Record a car's CAN buses, then work out what is on them

PandaCapture is listen-only by default. The panda's CAN controllers sit in bus-monitoring mode: no ACKs, no error frames, nothing transmitted. The bus can't tell the panda is there.

Windows & Linux GPLv3 licensed One file, nothing to install

✓ All three buses at once, with bit rates found automatically by listening, so a wrong rate can't disturb the bus. Captures are candump logs that SavvyCAN and can-utils also read
✓ A live dashboard in your browser that decodes the traffic with an address map for your vehicle. A Kia Stinger 3.3T map is built in
✓ A signal finder that lines a capture up against a logger's CSV or the car's own OBD answers and ranks every CAN field against each value
✓ Optional help from Claude on your own Anthropic API key: it proposes address-map entries from a capture's statistics, each checked against the capture before you see it
✓ Scan-tool reads with no other hardware: OBD PIDs, trouble codes, and each module's own codes and data over UDS. An ELM327 works too, and clearing codes explains what it resets before it does
✓ Flashes its own firmware onto the panda, backing up what was there first
✓ Gated transmit: you type TRANSMIT after a warning, only PandaCapture's firmware can transmit at all, and the panda drops back to listen-only within about 2 seconds if the program goes away
✓ On Windows, RP1210 and J2534 adapters such as a NEXIQ USB-Link 2, a Tactrix OpenPort or a Mongoose can record and drive the dashboard instead of a panda

Tested

On a oneclone mini blackpanda

Flash backup, flashing and updating, and the transmit gate. A Kia Stinger P-CAN capture at about 2,430 frames/s for 165 s with no dropouts. The dashboard replaying real captures at full rate, all 88 map signals decoding.

Not yet tested

Still to prove

A Red Panda, transmitting on a real bus, and the dashboard live in the car. The repository's status page tracks where each one stands.

Download the latest release Read the full guide on GitHub →

Only transmit on a bench, or with the vehicle parked and secured. A capture holds everything the car broadcasts, and some cars broadcast the VIN or odometer, so check one before sharing it.

Open source under the GNU General Public License v3 or later, © 2026 Xtremission LLC. PandaCapture isn't made or endorsed by comma.ai; "panda", "Red Panda" and "Black Panda" are comma.ai's product names. Its firmware is built from comma.ai's open-source panda firmware.