Ruben J=F6nsson wrote:
> My understanding of CAN is that the communication is oriented around
> the content of the message (or message type) rather than around a
> particular master and a slave node. Whichever node that is interested
> in that type of message acts upon it.

That is correct, but you can of course define the 11 or 29 bit frame IDs to
mean whatever you want them to mean.

> So, if I want to build a network with CAN rather than RS485 and use
> it with my master/slave type of protocol, can I do that in similar
> way (at least as seen from the master side)?

You could assign a address to each node, then encode that address into the
ID of frames to and from the node.

> And if I have a sensor I want to read the information from, do I tell
> it to send the data or is it generally sending the data continously
> and I just pick up the message from that when I need it?

Either way.  Read up on remote request frames.


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