Qt6 based cross platform canbus tool
(C) 2015-2026 Collin Kidder
A Qt6 based cross platform tool which can be used to load, save, and capture canbus frames.
This tool is designed to help with visualization, reverse engineering, debugging, and
capturing of canbus frames.
Please use the "Discussions" tab here on GitHub to ask questions and interact with the community.
Requires a resolution of at least 1024x768. Fully multi-monitor capable. Works on 4K monitors as well.
You are highly recommended to use the
CANDue board from EVTV.
The CANDue board must be running the GVRET firmware which can also be found
within the collin80 repos.
It is now possible to use any Qt SerialBus driver (socketcan, Vector, PeakCAN, TinyCAN).
It should, however, be noted that use of a capture device is not required to make use
of this program. It can load and save in several formats:
- BusMaster log file
- Microchip log file
- CRTD format (OVMS log file format from Mark Webb-Johnson)
- GVRET native format
- Generic CSV file (ID, D0 D1 D2 D3 D4 D5 D6 D7)
- Vector Trace files
- IXXAT Minilog files
- CAN-DO Logs
- Vehicle Spy log files
- CANDump / Kayak (Read only)
- PCAN Viewer (Read Only)
- Wireshark socketcan PCAP file (Read only)
Dependencies
Now this code does not depend on anything other than what is in the source tree or available
from the Qt installer.
Uses QCustomPlot available at:
http://www.qcustomplot.com/
However, this source code is integrated into the source for SavvyCAN and one isn't required
to download it separately.
This project requires 5.14.0 or higher because of a dependency on QtSerialBus and other new additions to Qt.
NOTE: There is a work-in-progress branch QT6WIP that can compile with QT6 (Tested with Qt 6.9 on 2026-03-11). Support for QT6 is approximately "beta" quality. Most all functions should work, please send issues if found.
It appears that the current binary build for MacOS requires at least MacOS 10.15
Instructions for compiling:
Download the newest stable version of Qt directly from qt.io (You need 5.14.x or newer)
cd ~
git clone https://github.com/collin80/SavvyCAN.git
cd SavvyCAN
~/Qt/5.14/gcc_64/bin/qmake
make
Now run SavvyCAN
./SavvyCAN
On linux systems you can run ./install.sh to create a desktop shortcut.
Compiling in debug mode for additional information
qmake CONFIG+=debug
make
What to do if your compile failed?
The very first thing to do is try:
qmake
make clean
make
Did that fix it? Great! If not, ensure that you selected SerialBUS support
when you installed Qt.
What to do if qmake fails with error Project ERROR: Unknown module(s) in QT: qml serialbus help on Ubuntu? :
sudo apt install libqt5serialbus5-dev libqt5serialport5-dev qtdeclarative5-dev qttools5-dev
Used Items Requiring Attribution
nodes by Adrien Coquet from the Noun Project
message by Vectorstall from the Noun Project
signal by shashank singh from the Noun Project
signal by juli from the Noun Project
signal by yudi from the Noun Project
Death by Adrien Coquet from the Noun Project
