Anyone seen this?

With a "simple" ethercat slave controller (ESC) such as LAN9252 or AX58100 there are two broad approaches:

1. Separate ESC module and MCU/FPGA module with SPI connection
- advantage that MCU/FPGA module could be used with other SPI options such as RPI or SPI ethernet adaptor. This would increase market size substantially.
- could produce different modules for different needs, e.g. step/gen module, all GPIO module rather than one "jack of all trades" module
- part count might be a bit higher


2. Integrated ESC and MCU/FPGA on one PCB

With both options:
Ideal to have ability to have expansion modules to add more GPIO etc.
?over i2c or SPI

For EtherCat only: The major need I think is for low cost GPIO.
However it would be great to have open source hardware design for general use. Which SPI interfaced hardware might be ideal for versatility of use with EtherCat/Ethernet/on board SPI.
Currently Remora (for example) mainly depends on 'hacking'/repurposing of closed source boards that are subject to change without notice

There is also LAN9255 - EtherCAT Device with integrated Cortex M4F Microcontroller
$17 USD in single part quantity, <$14 in 100 qty.

With a "simple" ethercat slave controller (ESC) such as LAN9252 or AX58100 there are two broad approaches:

1. Separate ESC module and MCU/FPGA module with SPI connection
- advantage that MCU/FPGA module could be used with other SPI options such as RPI or SPI ethernet adaptor. This would increase market size substantially.
- could produce different modules for different needs, e.g. step/gen module, all GPIO module rather than one "jack of all trades" module
- part count might be a bit higher
 

There's about $30-40 involved in even looking at an EtherCAT ESC when it's something that is to be sold. You can buy that chip for $12 and use it all day. Nobody can sell you anything with that chip on it for less than $30-40 as I explained earlier or they're losing money so that's the place where ya start. For what you're  mentioning here if you bought a Mikro Click and an BTT Octopus off Amazon, you're at $100 and that's the best price you could ever get for that combined device...nobody could go near it. Now, do you want to but the $100 thing, or a Mesa card? You'd probably just buy the Mesa card and you'd be better off for it.

You're previous suggestions were a little better. Stuff that makes sense is things that either nobody makes something similar and can withstand the extra cost of EtherCAT, or things that are simple yet so outrageously expensive otherwise like IO modules.

2. Integrated ESC and MCU/FPGA on one PCB

With both options:
Ideal to have ability to have expansion modules to add more GPIO etc.
?over i2c or SPI

For EtherCat only: The major need I think is for low cost GPIO.
However it would be great to have open source hardware design for general use. Which SPI interfaced hardware might be ideal for versatility of use with EtherCat/Ethernet/on board SPI.
Currently Remora (for example) mainly depends on 'hacking'/repurposing of closed source boards that are subject to change without notice
Personally I'm not doing anything with FPGAs, that's not my forte. The open source thing is the link I posted in the very first post when I asked "Why doesn't anyone use stuff like this"....did ya look at it? It sounds like exactly what you're looking for there.

My current project uses a keypad I made with 4 16bit I2C IO expanders. I2C expanders will be a thing with my EtherCAT project.

You mention Remora and you mentioned a plug in "module" well I always thought it would be great if they supported the Teensy 4.1. I think I asked 3 times and never got a response....even after they started supporting the Chinese Ethernet controller that may or may not have the same MCU on it depending on what day of the week it was......Seemed like a good idea to me.

pippin88 wrote:

There is also LAN9255 - EtherCAT Device with integrated Cortex M4F Microcontroller
$17 USD in single part quantity, <$14 in 100 qty.
 

Doesn't really make a difference. A comparable STM32 is $3-6 @qty1. It's good for something tightly integrated, but for something like this it's better to be able to change out the MCU for a bigger/smaller/faster one. It's just saving board space, STM32s only need some caps and a crystal...it's not a big deal.

So Mikroe EtherCAT Click ($31.45 each when Qty >10) and an open source SPI interfaced MCU board is making a lot of sense.

Then the SPI board can also be used with RPI or Ethernet (Remora)

Teensy cost is high. What is the benefit over much cheaper MCU for this role?

pippin88 wrote:

Teensy cost is high. What is the benefit over much cheaper MCU for this role?
 

High? An 8bit 16mhz Arduino Uno costs $28 on Amazon. A 32bit 600mhz Teensy 4.1 costs $31 from PJRC. The Teensy has built in ethernet, just doesn't have a jack. That ethernet obviously can't be used for Ethercat but it certainly could have been used for Remora or whatever else if they supported it.

But people with any smarts are not buying a Uno for $28

In Australia, an ESP32 board is 1/7th the price of a Teensy 4.1
A RPI Pico is 1/10th the price.

Just another option I've seen. I believe this is what is inside the RTElligent ECT60 Stepper-Servo Driver 

Infineon sell ARM based micros with integrated EtherCAT slave controllers

XMC4300-F100K256 AA

the dev kit:

XMC4300 Relax EtherCAT ® Kit

pippin88 wrote:

But people with any smarts are not buying a Uno for $28

In Australia, an ESP32 board is 1/7th the price of a Teensy 4.1
A RPI Pico is 1/10th the price.
 

Lol let's bring this back to EtherCAT, none of that has anything to do with this thread. It's not even worth talking about comparing dev boards that use MCUs that don't have any proper peripherals for machine control vs one that has all the peripherals. There's a reason actual company's use STM32s and IMX1052/1062 for CNC controllers...they don't use RP2040s and ESP32s. They have their own uses, machine control is not one of them. Niether of them have proper hardware encoder peripherals and no, the PIO doesn't compare in any way to an IMX1062's hardware encoders. So build something with an Rpi Pico, and be happy you saved $20 over using a Teensy 4.1 then be dissapointed that it's about 1/4 the clock speed and can count an encoder about 1/50th the frequency. Not really worth the effort to me.

I'm here to talk about EtherCAT. There's no penny pinching with etherCAT unless your going to build the thing yourself. We should try to keep the discussion more along the lines about "hey it'd be nice to not spend $400 for an IO module"

bw4257 wrote:

Just another option I've seen. I believe this is what is inside the RTElligent ECT60 Stepper-Servo Driver 

Infineon sell ARM based micros with integrated EtherCAT slave controllers

XMC4300-F100K256 AA

the dev kit:

XMC4300 Relax EtherCAT ® Kit
 

The XMC4300 doesn't have Ethernet PHYs.

the LAN9252 has the 2 ethernet PHYs built in so it cal literally be a 1 chip IO module. Then SPI to an MCU for more stuff.

There's probably good reason to use those other ESCs but the built in microcontroller doesn't really add much benefit other than saving $5 on the BOM, maybe. That's a big deal if you're going to make alot of a thing. Doesn't really matter much in the world of low volume, high overhead. It's kind of better just to stick with a standard design so you can re-use schematics and layouts between PCBs. Seems like the LAN9592 is a better case for that.

There is a nice open source design using that chip:
github.com/feecat/XMC4300_EtherCAT_CoreBoard/tree/master