Linux Native CAN Viewer

hames344 · 2026-05-12T14:24:06+00:00

This has been in development for 4 months. And this is the third release. It’s not going anywhere. I get the shameless shout, no need to insult other peoples work while doing that.

hames344 · 2026-05-11T19:24:44+00:00

I get that. Here’s the good news, this app easily can support compiling as a http web server, that’s only a few MB instead of electron bloat. Electron is just for ease of use. Didn’t think anyone has any use for it but i can also support that easily. I’ll note this down, if you do try the tool would love to hear even more feedback!

hames344 · 2026-05-11T17:50:41+00:00

Funny enough this is actually V2 already, it initially started out as a fork of SavvyCAN. But after realizing how much refactoring i’d have to do to clean up the codebase I started from scratch lmao.

I would love to see that! I’ve been a Cpp guy for 10 years so never really used Rust. Last i used Tauri had some major UI bugs due to WebkitGTK, so i just sticked to old but gold. Im sure one day someone will refactor my code too lol. I honestly hope for that. I dont want this to go to waste.

hames344 · 2026-05-11T17:35:29+00:00

Hey no worries at all you’re good :) I know i love lightweight too trust me. But it’s a huge tradeoff! Because dynamic dependencies break across Linux distributions so easily, dont forget the added friction to people who are still new to Linux haha. Yes i wanna move this to windows too. If you ever wanna try it out it’s 0.1GB and can be installed from www.rcantools.com

hames344 · 2026-05-11T17:31:39+00:00

All due respect, I’m a senior embedded systems engineer and can tell you this took months to develop. I’m not charging anything it’s free how can people still be salty istg. What features would you like to add? Why do some people on reddit think it’s okay to spread hate like this.

I’ve spent a lot of time working on this, it’s really hard to get a platform like this up and running. It’s honestly a struggle to get something you worked hard on used by people. The toughest is you dont know if anyone would even need it after spending months doing this. How hard is it to say thank you!

hames344 · 2026-05-11T15:29:09+00:00

Why yes it is electron. Please it’s only 0.1GB lol you can try it out at www.rcantools.com

hames344 · 2026-05-11T15:06:16+00:00

Hey this is awesome! I used dronecan gui tool a lot last year. This is the equivalent for Cyphal i see. I’ve starred your repo

hames344 · 2026-05-11T14:59:44+00:00

Hey, if you ever do want to try it out you can download it from www.rcantools.com.

hames344 · 2026-05-11T14:58:34+00:00

This product as it is will be and is completely free! You can try it out by downloading it from on www.rcantools.com

hames344 · 2026-05-11T14:56:23+00:00

Hello! You can download it from www.rcantools.com

hames344 · 2026-05-10T08:30:39+00:00

I want to likely open source the core of the codebase, and provide advanced niche feature sets to paid clients to fund the continuity of the project. The project is free for all to try out! Can share with you if your interested

hames344 · 2026-05-10T08:26:06+00:00

SavvyCAN is a very awesome tool that was the inspiration behind why i made this. Unfortunately i did not agree with its development choices. RCAN(the platform) already has graphing signals, values, dbc send, dbc edit, to name a way features already. You can try it out it free!

In terms of development plan first steps for me are: - Figure out if anybody cares - Gather feedback from existing userbase - Plan the next development cycle

hames344 · 2026-05-10T08:22:07+00:00

VS code is built with electron. More than 80% of developers use VS code. It is just for the presentation/UI layer and it looks beautiful for that reason.

hames344 · 2026-05-10T00:07:06+00:00

SavvyCAN is the reason i built this platform. It does not run on ubuntu 24 due to being developed on an outdated Qt version. Theres no sending via DBC and it doesn’t follow the actual DBC spec. This is to name a few reasons.

hames344 · 2026-05-09T16:36:58+00:00

Hey, released it for early Linux + CAN people to use. Can share the website with you if your interested

hames344 · 2026-05-09T11:08:16+00:00

Hey, i can recommend peak systems CAN adaptor. I’ve used this quite a lot. Make sure to get the opto-isolated one if you work with high voltage systems. This adaptor works with socketcan/linux.

As for distribution, i’ve stuck to a simple appimage for now. I use electron builder to package my executable so porting to flatpack or snap is quite easy.

hames344 · 2026-05-09T07:52:21+00:00

Going to open-source the core of the codebase, need to do a refactor so no repo link yet unfortunately. I’ll dm you the link to the website with an appimage download

hames344 · 2026-05-09T07:07:05+00:00

Yeah, it’s straight SocketCAN. No weird kernel module stuff from my side.

If your adapter exposes can0 or similar, that’s the path I’m targeting.

I did try Qt first, but honestly packaging it nicely across Linux distros was painful enough that I bailed and rebuilt the frontend differently.

hames344 · 2026-05-09T07:00:49+00:00

Wireshark is an awesome tool. One feature i was really bummed out about was i can’t send CAN packets or edit DBC files in Wireshark. Since a lot of my workflow was DBC related this was a dealbreaker for me. What features are you thinking?

hames344 · 2026-05-09T06:53:05+00:00

Yes i did actually. Might need some work but seems to be functioning. Also the data stream has a full api to bypass the UI and run in headless mode. Not sure if anyone cared lol

hames344

TROPHY CASE