The CAN bus — officially known as Controller Area Network — allows connected devices to exchange short messages in an efficient way. Although originally designed as a robust vehicle communication bus using as little wiring as possible (twisted pair), today it has found its way into all sorts of other applications. CAN is not a master-slave, peer-to-peer (P2P) or other connection-based network, but message-based. Consequently, connected devices — the nodes — send messages whenever they feel like it and without caring if there’s anybody listening. Collision and error detection and prioritization schemes ensure that everything goes well as long as network traffic conditions remain normal.