Australian mobile distributed controls specialist, CAN Automotion Pty Ltd., has joined Kvaser’s qualified sales network. The CAN Automotion team, whose expertise extends into telematics and the Internet of Things, is – as the company’s name suggests – populated with genuine CAN experts.

Explains company manager, Madhusudan Giri: “We provide end-to-end engineering solutions for control systems, including system design, architecture, programming, wiring, testing, debugging and fine tuning. Whilst our first and most commonly used field bus is CAN, we work predominantly with CANopen and J1939, and occasionally, DeviceNet. We also carry out cross-protocol work with Modbus / EtherCAT / Ethernet IP using Gateways.”

Giri continues: “Given the size and remoteness of many areas of Australia, there’s a great need for telematics and datalogging solutions in a machine service context. We see the Kvaser Memorator as an offline datalogging device, so highly complementary to our online datalogging and Cloud solutions.” CAN Automotion will stock a range of Kvaser’s Professional products.

Asked about the particularities of an Australian customer base, Giri says: “The caricature of Australia as a country of ‘bush mechanics’ is somewhat true. Engineering teams here tend not to feel threatened by any problem. However, they are also used to going online for everything, looking for the cheapest deal. This has positive and negative side effects for us; at exhibitions, we are bombarded by support questions for products that we haven’t necessarily sold; but this gives us a chance to get to know the customer’s problem and with our experience in virtually every sector, propose a solution to help.”

Notably, Giri has a long background in CAN, having worked at Parker Hannifin and MOOG Controls. Since forming CAN Automotion in 2006 along with Clem Berenger, CAN has remained a mainstay of the company’s sales mix, including CAN and J1939 stacks, tools, interfaces and encoders. With less CAN development projects in Australia as the offshoring trend continues, the company has also opened an office in Chennai, India, where CAN development is more active.