CANtrip¶

An 86-second tech demo: why CANtrip exists, how it's built and where it's going. Open it full page for chapters and a transcript.

CANtrip is an open-source, free alternative to Vector CANalyzer for viewing and decoding CAN / CAN-FD bus traffic on Windows, licensed GPLv3.

CANtrip main window

This site is the full reference. If you just want to get running in five minutes, start with Getting Started. If you're trying to understand how CANtrip actually works under the hood, or you're contributing a change, go to Architecture.

What's here¶

User Guide - every ribbon tab and dialog, in full: Home, Hardware, Analysis & Measurement, Logging, Stimulation, About, Runes, and a Troubleshooting & FAQ page built from this project's own real incidents.
Architecture - how CANtrip is actually built: the process architecture, the exact data flow from a bit on the wire to a decoded signal on screen, the vendor-neutral backend abstraction, how Send Message works for two very differently-behaved vendor SDKs, logging & replay, the Rune persistence format, and how bus load is actually calculated.
Headless Mode - cantrip.exe --headless: every flag, exit condition, and worked example for running a capture with no GUI window, for CI pipelines and test-bench automation.

Quick links¶

GitHub repository
Releases
CONTRIBUTING.md for code conventions and how changes get verified
RELEASING.md for the version naming scheme and how a release gets cut