Connect your dongle¶

canair reaches the CAN bus through an adapter — a WiCAN dongle, or a generic ELM327 clone — it never talks CAN directly. This page gets your computer talking to the dongle and confirms it's usable.

1. Plug in and power up¶

Plug the WiCAN into the vehicle's OBD-II port and switch the car to ignition/accessory (so the ECUs are awake). The dongle powers from the port.

2. Get on the same network¶

Two options:

Access-point mode — the WiCAN broadcasts its own WiCAN_xxxx WiFi network. Join it; the dongle is reachable at 192.168.80.1 (canair's default when no address is configured).
Your LAN — use the WiCAN web UI to put the dongle on your home WiFi. It then gets a normal LAN IP you point canair at. This is the more convenient setup for repeated sessions.

3. Tell canair the address¶

Edit ~/.config/canair/config.yaml or use canair config set:

canair config set devices.home.host 192.168.1.100
canair config set default_wican home

Any command takes --wican home|vpn|<ip> to pick which device to use. Each device can carry its own transport (canair config set devices.vpn.transport wican-ws), and when the chosen device is unreachable canair auto-falls-back to the others (disable per-command with --no-fallback) — including canair status, which therefore reports the device a live command would really use. Add --wait to any live command to block until the device comes online and then start — handy for canair monitor @driving --save --wait, which also keeps reconnecting if the link drops mid-session. config.example.yaml in the repo documents every key; see also the config reference.

4. Pro vs. classic¶

canair supports both the WiCAN Pro and the regular classic (non-Pro) WiCAN. The default is pro; if you have a classic, tell canair so it cleanly refuses Pro-only features instead of failing against the device:

canair config set wican_model classic

Pro-only features: AutoPID device sync (wican autopid upload/download/ diff), wican mode set, and the wican-ws WebSocket transport. All the core reverse-engineering — query, scan, discover, decode, DTCs, sniff, and generating AutoPID JSON — works on both over the default raw-SLCAN transport.

Using a generic ELM327 clone (no WiCAN)¶

Don't have a WiCAN? A generic WiFi ELM327 adapter (Kiwi, vLinker, OBDLink, or any no-name $10 clone) works over the elm327-tcp transport — a plain TCP socket to the dongle's ELM327 terminal, no WiCAN required:

canair config set devices.clone.host 192.168.0.10   # the dongle's WiFi IP
canair config set devices.clone.transport elm327-tcp
canair config set devices.clone.port 35000           # most WiFi clones use 35000
canair config set default_wican clone
canair status                                        # confirm it's reachable

Join the dongle's WiFi network first (many clones host their own access point). The ELM327 protocol engine is shared with wican-ws, so every canair command works the same — the dongle performs ISO-TP. There's no HTTP config API on a generic clone, so canair status reports transport reachability by probing the ELM socket directly (no device/firmware block).

Third-party dongles are best-effort

The WiCAN is the recommended and best-tested adapter for this project. Generic ELM327 clones vary wildly in firmware quality and their reliability cannot be guaranteed — cheap clones are especially likely to struggle with newer vehicles, which lean heavily on long multi-frame ISO-TP responses and extended (29-bit) addressing that many clones handle poorly or not at all. If reads are flaky, truncated, or a clone can't reach an ECU, that's usually the adapter, not canair — try a WiCAN before filing a bug.

Want to try canair with no hardware at all? See Offline testing with ELM327-Emulator.

5. Confirm it's working¶

canair config    # config locations, WiCAN model + addresses, resolved transport
canair status    # what am I talking to, in what mode, is it reachable?

If canair status reports a reachable device, you're ready. New to the bundled example car? Go to Read live data. Building a profile for your own car? Jump to Bring your own car.