Canbus in the T7, really??

[WingVetteStrom]

Just listening to Adventure Rider Radio, and a guest said the T7 has a Canbus?!   I always thought it didn't but also according to another thread here, it does.

True?

 

1.  I bought this bike for ultimate simplicity, as I ride in third world countries every winter.

 

2.  I have  a bucket full of lighting farkles and heated grips.  The Cyclops lighting was advertised for the T7, but my Admore and Skene lighting and Oxford grips weren't, but everything is working.

Edited January 12, 2023 by WingVetteStrom

[AZJW]

@WingVetteStrom Here's a discussion that references a Canbus question that might help.

 

 

[WingVetteStrom]

34 minutes ago, AZJW said:

@WingVetteStrom Here's a discussion that references a Canbus question that might help.

 

 

Ya, that's the thread I was referring to.   Guess I'm just going to take a chance and figure that since things are working they will continue to.  Checked Admore website and they are Canbus compatible.  Skene lighting says "BMW Canbus compatible", so I sent an email to see if that includes our Canbus.  Also sent emails to Oxford grips, and Cyclops Lighting to see if they are Canbus compatible.

[Ray Ride4life]

The CANbus part is just the engine communication, not the lighting and other parts you need to hack in to for accessories.

[Uncle M]

That's an interesting ARR episode but I need to listen to it again (and again...) to retain more of the details!!

[WingVetteStrom]

16 minutes ago, Ray Ride4life said:

The CANbus part is just the engine communication, not the lighting and other parts you need to hack in to for accessories.

Then why do some farkle sites say “Canbus compatible“?  

[Ray Ride4life]

Because a lot of products are in the basic form universal and only made bike specivic with some sort of adapter (wire and/or blocking plate).

[WingVetteStrom]

12 hours ago, Uncle M said:

That's an interesting ARR episode but I need to listen to it again (and again...) to retain more of the details!!

Most of the episode was about a guy advertising some dongle that helps diagnose problems on Canbus bikes.  Got pretty technical for me.

[Uncle M]

@WingVetteStrom what I got out of it first time around was that plugging into a Canbus system the "correct" way minimizes the likelihood of running into electrical issues with accessory installations, and that Canbus is simpler than one might think. My retention isn't that good these days, ha ha, so I'll listen to the episode a few more times. Adding an error code reader seems like a good idea. I'm not planning to add any electrical accessories but from a troubleshooting perspective, it's good to know how the Canbus system works.

Edited January 12, 2023 by Uncle M

[WingVetteStrom]

Update.

---------------

I contacted all the above mentioned lighting companies and Oxford, and they all tell me no problems with T7 Canbus.

[Ray Ride4life]

I think you need to see the T7 as a bike with no CANbus, there may be a CANbus but only within the engine circuit to have the sensors talking to the ECU and communicatie through ODB to us.
The ODB does no tell us a when a lightbulb is broken and which one it is and there also will be no malfunctions when you connect a GPS or extra lights to the wiring.
Like i said, only the high beam switch is a bit questionable but not because of CANbus bit a strange way of wiring.

[SO_Rider]

19 minutes ago, Ray Ride4life said:

I think you need to see the T7 as a bike with no CANbus, there may be a CANbus but only within the engine circuit to have the sensors talking to the ECU and communicatie through ODB to us.
The ODB does no tell us a when a lightbulb is broken and which one it is and there also will be no malfunctions when you connect a GPS or extra lights to the wiring.
Like i said, only the high beam switch is a bit questionable but not because of CANbus bit a strange way of wiring.

I too listened to the ARR episode and a fair amount of it went over my head. However, I think I heard that the company that was showcased (HEX ezCAN – All things ezCAN)  is developing a plug in for the T7 that would facilitate adding accessories. If the CANbus only manages engine control, why would this be necessary?   

[WingVetteStrom]

9 minutes ago, SO_Rider said:

I too listened to the ARR episode and a fair amount of it went over my head. However, I think I heard that the company that was showcased (HEX ezCAN – All things ezCAN)  is developing a plug in for the T7 that would facilitate adding accessories. If the CANbus only manages engine control, why would this be necessary?   

From what I think I understood from the episode was that his "dongle" would also allow other functions.  He specifically mentioned a type of set up where when you hit the horn, the headlight (s?) modulate/flash.

Not sure I'd do this.  My first reaction when I'm in trouble with traffic is to get the hell out of the way.  The horn is an afterthought just to tell them to be careful, you almost hit me.

[Ray Ride4life]

25 minutes ago, SO_Rider said:

I too listened to the ARR episode and a fair amount of it went over my head. However, I think I heard that the company that was showcased (HEX ezCAN – All things ezCAN)  is developing a plug in for the T7 that would facilitate adding accessories. If the CANbus only manages engine control, why would this be necessary?   

Because it's not, I have totally no respect for originality and cut the wires to install a LED bar, my GPS and the licence plate light that came with the tail tidy. Added a few other things directly to the battery and i have no problem at all.
If the T7 had a full CANbus system the system would have gone crazy.
Some people pay lots of money for systems allowing you to wire in all kinds of accessories, if that makes them happy all fine but you don't need it and it's just that simple.
I rather spend my money on upgrades i do need/want and on trips with the bike.

[random1781]

A CAN bus is just a way for devices to communicate to each other, regardless of what they are. On the Tenere it's just the ECU, ABS ECU, and the display, so it's basically as simple as possible. Like @Ray Ride4lifesaid, all lights, accessories, etc. are all on fused circuits that run directly to the battery. All switches (turn signals, brights, whatever) just control power on and off to these circuits. This makes tapping into power to add aftermarket widgets pretty easy. You might need to throw a bigger fuse in, but you don't need to worry about much else.

 

On some bikes, accessories are wired into an ECU. On the 1200GS, the head light and heated grips aren't directly connected to the battery, they're connected to an ECU. The button for the heated grips isn't an on/off switch. It too is connected to the ECU. Pushing that tells the ECU to turn on the power to the heated grips. The (questionable) benefits of this are that you can monitor the status of everything and you can control it electronically. The main downside to this is that these circuits are designed to accommodate a specific power draw, so tapping into them to power aftermarket accessories can overload the circuit and throw error codes.

 

The easy solution is to just run wires from your aftermarket widget directly to your battery with a fuse in the middle to basically create your own circuit. Add a solenoid if you want to tie it to ignition power. But a lot of people don't understand electrical or don't want to mess with it, so companies like HEX, Denali, and Clearwater make these devices (ezCAN, CANsmart, CANopener) that "solve" this problem.

 

These devices connect to your battery and have a few power wires that you can plug accessories into. They generally have internal, resettable fuses, so you're basically adding a couple of protected accessory circuits to your bike, similar to the PDM60. Unlike the PDM60, these also plug into the bike's CAN bus, usually through the diagnostic connector, where they function as an additional controller on the bike's CAN network where they can monitor or interact with other devices on the CAN bus.

 

What you can control on the CAN bus varies from bike to bike, but since the 1200GS uses an ECU for virtually everything, I'll use that as an example. The ezCAN can be configured to flash your brights and turn on aux lighting if you honk your horn. It does this by monitoring the CAN network for the message saying your horn button was pressed, and when it sees that, it then sends a message to the ECU to turn your brights on.

 

So when a company says their product is CAN-compatible, that generally means that they sell a device that adds a few power circuits to your bike and plugs into the CAN bus to interface with your bike. Personally I think this is a lot of complication and cost for a small payoff, but apparently it sells. I think there's an element of these companies capitalizing on the confusion and push these controllers as necessary, but they're not. Remember that you never HAVE to plug anything into the CAN bus if you don't want to: you can just wire it to the battery.

[Hollybrook]

If someone is wanting to really get into the CAN bus implementation, it is helpful to know that CAN bus is not just used on cars and bikes, but is also used for boats (NMEA 2000) and industrial controls.  You can sometimes find bits and pieces designed for one market that are useful in another.  For instance, I used an industrial CAN bus hub on our boat's NMEA 2000 network because it suited my needs better than any of the marine units available and a used one on Ebay was MUCH less expensive as well.