Category:EtherCAT:ECAT GENERAL GUIDE
Category:EtherCAT:ECAT GENERAL GUIDE EtherCAT - General Guide
The front page is EtherCAT
Introduction
From Wikipedia: "EtherCAT - Ethernet for Control Automation Technology - is an Ethernet-based fieldbus system, invented by Beckhoff Automation. The protocol is standardized in IEC 61158 and is suitable for both hard and soft real-time requirements in automation technology.
The goal during development of EtherCAT was to apply Ethernet for automation applications requiring short data update times (also called cycle times; ≤ 100 µs) with low communication jitter (for precise synchronization purposes; ≤ 1 µs) and reduced hardware costs."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EtherCAT
softMC's current main fieldbus is EtherCAT and this guide will help you to setup the system. A part of softMC is a software entity called "EtherCAT Master". The ECat master is a part of the Linux kernel and it works in parallel to the Motion part of softMC.
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It is critical to maintain the demonstrated order of the EtherCAT setup. Any change in the given example may result in undefined behavior! |
EC_SETUP.PRG
EC_SETUP.PRG is a generic script. Its purpose is to configure the EtherCAT master and slaves before they are started, start the master, and eventually run additional actions to complete the EtherCAT startup procedure.
EC_SETUP.PRG is written in a manner that easily allows embedding code to configure specific motion drives and IO modules.
This article details the main steps that occur upon EtherCAT startup as they are executed by EC_SETUP.PRG.
Drive Address
Each EtherCAT slave has an address. Currently this address is determined strictly according to the slave location in the
Example
t[300][6] = <6 bits value>
See Also
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