PEAK CAN Linux drivers

PEAK system provide a number of CAN cards with open-source drivers, and so far they have been working fine for us. (Unlike some other CAN cards!).

Installing the drivers is relatively straight-foward on a clean linux system (a fair bit more complicated with a Xenomai based system), but there are still a few quirks that can get in your way. I've described a simple way that works for us.

Starting with a fresh install of linux, the first thing you probably want to do is add some new users, eg:

adduser (name)

And perhaps add the user to admin group:

sudo usermod -a -G admin (name)

Then you need to make sure gcc, g++ have been installed, and the system is up to date. Having wget and a browser are always handy too. With ubuntu we can use apt:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install lynx
sudo apt-get install gcc
sudo apt-get install g++

Next, we need to ensure we have our linux header files. Find out your linux version:

uname -r

And install the linux headers, eg:

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)

Now we need a symbolic link to this for the CAN driver to compile.
So you need to find your linux 'version.h' file. (You can try whereis/locate). eg, mine is at:

/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.31-14-generic-pae/include/linux/version.h

So you need to make a new symbolic link there:

cd /usr/src
sudo ln -s linux-headers-2.6.31-14-generic-pae linux

We are now ready to compile the driver, but first, we need to get it. Go back to your home directory and download the driver:

cd ~/
wget http://www.peak-system.com/fileadmin/media/linux/files/peak-linux-driver.6.15.tar.gz

Then extract:

tar -xvf peak-linux-driver.6.15.tar.gz
cd peak-linux-driver-6.15

Now we are ready to compile! (and install the libraries)

make clean
make NET=NO

sudo make install

Now we can load the driver (if it isn't already):

cd driver
sudo /sbin/modprobe pcan

And we are all done!

Now, we can check if it is ok:

cat /proc/pcan 
cat /dev/pcan0
cat /dev/pcan1

If you have the dual-channel version you can try sending some data with a terminated CAN cable between the hardware modules. Example:

console1: cat /dev/pcan32
console2: echo "m s 0x111 2 0x12 0x34">/dev/pcan0

console1 will receive:

m s 0x00000111 2  0x12 0x34       310146 619

Enjoy!