Most reliable CAN Arduino - SparkFun AST-CAN485?

Development Boards Arduino
1

Hi,

I’m looking for the best board(s) I could buy that has CAN bus abilities.

The SparkFun AST-CAN485, DEV-14483 looks like the perfect board, but the reviews don’t seem that great. I’d like to know if this is a high-quality product or not.

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14483#reviews

Or would a Teensy 3.6, DEV-14057 with a CAN transceiver be a better option?

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14057

The project I’m working on is an automotive application that involves turning an inverter fan off and on.

The boards’ job would be to interpret the CAN signal from an electric vehicles inverter that has temperature data. Do a bit of math to decide whether the inverter fan should be off or on. Then send a CAN signal to a PDU (Power Distribution Unit) to turn the inverter fan on.

Ideally, this simple project would go into a few one-off consumer products. I looking for the most robust solution and don’t care too much about the cost if it’s dependable.

I’m an EE and have used Arduino, propeller, cRIO, Eagle, and Altium Designer so I can make a custom PCB if needed.

Thanks for the help,

Scott

2

Most of the issues that stem from the DEV-14483 are related to the lack of protection circuitry for voltage spikes in the vehicle’s system; adding in some zener diodes or similar should correct this (if you do decide to create a custom board)

The Teensy would work well (another good option here is an ESP32 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/15663) and a CAN Tx as you have described should also work :wink: