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OpenArm CAN library

  • Software
  • Robot arms and industry
  • Driver or SDK
  • Runs on hardware you can build

A C++ library and command-line tool for CAN bus communication with OpenArm robot hardware, driving Damiao motors over CAN or CAN-FD interfaces on Linux.

Made by Enactic, Inc., Japan (checked on github.com/enactic (opens in a new tab)).

Source on GitHub: github.com/enactic/openarm_can (opens in a new tab). Facts read at commit f340d4b (opens in a new tab).

Licenses

Code
Apache-2.0 (opens in a new tab)

Read by Robotheca from LICENSE.txt (opens in a new tab) (Apache-2.0) at commit f340d4b (opens in a new tab), on 16 Oct 2026.

Commercial use
Yes

What it does

  • Provides a C++ API to initialize arm motors, enable them, and control them over SocketCAN.
  • Includes a CLI tool for configuring the CAN interface, discovering motors on the bus, and monitoring their status.
  • Offers an experimental Python binding that is a low-level port and whose interface is expected to change.
  • Ships packages for Ubuntu and for AlmaLinux, CentOS, Fedora, RHEL and Rocky Linux, with example programs in C++ and Python.

Written by Robotheca from the project's README (opens in a new tab) at commit f340d4b.

Getting started

Difficulty
Intermediate
Hardware it needs, as the project states it
Linux with SocketCAN support and a CAN interface; supported Ubuntu releases are 22.04, 24.04 and 26.04.

Maintenance

Status
Active: a commit in the last 90 days
Newest commit
16 Sept 2026 on main
Latest release
OpenArm CAN 1.4.0 (16 Sept 2026)

Checked on GitHub on 16 Oct 2026.

Links

Robots that can run it

No robot on Robotheca is linked to it yet. Links come from a robot's robot.yaml, from its dependency files read as text, or from Robotheca's editors.

Robotheca lists software as a reference: nothing is hosted or run here, and every fact links to where it was read.