Ethercat HAL driver

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23 Jul 2012 16:25 #22346 by sascha
Ethercat HAL driver was created by sascha
Hello,

I'm currently developing a (new) Ethercat HAL driver based on IgH's EtherCAT-Master (see www.etherlab.org/de/ethercat/index.php).

The driver already supports some of the mainly used Beckhoff devices like digital and analouge I/O, encoder input and pulse train output
plus the Stöber MDS5000 series of servo drives (see www.stoeber.de/index_gb.html). The diver consists of a user space component
for configuration (masters & salves are configured via a xml file) and a RT component for the transfer/transformation of process data.
The structure of the driver makes it easy to add new devices. Distributed Clocks are supported.

I've also done a debian packet of the ethercat master for smooth integration.

I like to contribute but I don't know how. I've found a link 'Becoming a contributor' but unfortunately it's dead.
Should I publish a patch and some docs on the wiki?

Thank You & Kind Regdars

Sascha
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23 Jul 2012 16:50 #22348 by cncbasher
Replied by cncbasher on topic Re:Ethercat HAL driver
yes just post to the wiki would be the best.

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23 Jul 2012 17:56 #22351 by andypugh
Replied by andypugh on topic Re:Ethercat HAL driver
sascha wrote:

I like to contribute but I don't know how. I've found a link 'Becoming a contributor' but unfortunately it's dead.

The link was probably meant to lead to: www.linuxcnc.org/index.php/english/compo...coming-a-contributor

Patches in git-format are the preferred medium, as they retain history.

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23 Jul 2012 20:30 #22355 by sascha
Replied by sascha on topic Re:Ethercat HAL driver
OK, thank you for the answers. I've decided to use github and have done a initial commit:

github.com/sittner/linuxcnc/compare/add-hal-ethercat

There are some cleanups and tests to be done and I will add some documentation
to the wiki. Please feel free to send me suggestions and hints.

Thanks for watching :-)

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23 Jul 2012 22:41 #22359 by VNR
Replied by VNR on topic Re:Ethercat HAL driver

The driver already supports some of the mainly used Beckhoff devices like digital and analouge I/O, encoder input and pulse train output

May you give me an idea of the price range of this products ?

Thanks you in advance,
VNR

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24 Jul 2012 09:15 #22377 by sascha
Replied by sascha on topic Re:Ethercat HAL driver
If my memory dosn't lie the price range is like this:

buscoupler + bus terminal ~100 EUR
8ch digital in ~30 EUR
8ch digital out ~35 EUR
2ch 16 bit analog in ~160 EUR
2ch 16 bit analog out ~160 EUR
1ch pulse train (stepper) RS422 out ~160 EUR
2ch encoder input ~180 EUR
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25 Jul 2012 11:55 #22444 by andypugh
Replied by andypugh on topic Re:Ethercat HAL driver
Does your driver use RTNet? I noticed the other day that there is an option in RTAI to add RTNet support, but I am not sure if it is turned on by default in the LinuxCNC distributions.

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25 Jul 2012 13:10 #22445 by sascha
Replied by sascha on topic Re:Ethercat HAL driver
andypugh wrote:

Does your driver use RTNet? I noticed the other day that there is an option in RTAI to add RTNet support, but I am not sure if it is turned on by default in the LinuxCNC distributions.


No, it uses IgH's EtherCAT master. It's a driver for EtherCAT, not RTNet. The intension was to use a protocol that is
(relatively) open and where a good base of reasonable priced hardware is available. Fortunately the EthcerCAT
matser compiles fine with the version of RTAI that is included in the LinuxCNC distribution.

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31 Mar 2013 05:15 #32111 by willrat
Replied by willrat on topic Ethercat HAL driver
Has anyone tried this? I've got some Beckhoff modules I'd like to try out.

I'm following wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?EtherCatDriver

I'm trying it on 10.04 as per livecd install

The file src/hal/drivers/ethercat/master/debian/configure is missing so the ethercat master cannot be built as a deb file. (as per the instructions)

When I install the ethercat master using 'normal' configure prefix=/usr, make, install, install_modules the linuxcnc build process cannot find ecrt.h (even though it seems to be in /usr/include)

I notice that in the debian build folder for the master the src/hal/drivers/ethercat/master/debian folder references ecrt.h in ethercat-dev.links.in presumably linking the header elsewhere for realtime components?

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31 Mar 2013 17:57 - 31 Mar 2013 18:02 #32118 by sascha
Replied by sascha on topic Ethercat HAL driver
Sorry, it was my mistake. Files named "configure" are ignored by git by default and the repos is
not really maintained at the moment since I am very busy and community response for this
driver was very frugal.

We are using the driver in several machines.

I have commited the current development version to the repos now (including the missing script).
EtherCAT master is updated to 1.5.2 (wiki is fixed for this). There are some important fixes plus new
supported devices including a (currently not heavily testet) generic driver which allows simple
mapping of PDOs to HAL pins by the configuration xml.

The problem with ecrt.h in /usr/include is, that the kernel build system will not find it there.
So I softlinked it to /lib/modules/2.6.32-122-rtai/build/include.
Last edit: 31 Mar 2013 18:02 by sascha. Reason: Typo, missing sentence.
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