Ethercat Slave Stack demo limitations

There are no functional differences in stack obtained from Beckhoff and the stack included in TI's Industrial SDK.

TI takes the Beckhoff stack and integrates with TI hardware and software. Often, the changes made are submitted back to Beckhoff so the future versions of stack may include the adaptations for TI hardware.

There are certain features that have not been implemented yet in the PRU firmware and these are documented in the release notes that accompany each SDK release.

Thanks,

Maneesh

Thanks Maneesh,

in the release notes of the SDK 01.00.00.03 the main limitation is the lack of distributed clock support. This means that by now no real-time applications are possibile with this stack?

Thanks again,

Gianluca.

Distributed clock support is coming in the upcoming release later this month.

Thanks,

Maneesh

Dear Gianluca,

Gianluca Marabini said:

This means that by now no real-time applications are possibile with this stack?

it depends what you mean with real-time application. You can use EtherCAT with very low cycle times (<100us) even without DC mode. 

Just to clarify: The SSC stack supports DC mode anyway. It is just currently disabled in our examples as we need to upgrade the firmware to provide DC mode.

A limitation of the provided example with binary stack code is that you can't change the process data. You can evaluate a basic I/O slave function with 32bit input and 32 bit output. If you want to try different data setup you need to acquire the SSC source code. Anyway if you want to use TI EtherCAT slave implementation you need to join ETG as this is a general (legal) requirement for EtherCAT. Then you also get your vendor ID and access to the sources. It shouldn't take longer than a few days for the process. You can not ship a product with the TI vendor ID!

Regards.

Dear Frank,

I am right, that I must download the SSC, run the patch and create my own Stack with the etherCAt Slave Stack Code Tool if I want an other application than the example with the I/O`s?

best regards

Michael

Yes, correct.

However make sure that you have SSC 5.0 (not 5.01) for SDK 1.0.0.3.

Regards.

Any idea as to when the next release with redundancy support is going to be released?

Regards,

Fourth quarter of 2012 will be when we release it in SDK.

Thanks.

Maneesh

My customer in Santa Clara is demanding to know a date when this feature will be supported.  

Will we be able to order new boards in Q4/2012?     Do you have any better dates or beta units?

Thank You

Paul

Paul,

Please send a message to me and I can assist you with dates and give you background information.

Thanks.

Manesh,

The redundancy feature is going to be handled in a release of the SDK. I was under the impression that it would require hardware changes. Am I correct assuming that a firmware update would add support for EtherCAT redundancy?

How can I send you a direct message to you to get assitance with dates and background information as well?

Thanks,

Ignacio

Hi Maneesh, Thank you for your response.   My email is in my profile or (paul.smith"AT"cometusaDOTCOM).    We have built the TI controller into the next generation of our products delivering this month to the #1 equipment supplier in the Semiconductor Industry.   The customer has requested a detailed ?? timeline from us and a conversion plan to retrofit all products that ship with the current issue.

Please let me know any detail possible.

Best Regards

Paul  

Mod Note:

Paul,

I obfuscated your direct email address as search engines crawl these forums.

It will be handled in a SDK release that is timed with the batches of the AM335x device that have a Silicon Errata addressed.

The silicon errata is documented here: http://www.ti.com/lit/er/sprz360b/sprz360b.pdf. Refer advisory 1.0.4.

Thanks,

Maneesh

Hi,

hope I am sort of right here:
I am trying to build the full feature EtherCAT slave application on SDK 1.00.00.04 but I only have access to SSC 5.00. Is it generally possible to combine those or do I have to use SSC 5.01 for this SDK? So far, I am always getting errors during build. Also, would DC work on the Slave if I could get this to work? Thanks.

Malte,

not sure I understand this. If you have SSC 5.0 you should also be able to download 5.01. The patch process in SDK 1.0.0.4 only works with that code. You may try to merge manually but we can't guarantee this works.

Of course DC Sync is supported in 1.0.0.4 as release notes state. It was more an issue of the PRU firmware than the stack in the past.

Regards.

The SSC 5.0.1 is available for download from ETG/Beckhoff sites.

If not, you can use older version of SDK (1.0.0.3) with SSC 5.0.0

Thanks,

Maneesh

Unfortunately, I could not download v5.01 since our department does note have a Vendor ID and the only version I could get from other departments of our company was 5.00 so far. I had already expected these issues, but since I try to evaluate DC, which, as you stated, only works with SDK 1.0.0.4, I will keep trying to get SSC 5.01.

Thanks for your help!

Malte,

a prerequisite to use EtherCAT is that your company is a member of EtherCAT Technology Group (ETG). As an ETG member you get a vendor id (for free). As far as I know there is only one vendor ID per company.

If you need contacts at ETG let me know.

Regards.