A simple C++ EtherCAT master stack.

Kick-start your slaves!

Thin EtherCAT stack designed to be embedded in a more complex software and with efficiency in mind.

Current state:

Can go to OP state
Can read and write PI
interface redundancy is supported
CoE: read and write SDO - blocking and async call
CoE: Emergency message
Bus diagnostic: can reset and get errors counters
hook to configure non compliant slaves
consecutives writes to reduce latency - up to 255 datagrams in flight
build for Linux and PikeOS

NOTE The current implementation is designed for little endian host only!

TODO:

CoE: segmented transfer - partial implementation
CoE: diagnosis message - 0x10F3
Bus diagnostic: auto discover broken wire (on top of error counters)
More profiles: FoE, EoE, AoE, SoE
Distributed clock
AF_XDP Linux socket to improve performance
Addressing groups

Operatings systems:

Linux

To improve latency on Linux, you have to

use Linux RT (PREMPT_RT patches),
set a real time scheduler for the program (i.e. with chrt)
disable NIC IRQ coalescing (with ethtool)
disable RT throttling
isolate ethercat task and network IRQ on a dedicated core
change network IRQ priority

PikeOS

Tested on PikeOS 5.1 for native personnality (p4ext)
You have to provide the CMake cross-toolchain file which shall define PIKEOS variable (or adapt the main CMakelists.txt to your needs)
examples are provided with a working but non-optimal process/thread configuration (examples/PikeOS/p4ext_config.c): feel free to adapt it to your needs

Build:

KickCAT project is handled through CMake. To build the project, call CMake to configure it and then the build tool (default on Linux is make):

Configure the project (more information on https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/)

mkdir -p build
cd build
cmake ..

Build the project

make

Build unit tests (optional)

In order to build unit tests, you have to enable the option BUILD_UNIT_TESTS (default to ON) and to provide GTest package through CMake find_package mechanism. Note: you can easily provide GTest via conan package manager:

Install conan and setup PATH variable (more information on https://docs.conan.io/en/latest/installation.html)

pip install conan
export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.local/bin"

Install GTest in your build folder:

mkdir -p build
cd build
conan install ../conan/conanfile.txt -pr ../conan/profile_linux_x86_64.txt --build=missing

Configure the project (can be done on an already configured project)

cmake ..

EtherCAT doc

https://infosys.beckhoff.com/english.php?content=../content/1033/tc3_io_intro/1257993099.html&id=3196541253205318339 https://www.ethercat.org/download/documents/EtherCAT_Device_Protocol_Poster.pdf

protocol: https://download.beckhoff.com/download/document/io/ethercat-development-products/ethercat_esc_datasheet_sec1_technology_2i2.pdf

registers: https://download.beckhoff.com/download/Document/io/ethercat-development-products/ethercat_esc_datasheet_sec2_registers_3i0.pdf

eeprom : https://infosys.beckhoff.com/english.php?content=../content/1033/tc3_io_intro/1358008331.html&id=5054579963582410224

various: https://sir.upc.edu/wikis/roblab/index.php/Development/Ethercat

diag: https://www.automation.com/en-us/articles/2014-2/diagnostics-with-ethercat-part-4 https://infosys.beckhoff.com/english.php?content=../content/1033/ethercatsystem/1072509067.html&id= https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA00Z000000kHwESAU

trns1997/KickCAT