DBC editor v2 + new case studies |
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CSS Electronics newsletter - May 2026 |
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Our free DBC file editor v2 is live Need to create/edit DBC files? If so, our free DBC editor lets you do this - directly in your browser. Great for editing/validating your DBC files before use with e.g. our CANedge CAN bus data loggers!
The latest v2 adds multiple big improvements:
Error / warning reports
The editor now validates your DBC both at the message/signal level and summarizes any syntax errors/warnings at the top. You can review these errors - and one-click filter your DBC to show all problematic entries. The editor also flags duplicate IDs/PGNs.
Message / signal search
You can now search for messages/signals based on names, IDs, errors and more to quickly find entries of interest for editing.
Attribute support
The editor now lets you parse and edit DBC-wide attributes like vFrameFormat, SPN or custom attributes. Support for INT, FLOAT, ENUM, STRING. Further, you can now edit attributes per message/signal.
Value table support
For each signal you can now edit value tables directly in the editor.
PGN support
If an ID is marked as a PGN, the editor will now display the PGN for the ID.
Multiplexing
The editor now supports advanced nested multiplexing use cases.
Signal decoding
The signal decoding section has been improved to let you quickly copy/paste raw CAN data payloads to check your signal decoding logic.
Signed, unsigned, float, double support
We have expanded the support for signal types to include proper support for signed, unsigned, float and double types.
Check it out - and let us know if you have any feedback/suggestions!
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Want to deploy EV trailer telematics with custom dashboards? In our recent case study, Noah Lopez and the team at Thermo King use the CANedge2/CANedge3 to add CAN bus visibility to their Evolve electric trailers - alongside their existing TracKing telematics platform.
To fully evaluate their Transport Refrigeration Unit (TRU), the team needed to go beyond their default lower-frequency telematics data. Here, the CANedge allows the team to collect the full raw CAN traces - enabling much more detailed analyses and diagnostics.
Specifically, the team deploys the CANedge3 in their Evolve trailers to push raw CAN data via LTE to their AWS S3 cloud server. A custom AWS Lambda function passes the MF4 files into a Redshift database, where their Engineering Analytics team merges it with the TRU data. |
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| | From there, they built Tableau dashboards tracking battery errors, energy consumption and route stop patterns. More recently, the team has also started using the plug & play Grafana-Athena dashboard integration for the CANedge. | | |
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| | As Noah states:
"The CANedge is a plug & play device and requires minimal support to get up and running. This means that if someone comes to me with a CAN issue in the field, my first question is going to be 'do you have any logs?' and the second will be 'can we put a CANedge on the unit?'" | | |
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Need to deploy vehicle predictive maintenance? In this case study, Steven Liang and his team at Wallis Drilling use the CANedge2 to setup predictive maintenance across their fleet of drill rigs.
The drill rigs are deployed across remote areas of Australia - making it hard for engineers to troubleshoot intermittent issues in the field.
However, by installing the CANedge2 they can now collect data from each drill rig - and upload it through StarLink WiFi routers deployed in each vehicle. Data is pushed to their own AWS S3 bucket - where it is automatically DBC decoded to create a Parquet data lake that the team can visualize in Grafana dashboards.
As Steven outlines, this has been a game changer for the team:
"Improvements can now be made in a much shorter time frame, without sending engineers to remote locations to reproduce scenarios and manually collect data. Real-time alerts provide immediate visibility into unusual behaviour, enabling our personnel (both in the field and remotely) to prioritise attention where it is needed most. This enables a shift from reactive troubleshooting to proactive intervention. Further, the data allows our engineers to review precise message sequences and signal activity surrounding any operational event." |
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| | Further, the team deploys the plug & play CANedge 'event detection' workflow:
"When data is received from rigs in the field, it is automatically analysed to monitor for specific operational conditions. This allows us to proactively identify rigs that require maintenance and detect any anomalies. Alerts are promptly issued over Microsoft Teams to key engineering, maintenance and operational personnel in a matter of minutes." | | |
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Want to collect CCP/XCP data to your cloud? In our recent case study, Wouter Janssens and his team from Dana Belgium needed a way to quickly diagnose/troubleshoot transmission issues in prototype vehicles.
In the past, if a customer reported an issue the team would send a CAN logger to record traces until the error was reproduced - with the log files manually sent to Dana. This resulted in delays, overhead and a risk of errors.
To solve this, the team now ships a CANedge3 with their prototype vehicles. The device is pre-configured to connect to Dana's AWS S3 bucket - and is easily installed by the end customer. |
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| | The team uses the canedge-ccp-xcp Python tool to load their CCP/XCP A2L files and configure the CANedge to initialize dynamic DAQ sequences. The team deploys the relevant config files securely to the CANedge3 over-the-air. | | |
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| | The script also produces the DBC files for decoding the CCP/XCP data - enabling the team to visualize decoded CCP/XCP data in both Grafana dashboards and Vector tools. | | |
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