Bus Monitor

The NI-XNET Bus Monitor is a universal analysis tool for displaying and logging CAN, FlexRay, or LIN network data. You can display network information as either last recent data or historical data view. To identify more detailed frame information, you can assign a network database to the Bus Monitor. If a received frame is found in the database, you can display the message name and comment information in the Monitor view or ID Log view. In addition to the network data, the Bus Monitor can provide statistical information. For offline data analysis, you can stream all received network data to disk in two log file formats.

In the Bus Monitor in the CAN protocol mode, you can interactively transmit an event frame or a periodic frame onto the network. In this mode, you can quickly verify the correct setup of your CAN network and debug your communication with the device under test.

NI-XNET errors that appear while doing a CAN, FlexRay, or LIN measurement within the Bus Monitor are shown in the main user interface.

You can launch the NI-XNET Bus Monitor in three distinct protocol modes: CAN, FlexRay, or LIN, from NI MAX or the Windows Start menu.
  • In NI MAX, right-click an NI-XNET interface and select Bus Monitor from the context menu.
  • From the Windows Start menu, select Start » National Instruments and select NI-XNET Bus Monitor.

You cannot switch from one protocol mode to the other during run time. You can run the Bus Monitor in multiple instances on different ports, and can verify the network communication on several CAN, FlexRay, or LIN bus topologies in parallel.

Note The NI-XNET Bus Monitor utility does not support Automotive Ethernet hardware.