The mine safety detection system based on the CAN network consists of environmental information collector,CAN gateway,control terminal and surveillance computer. The distance between the environmental information collector and CAN gateway in this system can be up to 10km,and environmental information detecting point can be set up as many as 256,the system can detect various environmental parameters of roadway at the same time,such as temperature,wind speed,gas concentration and carbon monoxide concentration. The network is simple and reliable. In the programming of system the designing idea of soft PLC design is applied,so the programming is more simple and convenient,the operability of this system is improved and the difficulty of promoting this system is reduced.