HMI platform enables rapid delivery of custom instrumentation

CANtronik specialises in displays that are compatible with the CAN fieldbus, which is widely used in industrial and off-highway vehicles, boats, and diesel-powered equipment such as compressors and generators. The company offers a large-format LCD panel supported by data acquisition hardware, and sophisticated software including a novel generic engine monitoring application. This application can be configured in hours to provide the engine instrumentation that drivers or operators require, such as vehicle speed, engine speed, fuel gauge and alarms. Other software tools, and CANtronik's development services, enable completely custom instrumentation to be developed in days or weeks.

The company was founded in January 2007 by Dave Winwood, formerly Head of Engineering for Teleflex Morse Electronics, a well-known supplier of CAN-compatible man-machine interfaces for vehicles. He has spent over 30 years in the industry and has developed hundreds of instrumentation systems for companies ranging from producers of specialist vehicles and equipment such as pumps, mining equipment and cranes, to some of the world's best-known industrial and marine OEMs.

Winwood states: "Our new service is all focused on helping OEMs and system integrators to reduce time to market, and add value. Our portfolio and experience allows OEMs to focus their development efforts on their core skills, which might be tools for earth moving, for example, while we provide the electronics instrumentation system to specified cost and time budgets."

At the heart of the company's product range is the CANtronik display, a human-machine interface (HMI) with a large graphical screen, user interface buttons, and serial and CANbus interfaces. The large format of this display allows it to show as many as three or four vehicle gauges simultaneously. This is supported by remote data acquisition hardware, software including a monitoring application compatible with SAE J1939, J1587 and J1708 (protocols used for monitoring engine and heavy vehicle electronics), and development tools for the HMI's embedded processor.