🏭 Industrial CANbus Data Analyzer

Zero-hardware industrial CAN bus simulation & real-time decoder
Two Python nodes communicate over a virtual CAN network — raw hex frames decoded live into engineering units.

📌 What This Project Does

Machines on a factory floor speak in hex. This tool decodes that language in real time.

Raw CAN traffic (what the bus sees):
  [0x100]  05 DC
  [0x101]  02 F3
  [0x102]  12 5E

Decoded output (what an engineer needs):
  0x100 | 05 DC | Motor RPM      →  1500.00 RPM  ✓
  0x101 | 02 F3 | Temperature    →  75.50 °C     ✓
  0x102 | 12 5E | Torque         →  47.50 N·m    ✓

Node A mimics a motor drive, broadcasting telemetry every 100 ms.
Node B listens, decodes every frame, and renders them in a real-time dashboard.

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🏗 Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│               Virtual Industrial Network                │
│              (UDP Multicast · 239.0.0.1)                │
├──────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────┤
│      NODE A          │           NODE B                 │
│  Motor Simulator     │    Analyzer + Live Dashboard     │
│                      │                                  │
│  • Sine-wave RPM     │  ┌──────────┬─────────────────┐ │
│  • Thermal model     │  │ HEX LOG  │  LIVE GRAPHS    │ │
│  • Torque from P=kW  │  │ TERMINAL │  (4 subplots)   │ │
│  • Error flags       │  └──────────┴─────────────────┘ │
│                      │  Thread-safe DataStore           │
│  10 frames / sec     │  200 ms GUI refresh              │
└──────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────┘

Thread Model

Main Thread  ──┬── tkinter event loop
               │   ├── _update_log()     every 200 ms
               │   ├── _update_graphs()  every 200 ms
               │   └── _update_kpis()    every 500 ms
               │
Daemon Thread ─└── can_listener_thread()
                    └── bus.recv() → DataStore → log_queue

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📡 CAN Protocol Design

Signal Map

CAN ID	Signal	Type	Scale	Unit	Example Hex	Decoded
0x100	Motor RPM	uint16 BE	×1	RPM	05 DC	1500 RPM
0x101	Temperature	int16 BE	÷10	°C	02 F3	75.5 °C
0x102	Torque	int16 BE	÷100	N·m	12 5E	47.50 N·m
0x103	DC Bus Voltage	uint16 BE	÷10	V	15 8E	554.2 V
0x104	Phase Current	int16 BE	÷100	A	08 34	20.84 A
0x1FF	Fault Flags	bitmask	—	—	03	OVERHEAT + OVERCURRENT

Why Big-Endian? Industrial protocols (CANopen, J1939, EtherCAT) all use big-endian byte ordering. This project follows the same convention for authenticity.

Fault Bitmask

Bit 4    Bit 3    Bit 2    Bit 1    Bit 0
  │        │        │        │        └── Overheat      (T > 80 °C)
  │        │        │        └─────────── Overcurrent   (I > 5 A)
  │        │        └──────────────────── Undervoltage  (V < 520 V)
  │        └───────────────────────────── Comm Loss
  └────────────────────────────────────── Encoder Fault

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⚙️ Motor Physics Model (Node A)

Parameter	Formula	Range
RPM	1500 + sin(t·0.3)·0.5 × 850 + N(0,15)	800 – 2500 RPM
Temperature	25 + (RPM/2500)·55 + sin(t·0.05)·3	35 – 85 °C
Torque	(P·60) / (2π·RPM) , P = 7.5 kW	~47 N·m @ 1500 RPM
Current	Torque / Kt , Kt = 2.1	~22 A @ full load
Voltage	550 + sin(t·0.15)·8 + N(0,1)	540 – 560 V

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🧪 Encode / Decode Verification

Signal	Input	Raw Hex	Decoded	Status
RPM	1500	05 DC	1500.00 RPM	✅ Pass
Temperature	75.5 °C	02 F3	75.50 °C	✅ Pass
Torque	47.85 N·m	12 5E	47.85 N·m	✅ Pass
Single fault	OVERHEAT	01	"OVERHEAT"	✅ Pass
Combined fault	OVERHEAT + OVERCURRENT	03	2 faults	✅ Pass

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🗂 Project Structure

CANbus_Analyzer/
├── can_protocol.py          # CAN ID map, encode/decode engine, dataclasses
├── node_a_sender.py         # Motor simulator — physics model + Rich terminal
├── node_b_analyzer_gui.py   # CAN listener + tkinter/matplotlib dashboard
├── requirements.txt
└── README.md

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🚀 Quick Start

1. Install dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

2. Open two terminals

Terminal 1 — start the analyzer first:

python node_b_analyzer_gui.py

Terminal 2 — start the simulator:

python node_a_sender.py

Within seconds, hex frames appear in the log panel and all four graphs start updating live.

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🛠 Tech Stack

Library	Version	Purpose
python-can	4.6.1	CAN bus abstraction layer
tkinter	stdlib	Main GUI window
matplotlib	3.8+	Real-time subplot graphs (TkAgg backend)
rich	13.7+	Colored terminal output (Matrix effect)
numpy	1.26+	Array operations, time-window masking
msgpack	1.1.2	UDP multicast serialization
struct	stdlib	Byte-level encode / decode
threading	stdlib	CAN listener daemon thread
collections.deque	stdlib	Fixed-size circular data buffer

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🔑 Key Engineering Decisions

Decision	Reasoning
udp_multicast over virtual bus	virtual is process-scoped — it cannot cross process boundaries. udp_multicast enables real socket communication between two independent processes, the same way a physical CAN adapter would.
try / finally in every update loop	Any matplotlib or tkinter exception must not prevent root.after() from rescheduling. Without finally, one draw error silently kills the entire update loop.
Dataclass for decoded frames	Clean separation between raw bytes and application-level values; makes extending to new CAN IDs trivial.
Big-Endian byte order	Matches CANopen / J1939 / EtherCAT industry standards.

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🗺 Roadmap

Priority	Feature	Approach
🔴 High	Real USB-CAN adapter	interface='socketcan' / 'kvaser' / 'pcan'
🟡 Medium	Log recording & replay	ASC / CSV format via python-can built-ins
🟡 Medium	DBC file parsing	cantools library
🟢 Low	Web dashboard	FastAPI + WebSocket + Chart.js
🟢 Low	Anomaly detection	IsolationForest (scikit-learn)

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📄 License

MIT — free to use, modify, and distribute.

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"Turning noisy industrial bus traffic into actionable engineering data."