The original idea was spawned early October 2022 in form of three posts on our Copperhill Technologies website. The original requirement was to develop an embedded system with two CAN ports, either Classical CAN or CAN FD with the option of galvanic isolation.
The development of a complete board would be cost-extensive, and we already offer all these options in form of Raspberry Pi HATs, primarily the PiCAN board series. So, why not combine the power of the ESP32 DevBoard with RPi HATs? This approach opens the door to tap into the vast offerings of RPi HATs in the marketplace.
ESP32 Triple CAN Bus Application Through Adding Two MCP2515 Ports
October 4, 2022
The first question that may arise when talking about accessing the MCP2515 CAN Bus controller per ESP32 may be, “Why would you need an MCP2515 controller when the ESP32 comes with an internal CAN port?” Yes, I found this question in one of the online forums while researching this particular topic. The answer is easy: There are applications that require more than one CAN port, and the only applicable ESP32 resource to do so is the SPI interface, thus the MCP2515 – Stand-Alone CAN Controller with SPI Interface. As a matter of fact, hypothetically, you can add up to six(!) SPI-controlled CAN ports to the ESP32. However, in this post, we restrict ourselves to a total of three CAN ports. Read more…
Extending ESP32 Functionality by Using Raspberry Pi HATs
October 6, 2022
The ESP32 processor, integrating peripherals such as UART, CAN Bus, WIFI, and Bluetooth, allows a wide range of applications, and the low price adds to its popularity. There are various ESP32 development boards available in the market, such as the ESP32-WROOM-32, as shown to the left. However, compared to popular systems like the Raspberry Pi or Arduino, the hardware resources, i.e., additional peripherals, are limited. Consequently, the thought of tapping into the vast resources of the Raspberry Pi or Arduino system makes sense. In this post, I am using several of our Raspberry Pi CAN boards and accessing them per one of our ESP32 modules. This post’s method also applies to any other ESP32 module that provides external SPI and UART signals. Read more…
ESP32 Development Board with NMEA 2000 & NMEA 0183 HAT
November 23, 2022
The ESP32 processor, integrating peripherals such as UART, CAN Bus, WIFI, and Bluetooth, allows a wide range of applications, and the low price adds to its popularity. There are various ESP32 development boards available in the market, such as the ESP32-WROOM-32, as shown to the left. However, compared to popular systems like the Raspberry Pi or Arduino, the hardware resources, i.e., additional peripherals, are limited. Consequently, the thought of tapping into the vast resources of the Raspberry Pi or Arduino system makes sense. The above picture demonstrates the setup that I used to connect an NMEA 2000 and NMEA 0183 HAT with an ESP32 development board. Read more…