ColorCNC Colorlight 5A-75E/5A-75B as FPGA controller board

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01 Sep 2026 11:37 #349173 by romanetz
I'd like to share some latest information regarding current status of the project.
Support of serial port (with almost the same principle as pktuart) has been added in last pull request. Yet not approved by Peter. github.com/Peter-van-Tol/LiteX-CNC/pull/155
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11 Oct 2026 21:08 #350199 by romanetz
Hi everyone,  I wanted to share my progress on developing an EtherCAT slave for the Colorlight 5A-75E board integrated with LiteXCNC, and hopefully get some advice from the community.The basic skeleton of the firmware is ready. The board is alive and successfully responding to the master's initial requests—the physical layer and core logic are up and running. Right now, I am focusing on debugging the SII  EEPROM emulation. As soon as board gets to PREOP/OP state, I will share further updates. 
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14 Oct 2026 09:17 #350244 by romanetz
Update: PREOP reached, full SII EEPROM interface workingQuick update on the Colorlight 5A-75E EtherCAT slave.Since my last post, quite a bit has moved:What works now:
  • SII EEPROM emulation fully implemented and verified with IgH master
  • ethercat slaves -v
    reads identity correctly:
    • Vendor Id:
      0xDEADBABE
      , Product code:
      0x00C0FFEE
    • All SII categories parsed: STRINGS, GENERAL, FMMU, SYNCM
  • AL state machine:
    INIT → PREOP
  • IgH configures SM0/SM1 and accepts the slave in PREOP
Current limitation:
CoE mailbox is not implemented on the FPGA side yet, so IgH fails on
CoE SDO upload (
0x1C12
PDO assign) and never reaches SAFEOP/OP.Next steps:
  • Remove CoE declaration from ESI to bypass mailbox requirement for
    Phase 1 (bring-up with LinuxCNC and quadrature encoders)
  • Then decide: implement mailbox via VexRiscv + SOES (Phase 2), or
    keep CoE-free with PDO mapping from ESI
Repository:
github.com/romanetz/liteethercat Architecture and roadmap:
docs/architecture.md
in the repo.The project continues the same modular LiteX approach. Once the slave
is in OP and HAL pins react to encoder movement, I'll post a video.
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14 Oct 2026 09:23 #350245 by romanetz
(venv) engin@engin:~/litex-work/liteeth/bench/ESC$ ethercat slaves -v -p 0
=== Master 0, Slave 0 ===
Device: Main
State: PREOP
Flag: E
Identity:
 Vendor Id:       0xdeadbabe
 Product code:    0x00c0ffee
 Revision number: 0x00000001
 Serial number:   0x00000000
DL information:
 FMMU bit operation: no
 Distributed clocks: no
Port  Type  Link  Loop    Signal  NextSlave
  0  MII   up    open    yes             -
  1  MII   down  closed  no              -
  2  N/A   down  closed  no              -
  3  N/A   down  closed  no              -
Mailboxes:
 Bootstrap RX: 0x0000/0, TX: 0x0000/0
 Standard  RX: 0x1000/128, TX: 0x1080/128
 Supported protocols: CoE
General:
 Group: Colorlight5A75E
 Image name:  
 Order number:  
 Device name: Colorlight 5A-75E EtherCAT Device
 CoE details:
   Enable SDO: yes
   Enable SDO Info: no
   Enable PDO Assign: no
   Enable PDO Configuration: no
   Enable Upload at startup: no
   Enable SDO complete access: no
 Flags:
   Enable SafeOp: no
   Enable notLRW: no
 Current consumption: 0 mA
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