I finally found a nice project that would give all my playing around with Arduino some focus. I've moved from standard boards to
breadboard a while ago and I have a whole bunch of 'em, but didn't really know what
to do with them. First and foremost, I didn't have an easy way to build a network of Arduinos -- and there's only so much to be done
with a single one that can't really communicate to the outside world.
Fortunately, my employer is a company that builds embedded devices connected to a
CAN Bus, and I decided to try and build one for myself. Such a network would then allow
for a much wider range of interesting things to do. For starters, I'm going to control a Lego train — and I can even use my
power supply for that!
So that's the idea. However, the "real" CAN bus seems to require a more complex hardware setup than seemed practical for reproducing
across a set of breadboards, so I tried to find a way around that. The result: The Poor Man's CAN bus!
Read more…