Unlocking the Full Potential of Flipper Zero With a 10$ CAN Bus Addon

Published  July 19, 2024   0
Flipper Zero CAN Bus Addon

We all know the Flipper Zero, the portable multi-tool that has taken the geek community by storm. We have seen users using the Flipper Zero to hack or manipulate basic devices to most modern electronic devices, like simple garage openers, PA systems and even iPhones. Even though it supports most of the wireless protocols, it always lacked support for industrial wired protocols such as CAN Bus. But not to worry, the Electronic Cate team has built a new open-source add-on for the Flipper Zero, which gives it the ability to analyse, interact with CAN networks and control peripherals in that network. For the Electronic Cat team, it is not their first time making an addon card for the Flipper Zero, they have also made MODBus, Magpoof, and SubGHz addon cards for the Flipper Zero.

The CAN Bus add-on card uses the MCP2515 stand-alone Controller Area Network (CAN) controller chip. It is capable of transmitting and receiving both standard and extended data and remote frames. The MCP2515 has two acceptance masks and six acceptance filters that are used to filter out unwanted messages, thereby reducing the host MCU’s overhead. The team has also provided an open-source Flipper CAN Bus App to use with the addon card. Using the addon card is very easy, all you have to do is plug it into the Flipper Zero expansion header, install the app and you are done. The add-on card is fully open-source and both hardware and app source code can be found in the Electronic Cat’s GitHub Repository. And if you don’t want to make one your self you can get one for just 10$ from their official site. You may check out this CAN Bus add-on Youtube video for more information and a demo.