CAN Monitor
The CAN Monitor tab transforms your WiCAN Pro into a live CAN bus sniffer. It allows you to watch raw data flying across the vehicle's network in real-time.
This tool is invaluable for reverse-engineering proprietary vehicle messages, verifying that your WiCAN is on the correct baud rate, or confirming that a specific ECU is broadcasting data.
1. Monitor Settings
Before you start listening to the bus, you must configure how the WiCAN interacts with it.
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Bitrate | Select the speed of the CAN bus you are connected to (e.g., 500K is standard for modern High-Speed CAN). |
| Filter | A hex value used to target specific CAN IDs. Default is 00000000. |
| Mask | A hex value that works alongside the filter to allow multiple IDs through or restrict it to exactly one. Default is FFFFFFFF (allow everything). |
2. Using the Monitor
Once your bitrate is set, click the Start button. The WiCAN will open a high-speed WebSocket connection and begin streaming live frames directly into your browser.
!WARNINGImportant: When you start the CAN Monitor, it halts the WiCAN's normal background tasks (like Automate polling and Sleep Mode monitoring) to dedicate maximum processing power to sniffing the bus. You must reboot the device after using the CAN Monitor to restore normal functionality. The UI will explicitly alert you about this when you click Start.
3. Understanding the Data Table
To keep the interface readable, the WiCAN does not infinitely scroll the data. Instead, it groups repeating CAN IDs into single rows and simply updates the data payload and occurrence count.
The live table contains the following columns:
- ID: The hexadecimal CAN Identifier of the broadcasting module (e.g.,
7E8h). - Type: The frame format. You will see
Std(Standard 11-bit),Ext(Extended 29-bit),RTR-Std, orRTR-Ext(Remote Transmission Requests). - Len: The length of the data payload in bytes (typically 0 to 8).
- Data: The actual raw hex payload being transmitted by that ID.
- Time: The time delta (in milliseconds) since the last time this specific ID was seen. This is highly useful for determining the broadcast frequency of a module.
- Count: The total number of times this specific CAN ID has been seen since you clicked Start.
Stopping the Stream
Click Stop to halt the WebSocket stream and freeze the table. This allows you to safely scroll through the captured IDs and copy out any hex data you want to use in the User Custom PIDs/Filters tab.