Supported Log Formats

SeerWatch currently supports two different CAN log formats:

.asc
.log

Both are human-readable text formats.

ASC files

.asc is a text based format used in Vector products.

It has a header followed by a data section and looks like this:

date Sat Jan 24 15:09:15.88 2026
base hex  timestamps absolute
internal events logged
Begin Triggerblock Fri Jul 10 02:17:32.249 2015
 0.000000 Start of measurement
 0.000000 1  44              Rx   d 5 2A 36 6C 2B BA
 0.200134 1  F6              Rx   d 5 7A DF E0 7B D2
 0.400291 1  236             Rx   d 8 C3 40 6B 09 F4 C8 80 36
 0.600418 1  6F1             Rx   d 7 98 50 86 76 A3 27 34
 0.800571 1  17F             Rx   d 1 C7 Length = 225910 BitCount = 117 ID = 383
 1.000704 1  25B             Rx   d 8 6E AA C5 6C 77 D1 5E 27
 1.200844 1  56E             Rx   d 8 46 F0 2E 79 A2 B2 8C 7C
 1.401000 1  19E             Rx   d 8 6F E1 CB 7D E2 21 84 56
 1.601157 1  1A0             Rx   d 8 9C 20 40 7F 96 EA 16 7B Length = 225910 BitCount = 117 ID = 383
 1.801312 1  6DE             Rx   d 6 68 FF 14 71 14 D1
End TriggerBlock

candump / can-utils `.log`

The .log format is a simple text based format used by the Linux candump program. candump is a command line utility in the can-utils package. See the candump manual for more information.

Each line follows the format:

(timestamp) <channel> <can-id>#<bytes>

For can-fd, one character after the # sign represents the FLAGS field

(1769227468.836613) vcan1 123##41122334455667788

Sample log:

(1436509052.249713) vcan0 044#2A366C2BBA
(1436509052.449847) vcan0 0F6#7ADFE07BD2
(1436509052.650004) vcan0 236#C3406B09F4C88036
(1436509052.850131) vcan0 6F1#98508676A32734
(1436509053.050284) vcan0 17F#C7
(1436509053.250417) vcan0 25B#6EAAC56C77D15E27
(1436509053.450557) vcan0 56E#46F02E79A2B28C7C
(1436509053.650713) vcan0 19E#6FE1CB7DE2218456
(1436509053.850870) vcan0 1A0#9C20407F96EA167B
(1436509054.051025) vcan0 6DE#68FF147114D1

Converting from other formats

TRC conversion

.trc files are used by Peak System tools. They provide a converter that allows you can to convert to .asc.

Peak Converter

ASC / LOG conversion

SeerWatch natively saves as .log files. You can convert to asc using log2asc or asc2log utilities included in Linux can-utils package.

sudo apt install can-utils
log2asc -I <input-file> -O <output-file>