Hello. I have a question about CAN wire colors.
We plan to run two separate CAN networks on our practice chassis and possibly 2025 comp robot if needed. I know the standard CAN wiring is green/yellow. My question is, can we run another color pair for the second CAN network, say, orange/purple or some such, to differentiate between the two?
Or twist in a third color tracer line?
Or even just put some colored electrical tape on the line? I think this would be our least-favorite choice.
I believe the manual just says something like colors are generally green/yellow for CAN lines. I don’t know how strict this is? Would an RI/LRI frown on anything other than standard green/yellow? Thanks.
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CAN is a signal-level wire, so doesn’t need to follow the color-coding rules
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As mentioned above, CAN wiring color is not restricted by R624 (red & black is not a great choice, though).
Another possible solution is heat-shrink labelling:
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I wish my team had color-coded the two buses. I can’t prove that DIN 47100 ever recommended pairings like these but someone on the Internet made this:
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I’d definitely recommend color coding the 2 busses. At least at my company, we tend to keep yellow as CAN High, and use green for our primary CAN Low, and purple for our secondary.
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As others have said, there is no requirement for CAN bus wires to be yellow & green. However, you do want to make sure that the wires are twisted at around 1 twist per inch. Otherwise (especially with CAN PD) you run the risk of electromagnetic interference or signal reflections messing up communications.
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For a CAN FD buss our color choices are Yellow and Blue 22 AWG wire
Legacy CAN remains Yellow and Green
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Why not use color coded zipties on critical connections. these can be bought for cheap from amazon…