.

If you do decide to setup a CAN network, make sure you really need one and that you fully understand and test the communication before all the components are installed in the car. Solving communication issues will greatly hinder your testing schedule once the car is assembled.

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- Texas A&M 2009 FH Crew Chief
- 1st place FH '09: 981 pts