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Star on GitHubStar1.1k stars

Tool

CanLab

PyQt6 desktop workstation and command-line tool for reverse-engineering CAN bus captures offline. It reads SavvyCAN/GVRET CSV, candump, pcap, Vector BLF/ASC, MDF4 and openpilot logs, then suggests counters, checksums and their algorithms, byte roles, flags, multiplexers, entropy-based field boundaries and cross-ID correlations, decodes J1939 and NMEA 2000 PGNs and reassembles multi-frame messages. A cantools-backed DBC builder checks signal definitions against the captured frames and exports DBC, openpilot DBC, CANdb++, ARXML and Wireshark Lua dissectors, and an optional MCP server offers 29 receive-only analysis tools to assistants.

Targets
Protocol
Category
Protocol analysis tools
Relationship
Foundation tool
Sources reviewed

Requirements & limits

  • README calls CanLab a beta, single-author project. The reviewed commit 8aaa6ff (2026-09-23) declares version 2.1.0 in pyproject.toml, while the latest release is v2.0.0 (2026-09-15) with a Linux x86_64 build and demo videos. README stresses that the analysis is heuristic, suggests candidates rather than identifying signals, and has not been validated on many real vehicles.
  • Python 3.11+ on Linux, macOS or Windows (developed on 3.12), with optional extras for AI, REST, MCP, hardware adapters, MDF4 (asammdf) and openpilot logs (pycapnp); README asks for 4 GB RAM, 8 GB for the machine-learning features. Live capture uses SocketCAN, a comma.ai Panda, GVRET boards or python-can adapters; README reports one physical adapter used, a CANalyst-II, and the others only on a virtual bus.
  • Inputs are the user's own captures. The bundled sample is a synthetic Hyundai-style capture generated by a script, the test fixtures are a few lines each, and the real-data acceptance runs fetch public SavvyCAN, CSS Electronics and comma.ai recordings instead of committing them. The opendbc matcher downloads the commaai/opendbc index on first use, and the optional AI analysis sends the selected ID's frame statistics to the configured Anthropic, OpenAI, Groq or Ollama provider.
  • The application also has bench-only transmit functions behind a global ARM TX switch that is off by default and a blocked-ID list; README restricts them to isolated bench setups. The MCP tools cannot transmit.
  • README's Testing section reports 753 passing pytest tests (its badge still says 578), interoperability tests against can-isotp, udsoncan and can-j1939, and 99 checks over public real-world recordings; diagnostic requests were tested only against scripted responders. MIT; the NMEA 2000 table derives from CANboat (Apache-2.0) and the cereal schema from comma.ai (MIT).

About this entry

The description was reviewed against primary sources.

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Primary sources

  1. README.md GitHub · Sherin-SEF-AI/CanLab · Revision 8aaa6ff
  2. pyproject.toml GitHub · Sherin-SEF-AI/CanLab · Revision 8aaa6ff
  3. tests/real_data/README.md GitHub · Sherin-SEF-AI/CanLab · Revision 8aaa6ff
  4. canlab/sample_data/generate_sample.py GitHub · Sherin-SEF-AI/CanLab · Revision 8aaa6ff
  5. canlab/core/data/CANBOAT-NOTICE.txt GitHub · Sherin-SEF-AI/CanLab · Revision 8aaa6ff
  6. canlab/core/data/cereal/NOTICE.txt GitHub · Sherin-SEF-AI/CanLab · Revision 8aaa6ff
  7. LICENSE GitHub · Sherin-SEF-AI/CanLab · Revision 8aaa6ff
  8. https://github.com/Sherin-SEF-AI/CanLab/releases/tag/v2.0.0

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