CAN-Bus Interface to Mac Mini

**dknightx** · 01-10-2006, 10:33 AM

Thanks for the code, Dave. I'm waiting with bated breath today to see if I'll be buying an Intel-based Mac Mini or one of the old ones. I'm guessing the drivers won't work with the Intel-based ones, right?

Thanks again.

-Dave

**iamgnat** · 01-10-2006, 11:18 AM

Originally Posted by dknightx

Thanks for the code, Dave. I'm waiting with bated breath today to see if I'll be buying an Intel-based Mac Mini or one of the old ones. I'm guessing the drivers won't work with the Intel-based ones, right?

That would be an interesting question. There is Rosetta (is that the right name?) that will allow native RISC Apps to run on the Intel Macs, but I have no idea if that applies to drivers as well.

If it does require new drivers, then that should really be the only difference. The code should be the same.

-dave

**iamgnat** · 01-10-2006, 11:24 AM

Nuts!

I forgot there is one more piece of code you need for the Objective-C route. You need to define a method in your processing object (in this case I used "readWheelRemote" in the current object (self)) to processing the incoming data from the serial port. I'll try to remember to add that code when I get home tonight (but if you look up the docs on NSFileHandle notifications, what you need is pretty straight forward). Sorry about that.

-dave

**iamgnat** · 01-10-2006, 09:08 PM

Originally Posted by iamgnat

I forgot there is one more piece of code you need for the Objective-C route.

Bump.

I added the Notification handler to my post that has the other code segments.

-dave

**dknightx** · 01-11-2006, 08:26 AM

Thanks, Dave.

By the way, I'm picking up a Mac Mini today since there were no new announcements at Mac World. It does everything I need in a car anyway, and I'm worried that when they do announce the Intel ones that they'll be bigger than the current ones and won't fit into the space I've got.

This is the first Mac I've ever owned. I'm excited!

-Dave

**joeyoravec** · 01-25-2006, 10:41 PM

Originally Posted by dknightx

It looks like a CAN-Bus to USB interface will be the way to go. Here are links to a few of the options, but I have no idea if they have Mac drivers available.

My company Drew Technologies makes high end OBD-II interfaces. I've recompiled the drivers for our CarDAQ-Plus as an OS X dylib. This one is a high-cost, high-perfomance device that the automakers use for engineering and repair. We also make a low-cost USB interface Mongoose ISO/CAN but I haven't ported the drivers to OS X yet. If anybody is going to do work on a CarPC frontend for the Mac, I can spend some time on this. Drop me an email if there's any serious interest.

The interfaces you listed look proprietary. They don't support the indsutry standard device driver (SAE J2534-1), they dont seem specialized for the automotive market. Be sure to follow the OBD-II forum, there are a lot of smart guys over there.

**MacUsers** · 01-26-2006, 04:48 AM

Originally Posted by joeyoravec

If anybody is going to do work on a CarPC frontend for the Mac, I can spend some time on this. Drop me an email if there's any serious interest.

Yes please, we all, Mac users are very interested. A native Mac supported CAN bus driver is the nicest thing to have. I started working on the fronted by myself but as I found there are several other already have gone far with the development, I stopped doing the redundant work. May I request one of the developers to come forward please?

These two I found sound very promising:
Some progress on the application...
new Apple dash program...dash_run

Many thanks for the offer, joeyoravec.

**joeyoravec** · 01-26-2006, 12:26 PM

Originally Posted by MacUsers

Yes please, we all, Mac users are very interested. A native Mac supported CAN bus driver is the nicest thing to have. I started working on the fronted by myself but as I found there are several other already have gone far with the development, I stopped doing the redundant work. May I request one of the developers to come forward please?

Basically this PassThru (SAE J2534-1) vehicle interface standard defines a driver. It provides functions to connect, send/receive messages, send periodic messages, assert reflashing voltages, and other common tasks. This way you're not locked into a specific vendor's hardware. It's quite simple to program and I have example C sourcecode that reads data from the vehicle, reads trouble codes etc.

We normally provide drivers for Windows and Linux, and because I'm a Mac user I support the OS X drivers in my free time. I couldn't find contact information for either of the projects that you listed. If you put me in touch with the developer of an OS X frontend, I can try to help.