USB-to-CAN Bridge
A compact USB adapter that connects your PC to a CAN bus network of cockpit hardware. Plug in one USB cable and every device on the bus is instantly available to SimLinkHub and MSFS 2024 — no COM port hunting, no driver installation on modern Windows.
| Specification | Value |
|---|---|
| Microcontroller | STM32F072C8T6, 48 MHz Cortex-M0 |
| USB interface | Full-speed USB 2.0, CDC (Virtual COM Port) |
| CAN speed | 500 kbps |
| CAN standard | ISO 11898-1 (Standard Frame, 11-bit IDs) |
| Required driver | None (Windows 10 1903+ inbox driver) |
| Power | 5 V via USB, injected onto the bus for downstream devices |
One cable. Every device.
The CAN Bridge connects your PC to a CAN bus network of cockpit hardware. Plug one USB cable into your PC and every device on the bus is instantly available to SimLinkHub and MSFS 2024. No COM port hunting, no driver installation on modern Windows — see Architecture for why the whole system is built around this shape.
Plug-and-play USB
The bridge uses the STM32 USB-CDC (Virtual COM Port) interface, which Windows 10 (1903+) and Windows 11 support with no driver install. SimLinkHub identifies the bridge by its hardware ID, not its COM port number, so it doesn't matter which port it enumerates as.
Transparent gateway
The bridge is deliberately simple: it forwards CAN frames to SimLinkHub, and turns SimLinkHub's commands into CAN frames. It has no knowledge of any specific device's protocol, which means adding a new device never requires a bridge firmware update — the device firmware and SimLinkHub handle the protocol between them; the bridge just carries the bytes.
Presence detection and self-recovery
SimLinkHub tracks which devices are actively seen on the bus, and the bridge sends its own heartbeat so a lost USB connection is detected quickly rather than silently. See Adding a Device for the software side once the bus is wired up.
Firmware
Open source — see the STM-Can-USB-Bridge repository.