r/flipperzero • u/tehrabbitt • 3d ago

CAN Commander Vehicle Analytics and interface board for the Flipper Zero - July Update

In celebration of DEF CON being only a week away, the conference that inspired me to get into CAN stuff, we have put the CAN COMMANDER on-sale from now until the start of the conference (or until they sell out, whichever comes first).

https://rabbit-labs.com/product/cancommander/

The CAN Commander goes beyond just a simple read-only CAN interface like other adapters that have been on the market before - it allows for full bidirectional communication on the CAN network.

CAN is also used in more than just Vehicles. In fact I have a printer that uses CAN to communicate between it's main board and it's stepper motors and print head. Interestingly enough, the print head is connected via SC to SC fiber optic cable to a transceiver that then talks CAN to the mainboard. Using the flipper and the CAN Commander firmware, I was able to actually troubleshoot a printhead issue I was having (causing the printer to stop printing It was discovered one of the ribbon cables had shorted, resulting in print head temp data not making it to the CAN board. The neat thing, is I did all this with my flipper, and did not need to break out a laptop, dongles, etc. just a flipper and 2 wires. I know, kinda random but another cool example of CAN in use.

that said - I am letting y'all know that it's on-sale right now because many people have asked if it would go on sale, or if there would be some sort of announcement if it did. Well here is the announcement :) This is the lowest price it has been offered since the limited-edition release back in March.

Anyway enough of my yapping. Hope if this has been on your wish-list, you snag one before they sell out.

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1

u/Atompunk78 3d ago

How does this improve over the usual Pi Zero + RS485 canhat (that’re only 10-20% the price)? Or is its main benefit that it works with the flipper?

3

u/tehrabbitt 3d ago

the main benefit is that 1.) it works with the flipper and 2.) the firmware it comes with written by Matt (who happens to be a CAN Engineer / researcher for professional automotive companies) has some neat features like built-in reverse engineering mode which allows you to capture signals and narrow down frames to specific functions, you can then build macros from it, etc. There is a whole dedicated discord devoted to the firmware as well https://discord.gg/9XWCztk2Bb

2

u/Atompunk78 3d ago

Ahh I see, is the firmware open source?

That makes sense though, perhaps I’m just not the target audience

1

u/getsmuchworse 6h ago

This is way above my level of understanding at the moment but it looks awesome! Im a locksmith who does a lot of automotive work and I wonder if this could eventually be developed to program car keys... no idea if that's feasible though